After months of trying different methods, I'm finally getting around to trying Adobe AE, using Bridge for image enhancements, and I am beginning to see the value of camera raw.

A couple of the programs I had been using output only jpegs after deflickering, or after image enhancements, and so after every step I was getting an increasingly degraded results, with the jpeg patchwork artifacts in uniform sky or night sky background.

So, I'm assuming that Adobe's method of applying all of the various adjustments through XMP metadata at the final video rendering stage is what produces the highest fidelity results? If so, I wish someone what have beat that into my head at the start.

Also, can I buy an older version of AE (say, CS5) on ebay, and have it work with CS6 bridge? Apparently, only CS6 Bridge reads my Canon 6D raw files.

That's why people use LR Timelapse...

Mistakes - one of the best ways of learning. But if you're like me the mistakes continue

Of course the best method would be not to have flicker in the first place. I've only ever needed to deflicker two shots out of 200. It's a better way to go.

I only use AE for stabilizing if it's been a windy shoot but I've manage to remove this issue from my shooting setup. I wish I could justify buying it though. Too many lenses to get first !

I used RAW in AE before I found the processing times restrictive.
I now export to JPEG after all my adjustments are done.

Yes, it can take a while for a super long sequence but after that you will appreciate how much less time it takes to render from AE when you go back and make adjustments to your comp. 30mb vs 5mb per photo. It just chugs when doing previews and rendering unless you use JPEGs. I'm using an i7 3300K with GTX 680... 32gb Ram.

thanks for the info, scotchtape. Yes, I noticed the the previews and rendering are impossibly slow with raw.

Hey there, I've been doing the RAW thing as well. Though I am thinking about maybe trying to export to JPEGs first. However, which files do you keep long-term? Both the RAW and JPEGs? Plus the rendered video in full quality? That's even more data.. which is one of my biggest issues

To be honest I've only been doing this for a year so I don't know what I will do long term.
I have quite a few sequences I will probably just delete as they are my first shots with lots of mistakes etc.

Right now I have over 2TB worth of data (I think).

If you are just archiving them with no backups, HDD space isn't too $$$.
I decided on using the Seagate NAS HDDs, 2TB discs.

If I had to start deleting files to make space, I decided on what to keep on a shot to shot basis.
If it's a really challenging or unique shot I might keep the RAWs, but if it's just an "easy" shot you don't really need the RAW files...

I just make weekly backups and LR import backups, that's it for me. I might try to go with exporting JPEGs from LR and importing them in AE for my next project... thanks for the info.

My two cents. I have two hard drives that I use for easy access of shots. These contain RAW, JPG and two AVI files - high res (same as original RAW) and low res (1920 wide). I also have two copies on DVD-R which is only the original shooting files. One set is at my inlaws house. It's a lot of work to archive shots but if you don't want to lose them you have to take as much precaution as possible. I do have the added advantage of having an auto changer on a DVD drive so it saves time here. I've written a couple of DOS scripts that do the movie creation for me and I've just recently bought Lightroom with the idea that it will do some automated RAW->JPG conversions for me. I am hoping to start using dual layer DVD-R soon as the RAW shots do take up 4-5 discs for one shot.

I would worry if I only had a hard drive copy as when they go down they take the 2TB of data with them.

Steve R.

Of course, it is not the very best solution. Though the biggest risk, where I live, is that the disk crashes - and not that it gets stolen or destroyed (which, of course, can both happen). So if the disk crashes, I still have everything on a backup disk (or if the backup disk crashes, I have it on the "live" disk) and can copy it to another disk right away. I've got some storage left and can always delete other data that's not really important.

I'd like to have a third copy at another location, though this can wait, since it costs, and there are other things to pay, which seem more important to me.

Damn that lack of money. It gets in the way of so many things

Too true