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Change layer every 3 frames effect?
Hi, Im trying to recreate the effect of Everybody Have Fun Tonight and I would have thought it would be as simple as having an effect placed on a solid that randomly or uniformly picked between one of my 3-5 different takes of the singer, and displayed it for a couple of frames before picking another and so on. I have tried this effect with strobe, but that is really only useful for picking between two shots, whereas as some points in this video, it is flicking between maybe three shots.
Is there any way of doing this, as you can imagine cutting is not an option as it would take weeks to manually cut this for a 3 minute clip!
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7 Replies
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This looks like a good case for expressions.
Create a comp that contains nothing but the footage elements you want to randomly cut between.
Add a null object as the first layer in the comp and name it Control.
Add a Slider Control effect to the null, and Alt-click the keyframe stopwatch for Slider. Enter this expression:
Math.abs(Math.round(wiggle(5, thisComp.numLayers-2)))+2
Now, for each footage item, Alt-click the transparency keyframe stopwatch and enter the follow expression:
if (thisComp.layer("Control").effect("Slider Control")(1) == index) 100 else 0So here’s how all that works.
The null object’s slider randomly picks an integer value between 2 and the total number of layers. This is called a layer index. Each footage layer is looking at that slider to see when it’s layer number is “called.” For example, when the slider reads 4, layer 4’s opacity jumps to 100 while all other layers’ opacities drop to 0. Layer 1 is never called, because that’s where the slider itself lives.
For faster or slower cutting, change the number 5 after the “wiggle” expression in the first code block.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
great job walter! you should get a kudos. unfortanately now all the editors will get layed off, lol. and to make it more organic, replace the 5 with random(2,5);
https://technicolorsoftware.hostzi.com/
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THANKYOU!!! My goodness, this is EXACTLY, what I was looking for, I cannot believe how perfect the effect is, and how much it is like the Wang Chung video! Once I have the video I intend to use this on finnished, I’ll post it here in a couple of weeks when it’s done, for anyone who is interested in how this looks in action.
Thanks once again, there was an old post where someone was asking about this, and noone could come up with a suitable solution, so thanks once again for this perfect result!
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You’re welcome, Ike. Good luck with your project!
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Hey, as I promised, here’s the clip using your expression, I didn’t put it quite as fast as Wang Chung, but it is still crazy!
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Does anyone know how to make the layers fade in and out as well? this is exactly the effect I am going for, but with a little more subtlety.
thanks!
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I”m a nube to AE scripts. I tired replacing that 5 with the random(2,5); you suggested and it’s giving me error prompts. Would you mind re-writing that how it should look with the random replacing the 5?
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