• Adobe After Effects

  Sequence of images added to video – is there an easy way?

  Posted by William Long on June 21, 2009 at 3:03 am

  Thanks for reading…Beginner here. I’ve got some assets that are video and many that are still images. Question is…is there a plug-in that I can use to import all the images to the composition and have them move around some w/o having to add each one to the comp individually and set keyframes for position. I want to just add some to my comp in between two video clips, and want them to move around some, kinda like iPhoto does when you want to watch a slideshow put to music. Make sense? Sorry if I can’t articulate what I’m trying to get across. OR, is AE not even the right app to have such an asset created in?

  Thanks again for any/all help…..William Long

  William Long replied 16 years, 10 months ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  William Long

  June 22, 2009 at 11:24 pm

  Dave,
  Thank you for the response. I appreciate it. They’re aren’t a sequence of a movie file….they’re just several photos I want to import. I knew how to get them into the project file (thanks for the help, though), I was just hoping that there was a plug-in or something that would take my “assets” and randomly move them about the composition ‘window’ (right term???) so that there’s some motion to them (kinda like that iphoto slideshow) without me having to create all the keyframes for the transitions for each and every image file. I know…kinda lazy on my part, and I could really use the experience working w/ AE again (it’s been since 5.0 that I’ve worked w/ it), but if there was a shortcut for these images to float around on the screen, I was hoping for it….Thanks for the help, and take care….William
• 

  Jacob Wessler

  June 24, 2009 at 6:42 pm

  William,

  You can always bring your stills into the comp and then add a “wiggle” expression to the position. This is not a very elegant solution but would provide some “movement” in the background without having to do a lot of keyframing.

  Having not seen the iPhoto slideshow you mentioned, I’m not sure I can help re-create that motion, but wiggle will at least move the images around.

  If you want them to slide into view one at a time, that’s going to take some keyframing.

  To add wiggle – alt-click on the position stopwatch to add an expression and type wiggle(x, y). The x will tell the computer how fast to perform the wiggle and the y will tell it how much to vary from the position it started.

  Example:
  wiggle(2, 50) will move the picture up to 50 pixels twice a second
  wiggle(0.5, 50) will move the picture up to 50 pixels every other second

  If you want to control x, y, and z individually – try this

  x= wiggle(2, 50);
  y= wiggle(2, 75);
  z= wiggle(2, 100);
  [x, y, z]

  Change the numbers to suit your taste.

  Good Luck,
  Jacob
• 

  William Long

  June 24, 2009 at 6:49 pm

  Jacob,
  Thank you very much for your input. Your wiggle suggestion sounds like it may be just what I’m looking for. I’ll try it and see if the outcome suits my needs. Again, thank you very much. I appreciate it….William

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