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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects 20 bad frames out of thousands: Script or other tool to hold previous frame for those without ripple delete

  • 20 bad frames out of thousands: Script or other tool to hold previous frame for those without ripple delete

    Posted by Greg Sage on June 5, 2019 at 1:34 am

    I’ve run into this issue a few times where I have timed footage that just has a few bad frames in it. I can’t change the timing of the footage, so I can’t ripple delete them or ripple delete and retime. I also can’t just chop them out as there would be gaps.

    Basically, I need to chop them out, then repeat the previous frame.

    I can do this various ways manually, but it becomes very inefficient when there are more than a few frames.

    Is there some simple time remapping script or something where I can basically feed it a list of frame numbers and it can do this for me?

    Actually, workflow for this one would allow this in either AE or Premiere.

    thx

    Greg Sage replied 6 years, 11 months ago 4 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • Tomas Bumbulevičius

    June 5, 2019 at 10:35 am

    Greg, few questions:

    1. Is it OK to have more than few static frames to fill in the gap?
    2. Instead, maybe you should just ‘slow down’ the previous or upcoming clip, or even both, to fill that gap as naturally as possible? ‘Rate Stretch Tool’, shortcut of ‘R’ would do it.

    Find out more:
    After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.
    Boxer – Dynamic Text Boxes Template with a Live Preview

  • Greg C neumayer

    June 5, 2019 at 3:57 pm

    I don’t have a script handy that would do this, but here’s the approach I’d take to try to write one:

    –> On a null layer, use a marker to note each frame with the error
    –> Turn on time remapping
    then,
    pseudo-code:
    // if (is this a frame with a marker?)
    // then get the current time
    // display the frame for current time -1

  • Greg Sage

    June 5, 2019 at 4:56 pm

    Hadn’t thought of using markers. Not sure how that’s referred to exactly within the IF statement, but sounds like something that could be looked up.

    thx

  • Greg C neumayer

    June 5, 2019 at 4:58 pm

    Here’s a good documentation page on using expressions with markers:
    https://expressions.aenhancers.com/markerkey.html

  • Greg Sage

    June 5, 2019 at 5:01 pm

    Hmmm.. Maybe.

    It’s a very fast lip sync, so timing is everything. I should’ve clarified too.. it’s never more than one consecutive frame, so at most, I’d be interpolating across a single missing frame at a time. There’s just a number of bad frames randomly scattered throughout the clip. Mainly bad light flashes or sudden jumps that correct in the next frame, so even just holding the previous frame would be a huge improvement.

    Off the top of my head, that might work better, or it might be interpolating a bunch of frames when it’s not really necessary. Can’t say I have an opinion beyond that first impression as I’ve never tried to smooth over a missing frame before. I’d have to think through the stretch thing to work out how many previous frames it should be stretching, etc… and, of course, how to script it.

  • Greg Gesch

    June 5, 2019 at 11:35 pm

    Hi, a simple (though manual) method:
    Add a copy of the footage underneath, push it ahead 1 frame so it’s out of sync – delete the final frame, turn off sound.
    On your top layer set a HOLD keyframe for Opacity 100, go to first problem frame set a hold keyframe at 0 Opacity, move ahead one frame set a hold keyframe for Opacity at 100. Select and copy the 2 keyframes and then paste them at each problem frame.
    This might be quicker than setting markers etc. etc.?

  • Greg Sage

    June 7, 2019 at 4:02 am

    Definitely hadn’t thought of that approach. Yeah… Might just be simpler. as they’re always repeating the 1 previous frame. I’d have to create markers anyway (or a list entered into script somehow) to do any other way, so keyframe pair per skip frame is certainly no more work.

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