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A problem unlike I’ve seen before: Animation changes when nesting a pre-comp. Or something.
I’m having this weird issue where After Effects is, best I can tell, rendering frames that don’t exist. Or rather, measuring time differently for two different comps.
Let me try to explain… it seems to be happening with pre-comps nested in a larger comp. For instance, I’ve been trying to animate the writing of a url with the text “- Search Google” at a constant distance from the URL as it rights on. In the comp I built, I have this working great. I use hold keyframes to keep “- Search Google” to move in increments equal to the typing cursor. It looks great, everything works. This is in a comp called “Typing”. So Comp#1 is “Typing” and in it are two layers “URL” and “-Search Google”. Bear with me.
I then bring the Typing comp into a larger comp, let’s call it “Web Page”. However, upon playback, for a few frames here and there, it seems the two layers in the pre-comp are being played back at different speeds, so that “- Search Google” now overlaps the URL instead of staying equidistant.
Both comps are 23.976, both 2K comps. Even if they weren’t, it would still be weird because the layers within “Typing” should stay the same, relative to each other. But they aren’t. I don’t get it. I’ve attached a video to illustrate. The beginning of the video is me jumping back and forth one frame in the “Web Page” comp – you can see how things are misaligned. I then start jumping back and forth in the “Typing” pre-comp, where the two layers live. You can see that it looks good.
This is so bizarre. I’ve had a similar issue with another comp, also involving pre-comps. Is this a bug in AE 2018? I’ve been using AE for over a decade but have yet to see something like this.
Here are my specs: MacOS 13.2, 2013 Mac Pro (trash can), 32GB RAM, AFX v15.0.0 (build 180).
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8 Replies
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Can you post the AEP file?
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Sure thing:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hl41myy7d6xl2hm/Creative%20Cow%20Problem.zip?dl=0
Much obliged for the aid in time of need.
– Dave, I’ll try 2017 and see if that works.
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Thanks for the suggestion Dave. I guess expression language has changed between 2018 and one of the older ones, because the expression I used to drive the cursor in the text is broken in 2014/15/17, so unfortunately going legacy won’t help me.
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Looks ok here. Have you tried purging your cache?
Edit > Purge > All memory & disk cache…
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Yeah tried, that. No dice.
It seems my timeline cursor is stuck between frames. If you notice, the highlighted portion of the timeline that indicates the active frame falls to the left and the right of the timeline cursor. I don’t know how to unshift this.
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You’re saying it looks ok when you open the project? Throughout, there is no weird frames? Strange… Thanks for looking.
Here’s a screenshot of what I was talking about regarding the playhead in my timeline. See how it seems to sit in the middle of a frame, instead of at the beginning of one?
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[Gates Bradley] “you’re saying it looks ok when you open the project? Throughout, there is no weird frames?”
Nope, I took another look and I had missed a problem on the first or second frame of the animation.
I did a little more digging, and here’s what I found: layer #24, “URL Typings (Multiple)”, in the comp “SC45 SHOT01 – Hannah Search to G4D 2” does not start on a frame boundary. (Perhaps the frame rate of one of these comps was changed at some point?) This is causing you to see an intermediate state, between frames, where you see the hold keyframes and the expression fall out of sync.
Easy fix: extend that layer all the way back out to its beginning (drag the left-most part of the layer out as far as you can). Press “I” to go to the layer’s in point. Zoom into frames view on the timeline with the “;” key and note that the layer itself starts mid-frame. Press “[” to snap the in point to the CTI (which is now on an actual frame boundary). It should all work now.
[Gates Bradley] “Here’s a screenshot of what I was talking about regarding the playhead in my timeline. See how it seems to sit in the middle of a frame, instead of at the beginning of one?”
You definitely had the right idea about the partial frame problem here, but you’re misinterpreting the highlighted range in the timeline. That highlighted area shows the influence of the comp’s motion blur settings, not the frame boundaries. A shutter angle of 180 gives you half a frame of motion blur, and a shutter phase of -90 puts half of the blur before the CTI and half after.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Just goes to show, there are still things to learn. Thank you Walter for helping me through this issue! While I don’t know how I got in this mess (I can say for sure that the frame rate of the comp was never changed, though perhaps the spacing of the keyframes was (an option-drag re-timing perhaps), I sure am grateful for you help in getting me out.
And I certainly didn’t know that about the motion blur.
Creative Cow kicks *** once again.
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