Adding Black Frames and 2-Pop in AE Render Queue

[Chris Thomas]

Does anyone know of a way to (in the render queue) add 2-seconds of black onto a the beginning of a render?

Yes yes, I know it’s quite easy to precomp your animation and add 2-seconds in the composition itself… but I like keeping my comps streamlined and production-ready and it would be nice to create black frames on the beginning and end of my animations without having to edit the composition.

This sounds niche (and it is), but it would be super helpful when creating previews for clients.

Thanks!

[Walter Soyka]

There’s no way to do this directly with the Render Queue, aside from putting the two-pop in the beginning of your comp and using Render Settings to control the timing of the render, according to whether you wanted the two-pop or not.

There’s another option that’s probably not as automated as you’d like, but Adobe Media Encoder supports “stitched clips:”
https://helpx.adobe.com/media-encoder/using/overview-media-encoder-user-interface.html#StitchingclipstogetherusingAdobeMediaEncoder

I used to use Telestream Episode for things like this, but that’s EOL now. If you’re command-line savvy, you could do this with ffmpeg.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive [twitter]   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Eric Santiago]

You have to add it as a precomp or setup a sequence in an NLE.

Its been this way since the days of adding bars/tones/countdowns.

[Chris Thomas]

Thanks for the responses! Looks like I’m SOL, but I figured that was the case.