Delay / Offset Posterize Time Effect

[Trent Armstrong]

Well, I see that you indicate in your post that you’re not looking for an expression, but expressions would really help you here. Put those in and play around with the numbers in the parentheses. Using the posterizeTime() expression keeps you from having to use the Posterize Time effect which can mess with other effects.

Layer A timeremap could be

posterizeTime(6);

value

Layer B timeremap could be

posterizeTime(5);

value

Layer C timeremap could be

posterizeTime(4);

value

[Tom Slinger]

Thanks Trent!

Thats really helpful. I’ll use expressions instead, I didn’t know you could add posteriseTime to timeremap.

Ideally I’d want all layers to be 5 fps, is there a way of offsetting each layer by a different value so that the layers will be changing frame on different frames? I appreciate your suggest would do this but I’m wondering if it’s possible to maintain the 5 fps?

[Trent Armstrong]

So sorry. I haven’t had time to look at this again. I actually think you might need to precomp and offset the layers in time if you want to have the all at 5 fps but offset.

[Tom Slinger]

No worries! Thanks for your help.

I’ve taken your advice on using different values and created this which works well:

seedRandom(index,true);

posterizeTime(Math.round(random(4,6)));

value

[Trent Armstrong]

That’s pretty awesome! I hope it looks good for you!

[Jakob Werner]

I encountered the same problem and managed to write a custom posterizeTime() expression.<div>

 

Just use .vaueAtTime(newT); on your desired property.

newFramerate = 5; and frameOffset = 2; will change the values on frame 2, 7, 12, 17, 22, …

I hope that works for you, too!

Jakob

// Custom posterizeTime()

//
// Use .valueAtTime(newT) on your desired property
// and set your new frame Rate and your Offset value
var newFramerate = 5; //set your new Framerate in frames per second here
var frameOffset = 2; //set your offset in frame here

 

var frameRate = 1/thisComp.frameDuration;
var t = (time*frameRate);
var newT = Math.floor((t-frameOffset)/(frameRate/newFramerate));
newT = newT*(frameRate/newFramerate) + frameOffset;
newT /= frameRate;

 

transform.position.valueAtTime(newT);

</div>

[Tom Slinger]

Ah! AMAZING! Thanks Jacob, this is so helpful.

Exactly what I needed. 🙂

[Trent Armstrong]

Great stuff!

[Chloé Richmond]

I came up with this solution, which I found more useful:

let framerate = 1/thisComp.frameDuration;
let targetFrameRate = 12;
let frameOffset = 1; // (offset in frames);
Math.floor(value*targetFrameRate)/targetFrameRate+frameOffset/framerate

There’s also the solution of precomping it and then adding an adjustment layer with posterize time that you can move around, but I found that a bit too cumbersome for my liking.

[Ifeanyi anyi]

If you want true 5 fps across all layers but staggered updates, expressions are really the cleanest route.

Use posterizeTime(5) on the property, then offset each layer’s sampling with valueAtTime(time – framesToTime(offset)). That keeps the same cadence but shifts when each layer updates.

Precomping and time shifting also works, but it gets messy fast once you have many layers.