Edgy issues

[Richard Herd]

Oh man what a nightmare!

How many layers and elements do you have?

[Jerry Smith]

Approximately 12000.

[Jerry Smith]

I wrote a script that changes position and anchor point values. Maybe if you guys want, I can post it somewhere?

So I’m most of the way home. But I still have a question:

Suppose you have a blue background. Then you have a white solid that has a square mask. Then you put on top of that a red solid that has a square mask that is exactly the same as the first square mask. But let’s say that those square masks fall in between the pixels. And let’s imagine that all the opacities are 100%. Now, in the abstract, you shouldn’t be able to see any white. But, in AE, I the red box has a pinkish one pixel transition rim around it. If I turn off the white layer, then I get the expected purple one pixel rim. How can I get rid of that white layer seeping through on the edge?

I thought I could do some sort of blending option. There are so many. But none of them seemed to work. Maybe there is some Alpha channel voodoo I can do?

My actual situation is a bit more complicated as there are actually multiple white solid layers with squares and various text layers before we get up to the top red layer. So I don’t know if that matters.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[Kevin Camp]

it’s do to anti-aliasing of sub-pixel positioning.

you could modify the masks to fall exactly on the edge of a row or column of pixels.

you could add simple choker to the white solid and increase the choke slightly to ‘shrink’ in the edges so they are hidden behind the other layers.

you could pre-comp all the layers that make the rectangle, and then in the pre-comp turn on preserve transparency (layer>preserve transparency) for all layers above the white solid. this will clip those layers’ transparency to the any layers bellow that do not have that option enabled. you may need to enlarge to layers above the white solid to make sure they expand beyond the aliasing edges of the white solid.

you might be able to construct these rectangles in a way that uses a single layer and avoids the issue of stacking layers.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Jerry Smith]

Thanks Kevin.

1) Modifying the masks via draft quality is one of my current candidate strategies.

2) I’ll have to read up on chokers.

3) Pre-comping is a possibility, but would require considerable revamping. The white can’t simply be turned off and new masks would be needed. I’ll have to read more about preserve transparency though.

4) Too late in the game to reconstruct the rectangles. I thought about it last night for a few hours.

5) Something that you haven’t mentioned. I can use backgrounds that are less saturated.

[Kevin Camp]

if you do use the ‘draft’ setting method in for those layers, when you render, click the render settings and set the quality from the default ‘best’ to ‘current settings’, otherwise ae will assume that you want to render all layers at ‘best’ quality.

and simple choke is just an effect, simply start typing ‘choke’ in the effects palette and drag simple choker onto you layer, or select your layer and choose effects>matte>simple choker to apply it to the layer.

it has one control, choke amount. just scrub that value to see how it effects the layer, but it simply grows or shrinks the alpha transparency of a layer.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Jerry Smith]

Man, I earned my AE stripes. I did a partial redo. Lobbed off 7/8. Wrote a script to homogenize all inexact numbers. Then duplicated the remaining 1/8th three times. Then I turned on the Matte Choker just enough to get rid of all offending 1 pixel edges. Then I had to still go in and move many edges by hand taking into account a 61% scaling. Then I had to automate the chocker to come on just as the motion is stopping–two frames to turn it on.

Now my render times have gone through the roof, maybe 20 times longer? I dunno. Seems like I can’t RAM preview the entire thing. I guess that choker is choking my 16MB of RAM i7 macmini?

But, man, you’ve never seen sharper edges!

I’m going to tell the boss I deserve a raise.

[Richard Herd]

[Jerry Smith] “render times have gone through the roof”

You definitely need a pay raise. But also you can mess with render settings, for which there are dozens of tutorials and theories and opinions. Having said that, you can also save valuable render time with decent network settings.

After Effects > Preferences > Media and Disk Cache > Enable Disk Cache and then read all the stuff there. Generally speaking, you want 3 drives: a system drive, a media drive, a disk cache. That way in all cases you are reading/writing to different drives all the time, rather than trying to read and write to the same drive.

After Effects > Preferences > Memory & Multiprocessing > After Effects Multiprocessing > Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously … but I can never seem to get this right and have stopped messing with it, truth be told.

I have also found that if I Dynamic Link the final composition into Premiere (close After Effects) and render through media encoder, then I get faster renders and more options that seem easier to control, for me. In the Premiere settings, I also set the Premiere > Preferences > Media > Media Cache Files & Media Cache Database to the exact same folder as the AE preferences mentioned above. Then in AE, choose Composition > Cache Work Area in Background. My understanding is that now AE and PP are sharing cache files. Please note I use CS6, and hopefully in CC 2015, this is more straightforward.

EDIT: In Adobe Media Encoder > Preferences > Media > same location as Premiere and After Effects.