How easy is it to get this effect with looping footage?

[Mike Clasby]

I can’t use Jerzy’s installer because I’m back in the prehistoric 6.5, but here is a link to a similar question, I think part 2 is the answer to what you want.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/917746

The only difference I see is that your example is soooo regular in it’s progression, but the setup described in part 2 of the link is not so regular. You get the same back shuffle, but it’s in a little more spurts, you’ll see what I mean.

Is did make a preset form it but no place to upload to, but I can email it, that way it takes, Converting the music file to audiokeyframes, then running the preset to get three sliders and the expression on time remapping. Also with the sliders if you tweak the settings you should get close to what you want.

I need to explore a little math rounding in the expression to see if that will make it more regular.

[Daniel Haskett]

Hey mike

thanks so much for your help, i really appreciate it!

Im going through the stuff now, but if you did have a preset you could email me to check out that would be great as im having a little difficulty at the moment!

thanks

dan

[Mike Clasby]

I mailed it to the address from your website. Tell me if you don’t get it in awhile.

It’s a whopping 5KB, but saves a whole lotta time.

[Mike Clasby]

I found a smoother way to do this, smooth like in the example you showed.

Overview: It’s an expression on time remapping that is triggered by markers on the beat. No sliders to reference.

You can get the markers on the beat by tapping the * key on the numeric pad (asterisk) on the beat, after you’ve pressed the dot (.) or zero (0) on the numeric pad.

Or a slick way to get markers on the beat is with Filip Vandueren’s bpmMarkers.jsx script, here’s the link:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/867359

You can read the thread for details. Before you start up AE you need to copy the jsx file into your AE Script folder. You need to know the beats per minute before hand and then put the time marker on the first beat, run the script(File>Run Script>bpmMarkers.jsx ), I tested it out on that music video you linked to (I recorded the music as it played, imported the wav into AE, then found the first beat (LL reveals the audio waveform and I listened), anyway I ran the script and the default 128 bpm was exactly right for that music, placing a marker at each beat.

So to get the markers on the video I wanted to rhythm, I put the Current time indicator on that first beat, then selected the video layer to be rythymed, Ran the script on it, giving me the markers on the beat (once again). I Enabled Time Remapping and add this expression to the Time remapping stopwatch:

backSlide = 11; // number of frames to skip back
fps = 29.97; // change to your comp frame rate
n = 0;
if (marker.numKeys > 0){
n = marker.nearestKey(time).index;
if (marker.key(n).time > time){
n–;
}
}
value – (backSlide+1) * n/fps

So, this is a hack off of a few Dan expressions and I’m sure it could be cleaned up, but it seems to work on my test.

You need to put the comp frame rate into the “fps” on line 2.
Make “backSlide” in line 1 how far you want the vid to slide back on each beat.
So at 128 bpm like this music was, that’s 14 frames for each beat, so with it sliding back 11 frames at each beat, you get a 3 frame advance with each beat, that accumulates over time, at least it did on the 22 second clip I tested it on.

This is very smooth like your linked video and gives you same forward>backward>forward>backward-but-always-progressing look, progress 3 frames per beat. So if you set the “backSlide” to 13, yours only get a very slow 1 frame total progression per beat.

It’s not nearly as complicated as it sounds.

I tried tying this in with Audio Amplitude but it gives you erratic look, not smooth like above.

[Daniel Haskett]

hey mike,

thanks sooo much, this is awesome! combining that clever script with your expression really does do exactly what i asked and so easily too, its really clever. i wish i could understand expressions fully!

out of interest is there a way i can save that expression as a preset, so i can just apply that to a video layer in future? ive never learnt how to actually make a preset…

thanks again!

dan

[Mike Clasby]

Make a preset by selecting the Time Remapping (with the expression on it), then click Animation>Make Animation Preset and name it something like “RythymToMarkers”, then Save to the Presets folder.

Unfortunately if you run this preset on a new layers, without first having enabled Time Remapping, you get then original time remapping keyframes that were on the Original (Where you made the preset From), and unless this clip is the same length, it messes the timing up.

The workaround is to Enable time remapping first, then run the preset. It will add the expression. Now you’ll have three keyframes instead of 2, you can delete the middle one the preset just added, but it doesn’t seem to hurt the effect. I don’t know if it hurts if the layer you’re doing is shorter than the Original (you made the preset from).

It might just be easier to add the expression normally.