Roto Brush Freeze

[Chris Wright]

unfreezing roto was an ae update

https://technicolorsoftware.hostzi.com/

[Kris Mccormic]

Hey Chris,

Thanks for the reply!

My AE is fully up to date with all patches. My problem isn’t really with unfreezing but with the actual freezing. On freeze, the effect does not show up; on unfreeze or before freeze, the effect shows up.

Any other suggestions? Thanks again!! ^_^

Phade.

[Walter Soyka]

[Kris McCormic] “Now as the last step, I hit the Freeze button. It does its thing but then shows both the foreground and background in the final comp as if no roto had taken place. If I unclick the freeze button, it cuts the background out like it should showing only the wanted foreground part and cutting out the unwanted background part in the final comp.”

Are you sure you’re looking at the comp in the viewer, or are you still looking at the rotobrush layer?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Kris Mccormic]

Hey Walter,

Thanks for the reply!

I am looking at both. I first noticed it when I hit freeze and then went back to my final comp. I had been checking it all along to see how it looked in both the roto view and final comp. After hitting freeze, the roto appeared to go away. Unclicking freeze made the roto come back in both the roto view and final comp view.

Do you know of a way to force rebuild the roto without recreating the roto from scratch?

Thanks again for your help!! ^_^

Phade.

[Walter Soyka]

[Kris McCormic] “I am looking at both. I first noticed it when I hit freeze and then went back to my final comp. I had been checking it all along to see how it looked in both the roto view and final comp. After hitting freeze, the roto appeared to go away. Unclicking freeze made the roto come back in both the roto view and final comp view.”

In the layer viewer — do you the view set to “RotoBrush” and “Render” checked? Have you toggled the Alpha Boundary?

In the comp — does the layer with RotoBrush applied have effects turned on? Is the RotoBrush effect itself also on? Do you have any other instances of that footage without the RotoBrush effect applied elsewhere in the comp?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Kris Mccormic]

View set to: Roto Brush
Render checkbox: checked
Effect Controls: Roto Brush “on”
Comp Effects: “on”
Alpha Boundary: “on” or “off” no effect

There is another instance of the footage with roto brush applied. The footage is a single shot of actor crossing in front of a doorway (roto 1) and then seconds later entering the doorway (roto 2). Both 1 and 2 are separate sub-comps of a main comp (actor passes in front of object (another layer sub-comp) at doorway and then again). Could having roto applied in two places on the same footage in different sub-comps be the problem? If so, how do I fix that? (Import footage twice or something?)

The super weird kicker to me is that if freeze is off, the roto works great in the final comp (just chugs really slowly). Once freeze is on, there is no spoon, I mean, no roto.

Thanks again for the suggestions!! ^_^

Phade.

[Walter Soyka]

[Kris McCormic] “There is another instance of the footage with roto brush applied. The footage is a single shot of actor crossing in front of a doorway (roto 1) and then seconds later entering the doorway (roto 2). Both 1 and 2 are separate sub-comps of a main comp (actor passes in front of object (another layer sub-comp) at doorway and then again). Could having roto applied in two places on the same footage in different sub-comps be the problem? If so, how do I fix that? (Import footage twice or something?)”

Do those two pieces of footage overlap in your timeline? Are you cutting roto on the top layer, but then seeing the background from a layer below? What if you solo one of the layers at a time?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Kevin Reiner]

I am having this same problem. I have read all the documentation on rotobrush and was able to do 3 clips with no problem (awesome tool by the way). However, on my forth clip, when I hit the freeze button, the matte path disappears and the background is no longer keyed out. And as Kris experienced, it reappeared when I unfroze. I am positive that I am using the effect correctly, something is wrong.

I tried trashing prefs and restarting the computer, but no luck. I am going to open a fresh project with only that clip and see if I get any good results.

Kris, did you ever get this resolved?

-Kevin

Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
32GB Memory
Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
Dell Display (23″ flat panel)
ATI Radeon HD 5770
AJA Kona LSi SD/HD capture card
Rourke 16 TB
Flanders 2460

SOFTWARE
Mac OS X 10.6.5
FCP 7
After Effects CS5
Boris Continuum
Sapphire Plug Ins
All Trapcode Plugs
Zaxwerks Invig

[Kris Mccormic]

Hey,

I hate to say it, but I’m glad I’m not the only one with the problem. 🙂

I ended up giving up and trying again with the same footage in a new comp and it worked the second time. My guess is that the cached render of the mask became corrupt in such a way that it would not use or recreate it when toggling the freeze button. Redoing the roto from scratch “fixed” it. Sounds like it’s a “under certain rare conditions…” bug to me. Hopefully it will be recognized and fixed.

Sorry for the less-than-optimal answer. 🙁

Kris.

[Walter Soyka]

[Kris McCormic] “Sounds like it’s a “under certain rare conditions…” bug to me. Hopefully it will be recognized and fixed.”

I’d encourage you both to fill out bug reports to make sure that Adobe is aware of the issue:

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events