Slit Scan

[Michael Szalapski]

There are a few tutorials here on the COW that may point you in the right direction.
This one is a quick readable tutorial (remember those?) that talks about displacing text and also talks about time displacement; which is fun.
To go more in-depth there is a three-part video series here, here, and here about displacement in AE.

Now, you could possibly achieve this effect with some work on bezier warp under Effect>Distort…actually, you should probably play around with all the other options in that section; it’s possible you’ll be able to recreate it, but it’s also possible you’ll stumble on your own unique effect that fits your project too.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Nic Bian]

Thanks for your suggestions. The problem I’m having with achieving the slit scan is simply the jagged lines it creates, looking for a method or settings that can do this smoother, more liquid.

The bezier warp affects the entire frame, bending the background also. The nice thing about a slit scan is that only the figure in motion is warped.

Ultimatly want something smooth like this:
https://www.vimeo.com/3697348

Keep getting edges like this:
https://www.vimeo.com/2963801

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[Paul Robinson]

Hi Nic, I’ve been experimenting with this effect in After Effects today and found that if you increase resolution of the gradient, the resulting lines in the warped image are much smaller.
In my example I have my original video at 720*568, and with the gradient the same resolution I get obvious jaggy edges in the movement.
I then increased the size of the gradient comp to 4096*3112 (4k in the dropdown list) and made the gradient fit the comp size, and the resulting image had much smoother warping. It does still have slight jaggy edges though, but I reduced those a little more by applying the Reduce interlace flicker plugin.

Hope this helps a little.

[Nic Bian]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for investigating this, I tried what you suggested and found that I still got vary jagged lines.

My comp size for my footage is 1440 x 1080, I made my gradient comp 8000 x 6000. Resized the gradient comp in my 1440 x 1080 comp and still got the same jagged appearance, as before not any smoother

Did you achieve a fairly smooth output? Have I misunderstood your instructions?

[Paul Robinson]

Hi again Nic, I didn’t resize the gradient comp by scaling but by using the ‘Stretch Map to Fit’ option in the Time Displacement plugin, sorry I didn’t explain that bit so well in the previous post.
It still had jaggies but not half as bad as before, though my video source isn’t as high res as yours is.

Here is a test video I made…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlxwvPS2mVY
It’s not brilliant but I think it looks ok. That was with 720*568 video source and 4096*3112 gradient, then with the ‘Reduce interlace flicker’ plugin applied to the result.

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[Colin Smith]

Also Nic, the footage frame rate plays a part in the process.
If you shoot the footage with a 7D @ 60 fps you’ll get a much smoother result. Than you would with it @ 25 fps.

C

[Mo Stoebe]

Hi Nic,
Is your composition in 16 or 32 bit? Seems like that makes a big difference.