Tiling video with time offset

[Steve Brame]

It involves duplicating your layer and arranging into a grid. Do yourself a favor and use a script like this…

https://aescripts.com/layers2grid/

It will make your life so much easier.

Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions

[Kevin Camp]

I think you are looking or the time displacement effect. it can use a grayscale layer map to take samples from different times of a single clip (or comp).

to creative something similar to the ‘eye’ in your example, first create a new comp. add a new layer and add the fractal noise effect and then the mosaic effect (make adjustments to the mosaic ‘blocks’ and the fractal noise contrast so you have a fairly discernible block pattern).

bring that block comp into a the comp with your footage layer and add the time displacement effect to the footage layer. select the block pattern comp as the ‘time displacement layer’ and increase the max time displacement value and go from there.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Mischa Livingstone]

Thanks. That is definitely a good option.

[Mischa Livingstone]

Hmm. Interesting. I tried this out and it definitely accomplishes some of what I’m looking for. Thanks for the tip.

However, if I want to assign a differently timed version of the same clip to each box I’m thinking I might need to build a grid, as mentioned in the previous answer.

Is there a plugin that might do exactly what I’m needing. Where one can assign the same clip to each box, then determine the time offset for each box separately?

[Kevin Camp]

the first part of the example was likely done with time displacement (or similar effect in another piece of software)… this is the part with the big eye that is broken into a grid of slightly re-timed ’tiles’.

the examples with the eye that is duplicated across the screen in a grid could be done in a similar way. you can create the grid with the footage pretty easily with the motion tile effect in one comp. then in another comp, create the displacement map. to mimic the timing offset in the example, try starting with the ramp effect creating a gradation from the top left, to the bottom right, then add the mosaic effect with setting to give you the same number of boxes as you creative with the motion tile effect (like 4×4 or 8×8, etc). then take both those comps into a new comp. add the time displacement effect to the footage comp, and select the mosaic comp as the displacement map, and you’ll start getting close.

for a few of the boxes that you want to time displace further (like the eye that looks left, independent of the others), you might need add manually.

or you could do the whole setup manually, scale the clip down, duplicate it many times and arrange it in a grid. then offset the footage manually in the timeline.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Mischa Livingstone]

Thank you for the detailed notes. It confirms a lot of what I have been researching and makes a lot of sense. I’m guessing it will be a mixture of effects as you say.

Thanks so much.