Adolfo Rozenfeld
Forum Replies Created
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” but be warned that around 70% of what most motion graphics artists do in ae can be done in motion and faster”
I don’t know where you take the 70 per cent figure from. Nowadays I can hardly see many broadcast graphics pieces without some form of 3D space and Motion doesn’t have any. It boggles my mind how they can think they can in 2007 offer a motion graphics tool with no 3D space (maybe it’s the famous reality distortion field?). Also, Motion doesn’t have expressions (which AE standard has) nor any other form of parameter linking. I use both and like both, but feel very constrained by the omissions in Motion. It does looks spectacular on paper, but It seems as if most the work on it goes to making it spectacular (think public demos) than being deep and versatile for professional users. The whole text tracking/kerning model is wrong and bug-riden, for example. After using Motion for a couple years, I now have the impression Motion is more for people with some motion graphics needs (news/corporate/event video editors, for example) than for pro motion designers. And that it’s not a bad thing at all.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
Software based, standard conversion used to be a sci-fi topic until recently.
Now you have many options, depending on which side of the speed/quality equation you want to be in.The best possible conversion is probably that in Apple’s Compressor 2 on the Mac, if you enable its’ incredibly slow optical flow/motion compensated technology for frame rate and size conversions (in the frame controls tab). If you use Compressor 2 with the frame blending method, it will be much faster, but results will be similar to the other solutions described below. Compressor’s quality can approach hardware converter level, but unfortuantely is not as automatic process (even worse, it does actually have presets for conversions, but they are wrong in that they don’t enable the proper parameters).
On the PC, Canopus’ Procoder does quite decent conversions and, unlike Apple’s tools, it does so in a very automatic way. It can’t touch Compressor’s mindblowing motion compensated results, but it’s more or less as good (and probably faster) than Compressor’ fast method. It uses a similar method, I’d guess.
Another two options on the Mac side: JES Deinterlacer is a free tool (search for it in Google) which is very fast, and pretty much OK in terms of quality (frame blending method again). Graeme Nattress has a very nice tool that works as a plug-in for Final Cut Pro (Nattress G Converter). It’s probably better quality and quite fast too. Not free, though.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
Unfortunately, Motion doesn’t currently have expressions or any other form of parameter linking. That is needed to do what you want. BUT… specialcase wrote an utility which converts After Effects position keyframe data to Motion position property. You could use After Effects’ Convert Audio to keyframes assitant, copy the resulting keyframes to the position property, and then use specialcase’s tool (you will have to copy and paste the position keyframes to the property you want).
To download it:
https://www.motionsmarts.com/downloads.htmlAdolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
Hello, Ron.
How are things in Cambria?
Let me respectfully offer another experience on this subject.
I am using After Effects 7 on a MBP. In fact, it’s my main production machine at this time.It works quite well, without significant isuses. As far as speed is concened, look at the irony: yes, it runs much slower than it would if it was Universal, yet it runs at least as fast as the last generation of PPC Powerbooks (this is true since the latest Mac OS X update, which really beefed up Rosetta performance). So, if you’re a Mac user who needs AE on the go, at this point the MacBook Pro is the best option to run it. It doesn’t yet take advantage of the true power of the Core/Core 2 Duo processors, but using it with a PPC based Powerbook (the alternative if you’re a Mac laptop user) wouldn’t be faster, or particularly more reliable. I use it many hours a day, without major reliability issues.
Another interesting bit: AE 7 on a MBP completely supports OpenGL fast previews with the ATI X1600 chipset (Mac OS X 10.4.8 also upgraded OpenGL drivers in a big way). For the first time on a Mac laptop, all of AE Fast previews categories appear as “supported” in the OpenGL info window. So, suddenly, the MBP becomes quite acceptable for AE work: peformance for interactive adjustments is snappier than many G4 and even some G5 machines because of the OpenGL support. Interesting, isn’t it?
And of course, your MBP is ready whenever Adobe releases a Universal version of AE, right? Seeing how decently AE 7 runs on Rosetta, one can’t help thinking a native version should fly on it.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
If I understood correctly, you don’t need expressions at all for this. You only need to set the video layer as a parent for the other layer. At any spot in time, place the second layer in the relative position you like and set the first one as the parent. As a consequence, before and after that spot, the second layer will move in tandem with the first one, in a relative way.
Next time, you don’t need to correct manually the camera motion. After Effects’ motion tracking/stabilizing technology can do that for you, in an automated (or at least, semi automated) manner.
Hope this helps.Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
If I understood correctly, you don’t need expressions at all for this. You only need to set the video layer as a parent for the other layer. At any spot in time, place the second layer in the relative position you like and set the first one as the parent. As a consequence, before and after that spot, the second layer will move in tandem with the first one, in a relative way.
Next time, you don’t need to correct manually the camera motion. After Effects’ motion tracking/stabilizing technology can do that for you, in an automated (or at least, semi automated) manner.
Hope this helps.Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
“There are some obvious limitations to this — AE can’t reproduce features that Motion has and AE doesn’t (eg, particles).”
Apple marketing is second to none, isn’t it?
Of all cool things in Motion, that’s not a feature AE doesn’t have (in fact, there are a couple of tricks in Particle Playground that are not available in Motion at all, like having an arbitrary wall for particles to rebound, or using the luminance/color of a layer as a map to affect particle behavior: it’s even possible to apply time remapping to particles based on that information). It’s just something that is very different between the two programs, and that’s why it’s impossible to convert from one to the other. In the same way text animation is impossible to convert. Motion’s Parameter behaviors (wriggle, oscilate, negate, etc), on the other hand, would be really easy to translate to simple, one command AE expressions, if anybody wanted to.Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
“There are some obvious limitations to this — AE can’t reproduce features that Motion has and AE doesn’t (eg, particles).”
Apple marketing is second to none, isn’t it?
Of all cool things in Motion, that’s not a feature AE doesn’t have (in fact, there are a couple of tricks in Particle Playground that are not available in Motion at all, like having an arbitrary wall for particles to rebound, or using the luminance/color of a layer as a map to affect particle behavior: it’s even possible to apply time remapping to particles based on that information). It’s just something that is very different between the two programs, and that’s why it’s impossible to convert from one to the other. In the same way text animation is impossible to convert. Motion’s Parameter behaviors (wriggle, oscilate, negate, etc), on the other hand, would be really easy to translate to simple, one command AE expressions, if anybody wanted to.Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
[Clint Nitkiewicz Hern
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You don’t “import” it, you “paste” it.
Importing AI files is for the actual visual content. Not what you wan in this case.
You just copy the path in Illustrator and then, very important, you have to let AE know you want to paste that as a mask (not as a motion path, for instance). To do that, you first create a mask (any mask), select it and only then you paste the path. If it doesn’t work, you have the wrong clipboard format turned on AI’s preferences. Go there (Preferences > FIle handling and clipboard) and turn on the other one as well.Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com