[Andy Engelkemier]

Have you thought about just skipping the rotoscope? Since your object is only one color, you can select the color. The only thing that will give you an issue there is the balloon that has a similar color. So eliminate that with a simple mask.

You Might even be able to just use one effect, Change color.

I’d make an adjustment layer above your footage. Draw a mask that covers the dress in all frames. You can animate it a Little if you need to, but it doesn’t look like it would be needed.
Apply the Change color effect, select pink to change. Adjust the accuracy since it’s not all the same pink.
Then go nuts changing your colors.

There are more ways to do this, but they would be similar. You Really don’t need to rotoscope that though.
Rotoscoping is needed if your subject crosses a bunch of other background objects, or if your object is made of lots of pieces. Like, if you wanted to desaturate everything Except for your character. (that’s an overused effect, but a good example).

Also, only 720p? That’s already a bit dated, so unless you know your output screen is a device that will only be 1280×720 then you should edit higher if you can. This actually makes tracking easier also.

But rotoscoping is Always a pain in the butt. It always has been. Some points track fine, some don’t So there’s lots of manual work. It’s better than it used to be. But it’s still the most time consuming part of effect creating, so don’t do it unless you Have to.

[Andy Engelkemier]

It’s a 2016 Razer Blade.
It’s got an i7-67000HQ (2.6Ghz on battery, 3.5Ghz plugged in…which is pretty much always)
only 16GB of RAM. The one downside to the system.
512GB single drive system NVME. So it’s fast, but only one drive. It’s a samsung drive, can’t remember which one off the top of my head, but they didn’t skimp on the drive. It’s one of the fastest ones.

Laptop manufacturers are always a bit behind for the needs of designers that do sort of everything. SolidWorks demands 32GB now, pretty much anything 3D wants lots of everything, and the mobility of laptops get me out of a bind frequently. Processors are usually ok, but it either is Stupid large, or they skimp on one or two things. Mine was hard drive size, and memory. 512MB is not big enough for video work.

Our budget is usually 2500-3000 so this was the best I could do. Then when docked, I have an external Nvidia Titan X. Otherwise, I’m stuck with a 960M with 6GB. Definitely respectable for laptop video card memory, but I wouldn’t want to run this project on it.

[Andy Engelkemier]

Luckily, most of the movements are relatively slow, so I didn’t need to use motion blur.
It might just be that I have a lot of shape layers and expressions.

Are shape layers expensive because they use the entire composition size, even if the shape is just a circle that’s 40x40px or something?
I kind of want to do a test of a few ways of doing that. Like, use the same shape, but on a precomp, that is the same size as the shape.

I suppose my computer is also starting to age quickly. My Titan X is leaning toward old these days. And the processor is 2-3 gens back now.

Thanks for the link to rendergarden. I have seen it before, but dismissed it due to us not having enough AE work to justify. But these days it’s involved in nearly every project, unless I’m just doing 3D renderings or something for print.

[Andy Engelkemier]

well, don’t forget to try and Import the file as well. But it sounds a lot like you have yourself a corrupt file.
Don’t forget that if you’ve rendered it out, there’s usually a copy in the AME folder.
And you Should have Autoback turned on by default as well, also assuming this was your file to begin with.

Just to see if you get Something, also try importing it into Premiere and/or AME. Sometimes one works and not the other.

[Andy Engelkemier]

So “Master Properties” is a new feature from Essential Graphics.
This allows you to do things like have one composition, create instances of it, and have each instance Different. Previously, you’d have to duplicate the composition and make a change to it. Or do changes with effect on each instance.

In my previous post about using that feature I was asking about having one element, a checkmark, in my animation change to different colors. Using “change color” effect, you have some work to do to be sure you don’t have halos of another color. Passing this over as a Master Property allows you to do that.

But I’ve found that Animating master properties isn’t working as I had hoped.

I have found several unexpected behaviors with essential graphics, mainly with the protected regions. I’ve read as much as I’ve found on protected region, and I can tell you that they do Not work as you would expect. And if you remove a protected region after you’ve used one, you should Definitely go back and delete the layer that used it, and add it back in. Because time ends up Really messed up. It sort of uses a sudo-time remap that you can’t visually see. It’s one of those features where they tried to make something easy, but messed it all up.

So far, with questions surrounding it, I’m getting the feeling that no one is actually using the features. It seemed like a good idea, but it seems like Adobe kind of messed them up, so it took more work to undo after it didn’t work. So wasted a lot of time.

[Andy Engelkemier]

Yeah, that’s probably my bad in guessing poorly on what to explain.

So the time remap isn’t actually Changing the length of time. I’m guessing everyone here uses it to essentially add hold frames. You add time remap, then just extend the front and back. If you don’t stretch the keys, you aren’t changing the time.

So that’s what I’m doing. But I have that split in two. For simplicity’s sake, lets say i have a set of keys 0-2 seconds, and I keep them 2 seconds apart. Then I have another set of keys 5-8 seconds, and keep them 3 seconds apart. This allows me to slide those keys in my Main composition to match where I need that animation. I’m not effecting the timing of the animation at all.

So what confuses me is how the master property works. If I set keys, it looks like it sets keys In the precomp, but shows them to you in your main/parent comp. So if the times don’t match up, like if you’re using time remap, then is just doesn’t work.

[Andy Engelkemier]

I don’t believe there is enough information listed here to help. Were you trying to attach a video or image for context?

Anyway, the last question, probably No. But you’ll want to post a screengrab of your layers at least. Do you have an adjustment layer? That might cause this. Or are you using any modes that aren’t set to Normal?

You can Always do something sloppy like duplicating your comp, precompose the whole thing, and use one of them with No adjustments, as a track matte. So you’d use one with all the animation, but only use the alpha. So you can eliminate all the effects that might be used to adjust color and whatnot.
I wouldn’t recommend that, but if you’re in a bind it will work.

To figure out the cause, start at the bottom, and turn on one layer at a time with the transparency grid turned on. You should be able to figure out the cause once it’s no longer transparent.

Also, if you edited images, you May have changed something. Like, if transparency was saved as an alpha channel, but you saved with transparency in the image. Right click on the footage and choose, “interpret footage” to be sure the alpha mode is set correctly.

[Andy Engelkemier]

For still frames, yes.

I’m just curious, why not png? Tiff is starting to be the BMP of formats these days, where it’s only useful in specific cases. And PSD is somewhat large and inefficient for animations. I’m just curious about your use case.

I would lean toward EXR for most of my special needs, that’s why I ask. But I’d be curious if tiff or PSD would be a better fit. Although, you’re limited to 16 or 32 bit. And adobe always does some odd things when converting color. So some effects may end up being funky, like particular, or even glow.

[Andy Engelkemier]

Is no one else getting this? Or is just no one actually Using protected region?

I have been having to go back and abandon use. The ones that Were working, no longer work once I had to shift some things around. As soon as I slid the protected region to where I needed it, the animation then went outside of the protected region, which made the protected region useless. What the heck is it protecting!?

So I went back to just using standard time remap. I wish there was a way to see my time remap keys while the layer is collapsed. I can add markers, but can’t link them to keys (or can I?, not that I know of).
It was pretty cool, also, that i could actually slide that region around, without having to open up the layer.

With a composition of around 100 layers (that’s after most of it being precomped into groups) those can be fairly nice time savers. My scroll wheel is getting worn out. lol

[Andy Engelkemier]

OH! Well, then yes, that’s what I want. I’ll read more closely.

It’s tough, when you’re trying to use a new feature in a way that isn’t how they market it…if you’re not sure if it is even going to work. You kind of skim things to find out. I’ll read more carefully and Actually figure it out then. At first skim, it didn’t seem like it would work. Thanks for clearing that up.

I didn’t quite follow how the master properties was working. Nor did I know I should be searching for Master Properties, and not Essential Graphics.

This search lead my to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1ZsiQy764Q
Which Exactly explained it. You’ll want to watch that at about 3x speed if you already kind of know what you’re doing, but it gave me the jump start I needed.

Thanks for sticking with me Walter. Very helpful.

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