[Darby Edelen]

Although it’s hard to know exactly what you’re trying to do without more information, I’m guessing that you want this object to appear as though it is swinging from something. The easiest solution in this case would be to place the objects anchor point where you want it to swing from and then animate the rotation property, which could be done with an expression if you so desire.

[Darby Edelen]

[Steve Roberts] “Use the wiggle expression.

Here’s an example applied to position: wiggle (100,15) means wiggle 100 pixels 15 times per second.”

I love the wiggle expression, but under certain circumstances The Wiggler is easier. For example, if you need your properties to start and end at the same value (which I often do for DVD Menus), or if you don’t want your ‘earthquake’ to last the entire duration of the composition. These can be accomplished with expressions, but it’s easier to use The Wiggler.

Here’s a brief rundown of the Wiggler for zygotesoup:

The Wiggler is accessible under Window > The Wiggler.

In order to use The Wiggler you will need at least 2 keyframes on your property. One will be the starting point of the wiggle and the other will be the ending.

Select these 2 keyframes when you’re working on setting up your Wiggle.

You usually won’t have to deal with most of the settings for the Wiggler, the important ones are Frequency (how often) and Magnitude (how much). One important difference with The Wiggler as opposed to the wiggle() expression is that The Wiggler only increases the value of the property. wiggle(5, 1) will wiggle between positive and negative one five times a second, The Wiggler will only wiggle between 0 and positive 1 five times a second (this is by far the biggest headache with The Wiggler).

When you’re done setting up your wiggle, hit Apply and it should create intermediary keyframes between the 2 you had selected at your desired frequency and magnitude.

If you’d like more info about it you can check the AE help.

[Darby Edelen]

[chewbacca] “- I know that = is an assignment operator, but tks for the warning i just missed that, common typo =P
– I will start putting semi-colon”

I was just concerned that this was copied from your expression in AE, it’s much less forgiving than the Cow =)

[Darby Edelen]

This will be my first year attending, I don’t know how much it’s going to cost (my company is sending me!) but I’m pretty excited about it.

[Darby Edelen]

The AE equivalent would be wiggling the position of your footage using an expression or The Wiggler (I find the latter easier for motion that doesn’t last the entire duration of the comp). Make sure you have room outside of the frame as you do this so that the edges of your footage don’t show. If you’re working in a 3D comp you can wiggle the position of the camera.

[Darby Edelen]

[zygotesoup] “The only thing I’m having a problem with now is making the ending transition of the shot fade to black.”

You can animate the shape of the mask, but I think it would be easier in this scenario to animate the “Mask Expansion” property into the negative (collapsing the mask).

[Darby Edelen]

[El Pollito] “This may be a basic question, but is there a way to have the comp pause on a certain keyframe without me having to go through and re-keyframe everything? After spending a few hours putting in each keyframe and tweaking where I need the camera to go, I didn’t notice until previewing that it zips right past each picture a little too fast to see it”

The way to solve this will depend on the effect you want. If you want it to slow down while passing the keyframe you can select the keyframe and hit F9 to set the incoming and outgoing speeds of the keyframe to 0 (easy ease). If this is close to the effect you desire, but not quite right you can play with the incoming and outgoing velocities manually (usually best done while vieweing the speed graph, the button just to the left of the timeline at the top).

If you want the camera to stop for more than an instant you’ll need to make another keyframe. Simply copy the keyframes that designate the motion you want to stop and then paste them a little further down the timeline. Since these keyframes have the same values as the previous keyframes on the timeline, these properties’ values will not change between these two keyframes. The exceptions are position based keyframes which can sometimes be set to a ‘Spatial Interpolation’ other than Linear, to make sure these don’t ‘boomerang’ and cause unwanted motion you’ll need to select them, right click, choose Keyframe Interpolation and change Spatial to “Linear.”

I hope I understood what you were asking, if not: sorry for the unnecessary lesson =)

[Darby Edelen]

A simple vignette effect can be achieved by creating a black solid, masking the center with the oval mask tool, setting the mask to subtract, increasing the feather on the mask, and then playing with the layer’s blending mode (the sample you posted looks like it might be similar to a simple Overlay). Place the black layer above your footage.

[Darby Edelen]

There’s a schedule available on the NAB website, I had a hard time finding it too:

https://www.nab.org/nabshow/conferences/PPC_2007.pdf

[Darby Edelen]

I think you’ll actually find that the last frame in your pre-comp is always ’empty.’ For example, a comp with a duration of exactly 30 seconds only lasts until 29;29 (in AE 00;00 is a frame too!). When you time remap a layer it allows you to keyframe from 00;00 to 30;00, but 30;00 isn’t technically the last frame in the comp, it’s the frame after the last frame! Just change the last keyframe in your time remap to 29;29 (or subtract one frame from your comp’s duration) and move it back one frame in the timeline (alt-left arrow/opt-left arrow).