[Darby Edelen]

In the Photoshop document in which you created the circle are you using the NTSC DV 720×480 preset? Make sure that it’s set to 0.9 Pixel Aspect Ratio and not Square Pixels (Image > Pixel Aspect Ratio). If that’s all well and good could you tell me which way the circle appears to be stretched on the monitor (squashed or extended horizontally)?

Make sure you’re using Pixel Aspect Ratio preview in AE as well (a toggle switch below the comp preview screen on the right side, next to the fast preview preferences).

My intuition says that when the circle was drawn in Photoshop it was drawn with a 1.0 Pixel Aspect Ratio (Square Pixel).

[Darby Edelen]

I would use a Fractal Noise effect to get your fire, if you want it to look particularly flamey here are some good settings:

Fractal Type : Dynamic Twist
Noise Type : Soft Linear

Contrast : 160
Brightness : -20

Transform – (disable Uniform Scaling)
Scale Width : 100
Scale Height : 300

Offset Turbulence: Animate from a high Y value (480) to a low Y value (-480), this makes the flames look like they are rising.

Evolution: Animate over time (I used 2 rotations over 2 seconds).

You’ll note that you end up with a black and white image that looks vaguely firey. Duplicate this layer, set the bottom one to use the top one as a Luma Track Matte and then apply CC Toner to the bottom one (pick fiery colors, bright yellow for highlights, orange for midrange and dark red for shadows).

Pre-comp these 2 layers and name them something like Flames, then place this layer over your source footage and change its blending mode to Add. If you can, try to matte your actor out of the scene (if it’s green screened and you can key it that’s ideal), otherwise you’ll have use animated masks with a decent feather in order to keep your flames on your actor.

You can also play with the Fractal Noise effect in a similar manner to create some glowing embers if you like.

Depending on your required level of authenticity you might want to track your actor through the scene, apply this information to a Null object and parent the Flames layer to it.

An obvious shortcoming of this technique is that the fire will not bend realistically due to air resistance as it moves around in a scene (it will always look like a static fire on a windless day). I’m open to any creative solutions for that one (;

[Darby Edelen]

Another thing to note is that at 100% opacity you will have a value of 0 for your Gaussian Blur on your layer (your desired effect) but at 5% opacity you will have a value of 95 for the Gaussian Blur, which might be a little extreme.

You could use a linear() function to vary the Gaussian Blur linearly with the opacity of the layer:

linear(transform.opacity, 0, 100, 10, 0);

This function will return 10 when transform.opacity is equal to 0 and 0 when transform.opacity is 100. If you apply this expression to the Gaussian Blur’s value then the layer will go from a blurriness of 10 to 0 as the opacity goes from 0 to 100.

With this expression you can alter the last 2 values to come up with Gaussian Blur values that you like (either more extreme or less extreme).

linear(transform.opacity, 0, 100, 500, 0); //Extremely blurry to no blur at all
linear(transform.opacity, 0, 100, 5, 0); //Barely blurry to no blur at all

[Darby Edelen]

There is a color picker expression effect that could be useful in this instance. Make a Null object called Color Control and add a Color Control Expression Effect to it.

At this point there are a few different ways to achieve your desired result, I would use a CC Toner effect on each of the solids and pickwhip the color values of the CC Toner effect to the Color Control on the Null object.

Then getting the layers to vary subtly in Hue could be achieved by adding a Hue/Saturation effect to each of the solids and varying it by your desired amount, say 5 degrees variation on the first, 10 degrees on the second. In this manner each solid in the Comp will take its base color from the Null object and have that color adjusted via the Hue/Saturation effect.

Hope that helps!

[Darby Edelen]

Well, the easiest way to cheat this is to have the dot on the right use it’s own X coordinate for position and steal the Y coordinate from the dot on the left. If you put the layer of the dot on the left directly above the layer with the dot on the right then this expression would work:

tempX = transform.position[0]; //use this layers X position
tempY = thisComp.layer(index-1).transform.position[1]; //use the Y position of the layer above this layer
[tempX, tempY]

Note that the dot on the right will not be following it’s path precisely anymore. I guess that’s the price you pay =)

As noted in the previous response the dots are traveling paths of different lengths, so if they traveled at the same speed the dot with the shorter route (on the left) would arrive first.

[Darby Edelen]

Look under Filter > Video > De-interlace… that might do the trick (;

[Darby Edelen]

I would just set position keyframes at the time where you want the fish to begin their trip, move ahead to where you want them to finish their trip and create another position keyframe.

If you want a more realistic ‘fish’ like movement I’d recommend using the wiggle(); expression on the position:

Select the position property of the fish you want to wiggle, then hit alt-shift-= (or opt-shift-= on Mac) to add an expression.

The default expression should be:

transform.position

Change this to:

transform.position.wiggle(.5, 4);

This will cause the fish’s position to vary by up to 4 pixels every 2 seconds. You can change the number values in the parenthesis to suit your taste, the first is the frequency (number of wiggles in a second) and the second is the magnitude (amount to wiggle).

One thing to note, this will wiggle the fish with the same frequency and magnitude in both the X and Y dimensions. You could try this expression if you want it to wiggle more (or faster) in one dimension than another:

tempX = transform.position.wiggle(.5, 4)[0];
tempY = transform.position.wiggle(.3, 10)[1];
[tempX, tempY]

This would wiggle the X value more frequently but with less magnitude than the Y value.

Sorry if this is complicated, feel free to ask for any clarification you need.

[Darby Edelen]

So it sounds like you’re not trying to stabilize the footage entirely, only smooth the camera movement, which I should’ve gathered from the title of your post to begin with =)

This can be accomplished with a Camera in After Effects if you motion track your source, apply the tracking data to the anchor point of the footage then duplicate the layer (I’d recommend renaming it something like “Smoother”), apply a smooth() expression to the anchor point on the “Smoother” layer, turn its visibility off and parent the Camera to it (make sure they are all 3D layers).

Without the smooth() expression the above process would result in a comp that looks exactly like your original footage (as the camera would be following the footage in lock step) but the smooth() expression on the parent layer causes the movement of that layer (and thus the camera) to be smoothed as it follows the source footage along its path.

[Darby Edelen]

Wow, looking at the footage I think you are in for roto-scope hell =O

I was going to suggest finding a color channel in which the horse is whiter than the surrounding environment and then using levels on that channel to create a (quick and dirty) matte that you could then blur a bit (if the horse is going to be glowy anyway) and apply to the footage. Effectively you could then color correct the horse and the background seperately, but the color looks nearly identical in the horse and in the person next to it (I don’t know what the surrounding environment looks like, I was hoping for green grass and a blue sky so you could use the red channel).

I don’t think that technique will work if the color pallette is so limited… get out your pen tool there good buddy =)

[Darby Edelen]

I’m not familiar with Shake, but a simple technique for smoothing out camera jitters in AE is to use a motion tracker on your source footage and apply this tracker to a Null object’s anchor point then parent your source footage to the Null object. Your mileage may vary depending on the magnitude of the jitters and the quality of the motion track.

You also will need to scale up the source a little bit to make sure that you can’t see the edges of the footage when it’s being compensated.