[Dave Johnson]

Your description indicates 2 possible issues …

By “got some new effect plugins … they work fine on a friend’s machine”, do you mean you purchased them for use on your machine and, therefore, have the installation and licensing info necessary to use the plugins … or that you just copied them from your friend’s machine?

By “put into a new folder in the effects folder”, do you mean you installed them on your machine by following the unique installation instructions that come with any software … or that you just copied the files into a folder without actually installing them?

[Dave Johnson]

Dave L.,

This is the first I’ve heard of a “Quicktime Movie in PNG compression” … not that I would ever doubt you, but I was so surprised that I had to look and there it is! Do you know when it was added and do you have any other info about how it compares to other similar codecs? As you suggest to Jason, I use Animation for almost everything, occasionally use the tried and true PJPG and typically avoid bleeding edge technologies until the bugs are fixed, but I like the idea of a newer alternative to PJPG for the times I need particularly small file sizes.

Thanks.

[Dave Johnson]

No, you don’t need QR Pro to render with alpha, but you do need to use a codec that supports alpha … I (and most editors I know) use the Animation codec for most AE output.

[Dave Johnson]

I’d just add 2 things to Todd’s advice …

Unless you plan to do it in Photoshop or have other means to generate the grungy look (there are many ways), in order to do it from scratch in AE you might try Fractal Noise along with whichever other noise or distortion filters suit your taste.

As far as why your Add Grain didn’t show up, it’s probably that you were applying all your affects in a way that wouldn’t properly effect the text (Todd’s advice will fix that) or that you applied the Grain to plain white text and/or didn’t adjust the default settings to make the grain prominent enough to be visible.

[Dave Johnson]

Yes, you can definitely use easy ease at the beginning of a clip.

I haven’t used Video Copilot’s suretarget, but that shouldn’t matter … it sounds like you might have a simple keyframe interpolation issue … try selecting the two keyframes between which the “jumping” occurs, right clicking, changing the interpolations to “linear”, then re-applying easy ease to the first one.

To avoid the same issue going forward, you could go into the AE preferences and check the box that says something like “default keyframe interpolation to linear”.

[Dave Johnson]

I doubt very much that it was done this way (or any differently than David described) so this just something to consider … it could have been shot just as we see it (with no animation or compositing).

[Dave Johnson]

Perhaps there will be something in the posts below that’ll give you some ideas … along the lines of making multiple copies of a comp (or entire project) instead of the risky and less reliable method of copy and paste.

Re: Replacing footage – making clip independent — NOT globally changed
by David Johnson on Aug 7, 2009 at 9:21:36 am
in the Adobe After Effects Forum

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/962028

Re: Replace entire PSD file in AE
by David Johnson on Jul 24, 2009 at 11:53:44 pm
in the Adobe After Effects Forum

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/961578

[Dave Johnson]

If there is a limit, I’m very surprised I haven’t found it yet as I’ve had many AE projects with literally hundred of comps and precomps … you should be able to just scroll the timeline window side-to-side to see the others, although I’ve found it easier to just open and close various comps as I need them rather than keep scrolling back and forth.

[Dave Johnson]

Have you tried using a second instance of the keyed footage itself?

Whether and how well this method works depends very much on the footage and background, but you could try using your choice of the many methods to fill a copy of the keyed subject footage with black, put it below the main layer, make a it a 3D layer and rotate it to where the shadow should fall, drop its opacity way down (and/or use a blending mode), add a fast blur, and add a graded mask to give it falloff.

I hope that works for you since it sounds like you’ve put yourself through the ringer trying every other way.

[Dave Johnson]

I think that piece mostly gets it’s aesthetic appeal from good design and creativity, rather than anything too technically complicated. In other words, there doesn’t seem to be anything terribly difficult to do going on there … maybe I missed something with just the quick look I took, but it appears to be just creative use of gradients, a particle generator, lens flares and multiple instances of keyed footage of Mary (although if your top layer footage isn’t keyed you might be able to get away with good use of various blending modes).

I hope my generalization is somewhat helpful … a step by step might be preferable, but my main point above is I don’t think that is even necessary … personally, I’ve found the best way to get better at AE is to just try things that you think you don;t know how to do.