[David Bogie]

Oh, puhleeze, not that question.
Don’t ask this question.
Not here.
Not now.
It’s your money, not mine. This decision cannot be made by anyone except you and you must not accept anyone’s advice. Weigh your needs against your desires and your budget and buy what you want.

I’ve only ever used Macintosh for my serious video, writing, and photography work. Buy a Macintosh. You will love it.
Having a PC may benefit you in some way, dunno, never owned one. So buy a PC. You might like it.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Slight disagreement here, the effect just doesn’t look that complicated to me. I only see masks that change shape and are filled with various color solids or gradient patterns that can also be keyframed to grown or change.

Making masks grow is fun and easy and can use intelligent vertices created in AE or paths created in Illustrator or Photoshop.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Hope you get better advice as the day wears on. I think you want to use a linked behavior, not a match move/motion.

When stuck with this kind of challenge in the olden days. I would have used a copy (or clone) of the object and simply turn them on or off as needed. To accommodate that hack, I might have had an object in the foreground that obscures the switch slightly. But I’ve also done similar movement by deliberately stylizing the transitions between the moving objects and the static objects.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

I’ve only ever considered this kind of stuff to be possible with deep working knowledge of inverse kinetics. The ability to link one or two spines to one or two folds and to get them to react realistically is possible with simple expressions and parenting; we’ve all been doing that stuff since AE5 or so.

Hope you get the advice you need here but I’d also start looking at 3D apps.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Louis Stevenson] “I’m trying to make a custom shaped iris effect, has anybody ever tried this before? “

Of course it’s been done.
How you approach it depends on your concept of “custom.” It is easy to create simple shape and scale it up or down. If you are capable of using Motion, you can even create a custom iris wipe that moves. Or you can use gradient wipe and any grayscale image that does the job for you. Pixelan Spices are fabulous for this but you can build one in Illustrator or Photoshop.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[cheyo Masters] “I guess my question is how you add timecode to 300 files based on the date stamp.
“

I guess you will create 300 separate title supers.

You could do it Compressor by using the watermark feature but you’re still going to create 300 separate text objects.

The date of creation metadata item, white it exists, is not available as a selectable and then superable item, AFIK. There may be a filter/plugin for FCP that does that, dunno.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

That shot also needs to be corrected for the underexposure.
Adding the fluttering sheet will require a reflection in the glass curtain on the building.

Dave is correct, it’s much easier and more fun to shoot practical effects but if you simply MUST use AE to simulate it, search the AE tutorials for “flag.” PITA but great fun.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Debug it alter.
Find your rendered clip in the Finder.
Duplicate it and give it a new name.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Timecode comes from the metadata attached to the video itself. For that, you just use the timecode reader.Or you can modify the timecode by applying timecode generator. If you want to super an arbitrary date, you do that with a text generator.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

> What do you professionals recommend? I am trying to video myself running on the treadmill everyday in the same outfit for three months and edit together for about 7-10 seconds of video to show rapid weight-loss, as if I got on the treadmill and only needed to run for 10 seconds to magically loose fat and gain muscle. < Let's do some math. 10 seconds of video is 300 frames, is that correct? 30 frames per second times 10 seconds. yes. Three hundred frames. Divide that by three months or 90 days, oh, heck, let's just round it off to 100 days, what do you say? That's three or four frames a day. You shoot a minute of footage each day, taking a few seconds to come up to speed and to orient yourself on the platform. You pull out one second of footage from each day's shooting and then trim out the four frames you need. To shoot a person running, you must use a fast shutter speed or the moving parts are just a blur. If the feet and arms are a blur, your weight-loss effect must concentrate on the torso, breasts, neck, and face. What is your costume? Huge difference in this effect being a waste of time between you wearing a jogging suit, a body 'tard, or being naked. Which is it? In the visual effect you are planning, perhaps without thinking it through very carefully, which is why you have prefaced your inquiry with "What would you professionals recommend?" and that, for better or worse, is what we're here for, your 100 separate sequences of three or four frames are not only going to be difficult to assemble, they allow no time for transitions; these are all hard edits. However, while the opportunity exits that the process of linking those 300 individual frames together will result in a completely magical visual sequence, if you carefully deconstruct similar effects shots, you will notice it is the acting, lighting, and camera angles that help sell the shot and make it watchable. Effects rarely sell a shot all by themselves. If this were a commercial, the story would be propelled along by a sequence of edits, not a concentration on an effect. There might be a cutaway to the actor's face to show their concentration, wind propelled pixy dust on the wide shots to emphasize the dripping away of fat with a motivating lighting effect on the set to give the impression the pixy dust gives off light, a change in lighting from flat and dull to a heavy backlight with a lovely amber filter, a subtle change in shutter speed from slow to fast to make the shift from lethargy and apathy to engagement and the enthusiasm of seeing positive results. Another cutaway to the closeup that clearly shows the pleasure and satisfaction of having lost 200 pounds in 3 months. A costurem change may have happened along the way, moving from a baggy jogging suit to the disclosure of a leotard or running shorts and sports bra. Morphing and dissolves require time, 15 to 60 frames for each transition. The new Disney version of Dickens' "Christmas Carol" features a great morphing shot at the end of the Ghost of Christmas Past episode. About 20 faces morph in a shot that is no more than 15 seconds long. The first face and the last face are up much longer than all of the others so, if you do the math, no single face ever really has time be stabilized; they just keep changing. And that means the shot is all about the effect, not being able to recognize all of the faces. If you are going to compress three months of real time into 10 seconds of screen time, you can do it by shooting only four or five separate setups. If you are going to pursue acquiring and learning a morphing program or filter, you don't need to do any of this stuff at all since you will simply modify the person on the treadmill and that can be done with only two shots, before and after. But to do serious morphing, you must be able to isolate the character and that requires keying or rotoscoping. bogiesan