David Johnson
Forum Replies Created
-
Glad you found a solution. I for one would like to see the results … always helpful to see results of different methods.
-
Since you asked about the Adobe Suite, not just After Effects, I’ll also add a couple things to consider …
The Adobe Suite includes a lot of programs (Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Encore, Flash, etc.) … all of which are primarily intended for professional users and that are usually used together to accomplish the desired end results. So, it depends on how you define “user-friendly” … they’re generally not the kind of programs you can master in a few hours by just clicking around on a few controls and it’s usually not as though you just need to learn one of the programs. However, I’m not at all suggesting the Adobe Suite isn’t a good choice … the same things apply to any pro software package and Adobe has been among the best for a very long time.
As the above relates specifically to After Effects, there are two things important to consider: [1] AE is a very deep program that does a lot of different things so how long it’ll take to learn what you need to do depends on what you plan to use it for and, [2] Motion is, by design, simpler to use than AE so you may not want to base your approach to AE on having only dabbled in Motion.
The fact that your acquisition format is P2 is generally a non-issue since most pro software nowadays works well with all of the common formats including P2, although various people obviously have varying personal preferences.
-
I’m not in AE now so I can’t check to be sure it isn’t a third-party plugin, but using the same method Todd described, I’ve gotten much better results with a Tri-Tone plugin than Change Color or Change To Color. Colorama can do the same, but it requires more effort.
The reason is, although they appear to be, skin pixels aren’t all one color so, without applying color variations, you’ll likely end up with a noticeable one-color patch over the corrected area.
Whichever plugin you go with, it can also sometimes help to add a tiny bit of grain over the corrected area, although that depends on the footage and isn’t always necessary.
Sometimes, I’ve also found it helpful to use a masked duplicate of the footage instead of or in addition to an adjustment layer, but again, that depends on the footage and isn’t always necessary.
By the way, if you do it via painting, you’re creating extra work for yourself because you’ll probably have to motion track the paint to the footage.
-
Sounds like you might have an extra keyframe or wrong keyframe interpolation for what you’re trying to do. Maybe zoom all the way in on your timeline and make sure you don’t have an extra keyframe between the two you intended to have, then right-click on each of your keyframes to make sure their interpolation is linear (or whatever you want it to be).
-
Sounds like you might have an extra keyframe or wrong keyframe interpolation for what you’re trying to do. Maybe zoom all the way in on your timeline and make sure you don’t have an extra keyframe between the two you intended to have, then right-click on each of your keyframes to make sure their interpolation is linear (or whatever you want it to be).
-
You should be able to drag the layer’s handle to the end of the comp as you said … if not, there may be some issue with the layer or file. Maybe you accidentally imported it as an image sequence instead of a normal file … try replacing the image with the same file, but double check that everything in the import window is correct.
-
Sorry, but I’m not sure I understand what the question is … AE can definitely read MJPG (lots of stock footage firms use it) and can render back to MJPG or whatever other codec you have installed. You may run into issues with the 20fps, but even that should be fine as long as your comps etc match that frame rate.
-
Figure out what codec the file is in and use conversion software that can read that codec to transcode the file to a codec QuickTime and AE can read, which there are very many of.
You can search this forum and related COW forums for answers if you either don’t know how to figure out what codec the file is in or don’t know what conversion software to use … there are various software tools available to identify codecs, as well as to convert files to different codecs (including free ones in both categories).
-
Manually replacing each footage source or layer is indeed the standard way. I’ll just mention and alternative method since you’re dealing with “a large number of footage layers”. You could save a copy of the project, hide the original sources from AE and point AE to the alternate sources when you open the copy.
I’ve used this method to make several versions of projects with hundreds of sources … it’s actually not nearly as cumbersome as it may sound and works flawlessly, but I’d only recommend it for a meticulous type person since doing it wrong can be problematic (i.e., careful file naming and folder structures are important).
If you do choose this method, there may be a few things in these threads that’ll help with minor issues inherent to the method:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/961574#961578
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/962009#962028