David Johnson
Forum Replies Created
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I agree with Michael that what your trying to do is unclear, but will try to answer anyway … set a position keyframe for video2 at the first position, change it to a “hold keyframe”, move the playhead to the time you want video2 to be in the next position, move video2 to that position (inside the window), set another position keyframe for video2 at that position and change that keyframe to a hold keyframe.
On a more general note, it seems it may be beneficial to spend some time with some learning materials for AE … it is not a program that one just open ups, clicks around on a few things and masters. No offense intended … the intent is only to save you a lot of frustration, headaches and wasted time.
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[Anthony Dupsta] “while my foreground is scaling by BG layer needs to have an exponential scale”
I guess I should’ve followed my first mind and stayed the heck out of the expressions forum. That said, it still seems that if a 50×50 pixel square and a 100×100 square are parented to the same null (after the first square has been scaled down from 100×100 to 50×50), then the null is scaled up, each of the squares will scale exponentially … just the first one will always be half the size of the second since it started out that way. Then again, perhaps I just don’t get it, which is fine too.
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I’m not a big expressions guy, but it seems the answer might be evading you due to it’s simplicity … is just scaling the layer down *.5 before parenting it to the null not working for some reason?
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[Mark Gin] “I haven’t done this before because I didn’t know the anomaly’s name.”
Yes, I suppose “gradient jumps” wouldn’t return many search results. ;~) At the same time, my curiosity to know what a “gradient jump” is lead me to read the post in the first place and I imagine the same is true for others so it was effective to a degree.
[Mark Gin] “Great stuff can be found here”
Indeed the COW host a wealth of information going back many years so there’s not much that one can’t find here.
Sorry I can’t help with the specifics of DSLR workflow/issues.
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Using a track matte doesn’t change the color of the matted image so it sounds like you may be applying that matte wrong and, thus, seeing another layer above or below (the black or white you mentioned).
Perhaps try it in a precomp with only the two layers (the image layer you want to matte and the shape layer you want to use as the matte). Then, try the different matte modes on each layer to see the different effects. You will need to change the layer order for some and also notice that the matte layer gets turned off when you apply the matte so you may need to turn it back on when switching things around. Or, just read the info on track mattes that Todd provided, pick the method that does what you want and forget about the rest for now.
Hope this helps.
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Although I get nothing when I try to go to their website now, around 2002-3, there was a company called Algolith that had some pretty amazing video enhancement technologies. They ported some of the software aspects to After Effects plugins for a short while, but those plugins stopped working somewhere around CS1-CS2. If I had image enhancement needs significant enough to make chasing a possible dead end worthwhile, I’d probably try to find out where Algolith’s technologies went … they were so far and above anything else I had seen that it seems likely they were sold and integrated into some existing product, rather than abandoned. In case your needs warrant looking into something like that, the only other piece of info I have is that Algolith was at one time a subsidiary of Miranda Technologies.
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Despite the “new” descriptor, those effects look very much like they’re from an old plugin package called “Hollywood Effects” from about 10 years ago. I don’t recall who made it, but I’m pretty sure it was eventually bought by Pinnacle, integrated into some of their then existing software and no longer sold separately or available for After Effects. The “Hollywood Effects” plugin set included very basic 3D animation presets that video clips could just be dropped into.
I doubt very much that there are any such plugins for AE anymore since the things that plugin set offered were never very useful to most AE users. Far better 3D worlds and animations can be built manually in AE, but doing so is not at all a task for novice users … it is very far from the drop your video clip in this box and you’re done method of old plugins like Hollywood Effects.
With that said, your best bet to get something similar might be to search Google for consumer-level video editing software that includes 3D animation presets … I’m sure there are still such programs available, but it’s doubtful that most AE users will be familiar with any of them to refer you to a specific one.
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Thanks for sharing your experience, Gary. I’ve not yet tried to edit with FCX myself, but am well aware of its significant shortcomings from the perspectives of many other career video editors, which is why I haven’t spent time with it yet. Even so, I consider equally valuable an unbiased review from a self-proclaimed novice video editor since that indicates the likelihood that FCX will take over the video editing market bottom up, so to speak (as opposed to top down the way FCP did). In other words, FCP took over the entire video editing market because many pros switched to it and everyone wanted to (and could now afford to) use the same tools as the pros. If FCX were as intuitive and effective as some say, I might believe there’s a chance that so many people will adopt it that the rest of us may have no choice than to go with the new “standard”. However, that doesn’t sound like the case at all, which is very valuable information for my future decision-making process.
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[Kip Cole] “I’m getting ready to purchase a Mac Pro for editing. I’m a new, small production company with limited cash flow. I’ll be loading FCP Studio 3. I also have an external AJA IOHD box for input/output.”
Sorry, this is not a direct answer to your questions, but as Everest alluded to, you might consider whether you really want to spend a bunch of money building your business around products that are at or near their end of life … FCS3 will not be supported or updated any more and there is plenty of speculation around these forums as to what that might mean for the future of Mac Pros. That’s not to say that both can’t serve you well for a while … they can … it’s just a matter of your expectations for the lifespan of the system.