[David Van brink]

A little late, but I just posted a script which imports .mid files as After Effects keyframes, in fresh tracks.

https://omino.com/pixelblog/2011/12/26/ae-hello-again-midi/

Might be useful to you!

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dvb == recreational pixel abuse // motion, graphics, & scripting
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[David Van brink]

Well, it’s an old thread, but same old problem!

Export to PSD Sequence (Photoshop Sequence) from After Effects CS4 works… even with alpha.

But is there some way to export to “clipped photoshop image format”?

I want to use parts of my output in a photoshop document, and that’s not convenient with that pesky Alpha channel. I want photoshop shapes!

(signed) confused about masks alpha channels.

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dvb == recreational pixel abuse // motion, graphics, & scripting
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[David Van brink]

Nifty!

I believe this is known as “fixed plate” or “clean plate” matte extraction. Something like that. With video footage (and a locked-down camera) it’s a little trickier, because the pixels aren’t *exactly* the same on every frame. Differences can be reduced by disabling the camera’s autofocus & autobrightness. And then in AE futz with blur and threshold and garbage mattes and the like and you can eventually pull the moving object from the background.

(And a fun thing to do is “unlock” the camera with panning &c after the fact; I did an experiment with that; youtube here.)

Also! This feature is built into Apple’s iChat video-chat software, they call it “Backdrops”. Doesn’t look *great* but it’s amusing.

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dvb == recreational pixel abuse // motion, graphics, & scripting
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[David Van brink]

Interesting!

Another artifact visible in the clip you reference is “color fringing”. Stop on the frame where the text is up close, and we see a bit of blue/orange on it.

You can do a simple rgb fringe by taking three copies of your clip, each multiplied by pure red, green, and blue, and use Add -mode to stack them back up. Distort each one a little differently, such as with slightly different Spherize amounts.

Or use more or fewer colors to get a more or less rainbowed effect, as long as the total rgb adds to “white”. Or doesn’t!

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motion, graphics, & scripting
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[David Van brink]

Another flourish to try is to add the tiniest bit of random movement to the layer. Although it’s day is closing, the venerable film projector doesn’t hold the film perfectly steady, especially after throwing the image a few hundred feet to the screen.

Reducing the pixel-perfect steadiness makes it more alive.

Try Position Expression:
(whatever position is).wiggle(1,1,3,0.5)

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