[Declan Smith]

This is probably simpler than you think.

1. Create a shape layer with an ellipse. Turn off the fill, increase the stroke, change stroke colour to what you want.
2. Add trim paths to ellipse. This is probably where you are at the moment. This will allow you to animate a plain colour stroke.

3. Duplicate ellipse, change its colour and alter the trim path to suit.

4. Create a null layer and add a slider, link the parameters.

I’m guessing that so far you have already done something similar to the above.

Now, click on the shape layer, then choose from the menu: Layer -> Layer Styles -> stroke

This has applied a stroke to the shape layer. Now alter the colour and size to suit. I have attached an example project. In this project, the null object has a slider which will change the relative size of each half.

7100_ringstroke.aep.zip

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

In CS6, I think the default key bindings for going to the sequence IN & OUT points are Shift i and Shift o.
(I say think because I have customised mine)

They are under the Marker menu for reference.

To change them, go to Keyboard shortcuts and type ‘Go To’ in the search box. This will bring up the two commands you want. The click on one and then the edit button to change. If your new keystrokes are already taken , PP will warn you.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

Here is a project and all the scripts and example text files that should show how this works.

7096_txt2ae.zip

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

Right, That’s jogged my memory. I seem to remember having exactly the same issue a while back and I think it’s an adobe bug and this is what I did to get around it.

Create a new sequence with the settings that match what you already have. Go to you existing sequence and select everything then edit-copy

Next go to the new sequence and edit-paste. So now you should have your entire timeline in a new sequence.

Now try the track automation in the new sequence.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

Thats’ odd. I could understand that your automation doesn’t play back because you need to ensure that the sliders mode is changed to read, but I would have expected to see keyframes in the timeline. Ensure that the parameter displayed is actually the ‘Track Keyframes’ on the timeline.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

If you are referring to track automation try the following:

https://tv.adobe.com/watch/peachpit-tv-for-video/audio-automation-modes-in-action/

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

Not easily, but yes, there is always a way. evalFile will ‘evaluate’ an external script, that’s it, that’s all it does. In this, it will of coarse evaluate variables, so as long as your text conforms to these requirements, then it will work.

For example, supposing your text file contained the following:
——–
Here is “my text” and [not] someone else’s!!

Oh and here is another line of my fine work
——–

The using $.evalFile(‘/somepath/somefile’) on it’s own will (as you have found) not work.

BUT

If your file read like this:
——–
contents=[“\
Here is \”my text\” and \[not\] someone else’s!!\
\
Oh and here is another line of my fine work\
“]
——–

Then the text expression below would indeed display the contents of the file:

try {
$.evalFile(“/Volumes/Media/Projects/AE/keys2.txt”);
eval(“contents”)[0];
} catch (err) {
“Error”;
}

So, what you need to do, outside of AE, is pre-process your text files. This can be done very simply with a script (depending on what platform you are on, Mac or Windows). The requirements are as follows (in this order):

1. Replace \ with \\
2. Replace [ with \[
3. Replace ] with \]
4. Replace ” with \”
5. Insert a line at the beginning
contents=”[
6. Insert \ at the end of every line
7. Append the following line to the end of the file
]”

[EDIT} a simple perl script to do this as follows (I assume entirely that you are on a Mac so you would do all this in a terminal window)

—–
#!/usr/bin/perl

print ‘contents=[“‘;

while () {
chomp;
s//\/g;
s/[/[/g;
s/]/]/g;
s/”/”/g;
print $_ . “n”;
}
print ‘”]’.”n”;
—–

to use, save the file as “txt2ae.pl” then

cat source.txt | perl -f txt2ae.pl > dest.txt

If you have loads of files, then wrap it in a script. For example, if all your files that you need in AE have the .txt extension:

for file in `ls *.txt | grep -v AESRC_`; do cat ${file} | perl -f makeae.pl > AESRC_${file}; done

This will create converted versions of your files that will have their filename starting with AESRC_

If you go down this route then I would further advise that you rename your files to contain the layer name or comp name, so that you can duplicate the layers easily within AE.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

This is precisely the issue I’ve faced on a current project and I will detail below how I’ve tackled it, and the trade offs I have made.

First I used plural eyes on a clip by clip basis to create synched, trimmed audio from the external sources, such that in the premiere timeline I can grab a clip and it’s six audio tracks and just line then up to the inpoint. I have done this for all tracks. In the process I ensured a consistent naming convention.

Next, in premiere, for each clip I created a sequence and dragged in each of the associated audio tracks. So the clip sequence has the MOV and 6 audio tracks (also includes audio from MOV). You will end up with as many sequences as you have MOV clips.

When I created my edit sequence I worked entirely with the clip sequences. This has the advantage that you have a simple 1 video, 1 audio track to work with per clip. To select the audio track (or even a mix of audio tracks) go into the clip sequence and adjust by muting, or soloing etc. So for example, this allowed me to rough cut my sequence then later, go through and select a lab or boom track. The other advantage is that once synched at the beginning when you chop up the clips on the main timeline, you still have all your synched audio. So if you decide to use a different track you change it in one place.

The downsides are that by default you don’t get waveforms displayed in the edit sequence until you render audio. Also from the main timeline, when you open the nested sequence, the CTI doesn’t line up. There is a bit of toing and froing between the main edit and each clip. Also you sort of have to edit your sound in two places.

Another approach I started to look at was to create the MOV files with true multichannel audio. This means you can import these clips onto the main timeline, and depend ending on how you configure the imported clip (i.e single mono, stereo, adaptive etc) you have the option to choose the actual track directly from the timeline. This to me seems sensible, however, I have had to move my media to a faster hard drive for this configuration. It would appear that premiere has a harder time streaming audio from multi audio clips than accessing separate WAVs.

The third approach is to reset the timecode for each of your clips (and audio files) to start at 0. Then edit your MOV clips onto you main timeline. When you come to replace the audio, line up the CTI with the start of a clip in the timeline, then double click to get it in the source window. Note (or copy) the start time of the clip. The in the project window double clip the audio file you want so it goes into the source window. Change the start time to match the clip on the timeline. Now, back in the timeline, just select the audio portion of your clip, right click and select ‘replace match source frame’. That should replace the audio with the one you need.

Right now, I started with method 1, and am in the process of converting it to method 2 because I need more than just one of the audio tracks to edit on the main timeline for each clip at the same time and it means that all my changes are in once place.. If I have further performance issues, then I will switch to method 3.

In addition, I have setup a multichannel audio sequence. So my master channel has 10 channels. I have configure four sub mixes: DIALOG, ATMOS, SFX, MUSIC, MASTERMIX and directed the appropriate tracks at these sub mixes. The then target the sub mixes to channels 3&4, 5&6, 7&8, 9&10 respectively and also add a master send for each of the four sub mixes, which has the effect of creating a master mix on channels 1&2. This master mix can be mixed separately from the submit channels. Net effect of this configuration is that I have a master mix on channels 1&2 and each of the sub mixes can be at full level on its own master channel pair. This allows you to create your final master render with multichannel audio including your stereo mix and all the separate sub mixes, should you want control over these in the future outside of premiere.

It has been a headache if I’m honest. Multichannel support seems inconsistent between applications, and as I have already pointed out, can have some performance implications.

I hope this has been helpful.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

Hi Ben,

I thought this looked familiar. My modified code is below which should meet your new requirement. This will start the counter at 97 years and count down in real time backwards. You can start the countdown by changing the variable ‘startDate’ .

Hope this is what you are looking for:

function pad(num, leading) {
num=”” + num;
while (num.length < leading) num=’0’+num;
return num;
}
// Variables
startDate = new Date(“01/01/2067 00:00″, ) ;

date = new Date(startDate.getTime()-(time*1000));
years=pad(date.getYear(date)-70,2);
months=pad(date.getMonth()+1,2);
days=pad(date.getDate(),2);
hours=pad(date.getHours(),2);
minutes=pad(date.getMinutes(),2);
seconds=pad(date.getSeconds(),2);
counter=”” + years + “:” + months + “:” + days + “:” + hours + “:” + minutes +”:” + seconds

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

I’ve tried tracking this in AE and it does a reasonable job, but as you say, it loses it. What I would suggest is that you have a fairly large outer bounding box so that AE has a fighting chance of registering the movement. I notice that there is at least one frame where there are two dots, which confused the tracker.

It would be best fro track, one frame at a time, and as soon as AE loses the track, correct that frame.

Also the dot changes shape from a circle to an ellipse which helps the tracker lose focus,

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”