[Michael Duff]

you need to shoot the video in a specific way to make it ‘pre-matted’ like the video copilot stuff …

so for smoke/fire you set it up in a studio with black behind.

for ink, you might want to use a white background then shoot black or coloured ink dropping into a vase or tank…

splatters/grunge could just be paint/dirt thrown onto a canvas …

…or you can re-create many of the smokey/ink like patterns using fractal noise combined with other effects …

tv noise you could fake with AE’s noise and distort effects or just capture some TV noise straight in from the TV…

Michael Duff –
Bearcage Productions, Australia
http://www.bearcage.com.au

[Michael Duff]

sounds like you’ve got the spacial interpolation set to bezier.

right click on the keyframes where this is happening and select “keyframe interpolation” . then change the spacial interpolation to linear …

often you will need it to be bezier though so that the movement is smooth. In this case you need to look at the camera path using the top/side/front views and manually adjust the curves.

Michael Duff –
Bearcage Productions, Australia
http://www.bearcage.com.au

[Michael Duff]

hi … do you know how to replace footage by alt+dragging?

so you have 2 comps and 1 is nested in the other. Duplicate both comps. Open up the new top level comp, but it is still referencing the other original comp right? …

so select the comp in the timeline, then hold down alt and drag the comp that you want it to be from the project window to where it is in the timeline.

does that make sense? does that help?

Michael Duff –
Bearcage Productions, Australia
http://www.bearcage.com.au

[Michael Duff]

Particle Playground comes with After Effects… in AE7 and 8 it is in effects under “Simulation”.

In older versions of After Effects it only came in the Production Bundle … but I think it is standard now..

What version of AE are you running?

Michael Duff –
Bearcage Productions, Australia
http://www.bearcage.com.au

[Michael Duff]

thanks for all your suggestions … i thought this would be the case, but was hoping there was something simple I was missing in the PAR conversions and such … will have to live with the upscale because a lot of this footage is older archival stuff ..

have tried a couple uprezzing apps in the past like Instant HD and have not really been happy with any of the results .. most of the time I could hardly even tell the difference between these and AE upscaling …

Michael Duff –
Bearcage Productions, Australia
http://www.bearcage.com.au

[Michael Duff]

it is a mix of different things … the vertical rolling is just animating the position and using hold keyframes …

try using wavewarp…
try using displacement map, and different textures as the map (like maybe use static as the map)

add some static and noise over the top …

Michael Duff –
Bearcage Productions, Australia

[Michael Duff]

or if you’ve got a camera and a VHS player transfer it onto VHS and then digitise from the VHS tape (via camcorder RCA inputs)…

try searching the forums for:
old TV
static
fast forward
rewind
CCTV

Michael Duff –
Bearcage Productions, Australia

[Michael Duff]

not sure off the top of my head … but if you hit the ‘*’ on the keypad while it’s playing it will place layer markers on the fly ….

Michael Duff –
Bearcage Productions, Australia

[Michael Duff]

thanks Dan, the keyframe assistant should do the trick

Cheers

Michael Duff –
Bearcage Productions, Australia

[Michael Duff]

try applying the CORNER PIN effect to the jpeg .. it is in Effects->Distort ….. then you can grab each corner and put them where you want … you can also animate each corner point …

does this help?

Michael Duff –
Bearcage Productions, Australia