[Eric Barker]

I can now also confirm that it is reproducable on CS4 for Mac. It’s becoming clear that this is a fetal error in the Shatter plugin, specifically.

I just wrote up a bug report to Adobe yesterday. I’ll ammend it with these new findings.

Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com

[Eric Barker]

Eh, that caused some problems when trying to animate the Framehold value, because every time the value would switch, the math might work to make the picture switch at the very next frame again. Basically every time the framehold value change, it would suddenly pick a new image, and it looked very glichy.

So in the end, I did it the way AE wants you to do it:

posterizeTime(Math.floor(effect("Framehold")("Slider")));

Math.floor(random(2,thisComp.numLayers+1));

I guess that’s nice, you can force AE to only evaluate your expression every x amount of frames. I was just hoping to challenge myself to do this on my own, but I’m running out of time.

Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com

[Eric Barker]

Wow, that’s pretty much EXACTLY what I came up with after I typed that post. But, I made some modifications and made it even simpler, and less weird (I’ll explain later):

framehold = 7; // use external Slider Controller to control this

seedRandom(Math.floor(timeToFrames(time)/framehold), true);
Math.floor(random(2,thisComp.numLayers+1));

Basically, it re-seeds the random number generator every 7 frames… or should I say, it seeds the random number generator with the same number for 7 frames, and therefor, it gives you the same random value for 7 frames in a row.

In the process, I discovered some ABSOLUTELY WEIRD things about the way AE evaluates JavaScript. First, it DEMANDS a value for every time it evaluates (which is every frame). I originally tried to accomplish this by getting the frame, and then use a conditional “!frame%7” to give me a new random value every 7 frames. Unfortunately, because AE demands a value output at every evaluation, it would use something else for the value, like another line, or if there is no line outside the conditional, it would simply use the value in the box. So while every 7th frame would give me a random number, it wouldn’t hold onto that value. And since there’s no way of globally storing variables (without tedious text object manipulation), AE would have no way of keeping the same value for 7 frame.

Secondly, I HATE the way that AE grasps at whatever it can find to fill it’s value box. Evey line that’s evaluated, gets temporarilly stored in the value box. So if you write “x=100;”, then unless there’s another math-based line, the box will remain at “100” after the cycle completes. I’d always asumed it was a variable called “value”, because so many people mistakenly use “value = x;” for a final value assignment. But in reality, all you have to do is put “x” to accomplish this.

My inner-programmer is screaming bloody murder right now, this is SO WRONG!

Sorry… anyway, at least this expression works, and it works well. It definitely feels a lot better than using time remapping.

Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com

[Eric Barker]

I figured it out!

I had put the AfterEffects “Lens Blur” effect on one of the background tracks. Whenever I install Premiere, I always copy over all my AfterEffects plugins, because there are some that work well in Premiere (though less since it went 64bit). Lens Blur is vastly superior to Premiere’s “Camera Blur”, but it’s a CPU hog… and I guess, crashes Premiere. This isn’t surprising, I think I remember it crashing CS3.

Anyway, case closed!

Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com

[Eric Barker]

Yes, I tried that, but it doesn’t do what I want it to. In fact, it’s a pretty bad option. Instead of creating organized folders for the cache files, within each project, it just throws all the cache files right beside their parent files, free-floating without any subfolders. So if you have 30 footage files in one folder, the folder will now have 90 files, 60 of which you will never use. CS3 used to segregate the cache files off in their own folders within the parent project directory, so they were out of the way with all the rest of your files, and not strewn around the project folder willy-nilly.

I’ve switched over to making one large, dedicated cache folder on the network, out of site, out of mind… seems to be the best option that CS5 has to offer.

Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com

[Eric Barker]

I should have prefaced this by saying I don’t have a budget for 3rd party plugins. I’m on a shoestring budget, and it’s impossible to convince my engineers (who control the money) to invest in plugins. I know Trapcode is amazing, and I’ll see whether I can fit it into next year’s budget, but for the foreseable future, I’m going to have to rely on builtin plugins.

Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com

[Eric Barker]

But that only sends cache files to one place, for all projects. The way CS3 worked, it created a new folder for every project (or project folder). It was great. Even if you had two projects in the same folder, it would create ONE Media Cache Files folder, but then have subfolders inside of it for every project in that folder. With CS5, nothing is automated, I would have to change that setting every time I opened a different project. The setting isn’t even a project setting, it’s a universal one, so if I forgot to change it, my cache files would end up in a different place. This is so infurierating!

Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com

[Eric Barker]

Not sure how this isn’t any different from a simple “Cross Dissolve” Transition. If you butt the two clips next to each other and throw a cross dissolve between them, one will dissolve out at the same time as the next dissolves in.

The above poster suggested using the opacity automation, but frankly, I have to dissagree. Opacity automation is only really useful if you don’t want a linear ramp on your dissolve, which in MOST cases, isn’t neccessary. If you need different dissolve times between clips, then use two video tracks, throw cross dissolve transitions on the begginging and ending of the clips, then adjust the transition lengths to what you want each one to be. You might not get the Nth degree of flexability in drawing non-linear automation, but it’s far easier to adjust later, especially when needing to change the duration of the clips themselves.

Now, maybe we’re completely missunderstanding you. At first, I thought you were asking about a credit roll, instead of still frames. Maybe you’re describing that the credits will fade in and out as they come into an area of the screen. If that’s the case, a simple trick is to throw two “Linear Wipe” effects on the credit roll. Set the angle of one to “0” and the other to “180”. Then set the feathering to how much you want the clips to fade at the top and bottom, and adjust the percentage to determine where you want them to fade in and out. This might not be what you’re describing, but it is a handy trick that many may waste time in After Effects trying to achieve.

Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com

[Eric Barker]

That’s actually what I did, I imported the BPAV directory off the SD card into CatDV via “Import Directory”, and it went in and gathered all the MP4 files. I then exported them to a library folder. All the files worked great in QuickTime Player, but when I tried opening them in PPro CS5, they had missing audio tracks and/or video tracks.

Maybe I’m not doing something right. How do you use CatDV to extract files off a BPAV directory into a mass library folder? I feel like I’m too close to just write this whole idea off, but at this point, it’s just not working correctly.

Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com

[Eric Barker]

Well, I was able to get it working up to a point. Greg was amazingly helpful and very nice. Some of the best customer service I’ve ever gotten. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that Premiere is playing nice with the MOV format that MP4-EX (with CatDV) converts to. It would play fine in QuickTime, but PPro wouldn’t recognize any of the audio tracks. I was so hoping this solution would work out. Back to the drawing board.

Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com