[Ian Northrop]

for mac: Command+Option (Mac OS)

[Ian Northrop]

I was having a similar issue – plasma tv as ‘Realtime Playback’ monitor just stopped working suddenly. My problem ended up being that my Premiere Pro window was creeping over to the other monitor (I have them set-up side-by-side, not mirrored). This was enough to disable ‘Realtime Playback’ on my system. Sometimes the solutions are far simpler than we conjure-up in our minds..

[Ian Northrop]

I’m in the process of trying to figure this out using Javascript. Seems the only way possible, unless of course Adobe creates a command for the app.

Here’s my thought process for how it would work (using Javascript):

create a null, trimmed to work-area range (can do now)
turn on expressions for any parameter in null (can do now)
bake expressions using “convert expression to keyframes” (can do now)
zoom to work area using “fit all graphs to view” command from graph editor (need code)
delete null (can do now)
done

Well, it’s a workaround, but one that may very-well work. If anyone knows how to execute the “Fit all graphs to view” command in Javascript, let me know.

-Ian

[Ian Northrop]

I hope PP becomes scriptable very soon. Scripting in AE has increased it’s workflow potential ten-fold.

[Ian Northrop]

I’d recommend for a quick, relatively easy approach to find some good stock footage of water, shot overhead (artbeats.com). Performa speed-ramp on some stock footage where the water has some tight ‘chop’/ripples in it, speeding it up a bit – this should help to emulate heat distortion. Experiment with blur on your stock footage and, I’m not entirely sure about this part, you may need to desaturate your footage, maybe not though. Now you can use this treated footage as the basis for your distortion on your text layer. Apply a ‘displacement map’ effect to your text layer for distortion. In the effects setting, point the displacement layer parameter to your treated water layer (as basis for distortion), then set both horizontal and vertical distortion parameters to ‘luminance’ (this is where desaturating your water layer comes in to play, you can perform ‘levels’ adjustments to your treated, desaturated footage to tweak the final distortion outcome). One more thing – turn eyeball icon ‘off’ for your water layer when you’re ready to view the result of it on your text element.

Hope this long-winded explanation helps. Your other option is to find a 3d effects artist to render you out a displacement map (usually red and green) from a 3d program which you, as well, would use in conjunction with the ‘displacement map’ effect in After Effects. Good luck.
-i4n

[Ian Northrop]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t this expand the work area to cover the entire length of the comp? I was under the impression that the question was about zooming the viewable area to that of the playback range..

[Ian Northrop]

Did you ever find a solution? I’m currently looking to convert an imported cameras rotation from xyz to zxy. Without the conversion, the cameras curves are of little use to me. I’m currently researching euler rotations and conversion using matrix math. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Ian Northrop]

Great to know. Thanks for the reply!

[Ian Northrop]

Assuming the AE camera works like a real-life camera, you’ll want to use a 100mm lens (in AE). This is the lens that portrait photographers use due to the fact that there is virtually no distortion applied to the image, from the lens.