Jeff Kay
Forum Replies Created
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Text undulation (wiggle is a specific AE tool/script): Looks like there is a time posterization on a “distort” effect. Offhand guess is that turbulent displace with changing evolution would work, though to make it look better stacking more than one “distortion” effect should work better.
Water effects: A lot more to break down here, which I’m not going to attempt and instead I’ll answer simply. The assets were most likely not created in AE, but likely as vector illustrations in Illustrator. There is plenty you can do to pretty up a brush stroke, far too much to try and list.
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As above, After Effects is just not an editing software and editing techniques just aren’t able to be developed in that suite.
That said, are you getting your preview by hitting the spacebar or doing an actual ram preview (default is numberpad 0)?
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Parenting should also confer scaling changes? If you specifically don’t want to change the scale of the parent, then a quick fix is to create a new null, have that parented to the original, then parent all of the objects you want to scale to the null and change scale on null. If you need a scale change on the timeline, then the null can hold it, if you don’t then you can delete the null and reparent to the original.
If you specifically wanted to do it via expressions, then just a simple pick whip on scale to something that matches the scale change, a null, or an expression control should be simple. Not completely why the necessity for the objects to stay at their x,y coordinates, but subcomping all of the moved objects, then adjusting the scale within the subcomp should keep the x,y coordinates the same in the main comp (having the scale of the objects bound to an expression control in the main comp should allow you to adjust the scale from the main comp).
Though, this type of trick can get unwieldy very quickly if you need to make further adjustments. Typically once in 3D space I would recommend to avoid using scale as a good enough looking replacement for Z-axis movement.
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What’s happening is that once the video is uploaded to YouTube it is then transcoding the video to a format that YouTube delivers. The real trick is to upload a version that YouTube (or whichever video streaming site) recognizes immediately and won’t transcode. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en should be the right information, additionally the YouTube presets in Media Encoder has done this in my experience (preset under H.264/MP4 [wrapper is important], as far as I have seen YouTube does not natively work with anything AVC).
Used to be able to trick it into using higher bitrates than what it would normally allow, by having your upload in the correct format, but encoded at a higher bitrate. Uncertain if you can still do that or if it will transcode if the bitrate is too high. Try an encode from your master to the recommended (maybe try a higher bit rate than listed?). It certainly won’t be perfect, but it should be a whole lot better. Should also cut off a whole lot of the “processing” time before the video is available and shouldn’t see a “encode/transcode” step.
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This could be VLC player itself. I keep it around, but I’ve had issues with VLC player creating problems in adobe/avid suits just by being installed on the computer. Additionally it has trouble playing a lot of formats that are very standard to NLE’s. Uninstall it and uninstall any non-professional codexes.
Its all I got. It definitely looks like an incompatibility issue as Adobe Media Encoder should handle encoding a Tiff sequence incredibly easily.
Second thought: Are you checking the corrupted video in just VLC or in AE/Premiere/other software? I’ve had more than plenty of cases where VLC either won’t recognize video (many standard NLE formats) or won’t be able to correctly play video (high bitrate, which is virtually every video other than the final deliverable).
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If you are encoding from the After Effects application itself, that is a problem in and of itself. Export uncompressed or export as a tiff sequence (I would not use a jpeg sequence as it would result in multiple compressions). Take that large intermediary and encode it in the media encoder of your choice.
The encoder built into AE is bad. Its so bad that while this may sound like a whole lot of extra steps, its far faster and results in a much better encoding than through the AE application. If you are doing a whole lot of exports, then setting up a watch folder for Media Encoder will even cut out that extra work.
If that doesn’t work and there is something with the video itself on the camera switch (does it RAM preview okay), then transcoding the base video is the next natural step.
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I’ve noticed a developing trend (its been developing for quite a while) that many are not looking for editors they are looking for software technicians. While modern software has created a lot of conveniences, because of those conveniences there is a lot more second guessing what the editor does.
For instance the multi-take feature where you can quickly swap between takes that have different i/o points. During a review someone will ask to see the other takes. They don’t say what exactly bothers them about the current sequence (shot composition seems out of place, dialogue is too slow/rushed, etc), they just ask to see the others. The editor is stuck constantly reworking the timeline while the director/producer/whoever is effectively the editor while they are simply the person working the software. (Though even without that feature, there has still been a move to this)
I’m in agreement that I would want someone that has the skillset to be an editor (which doesn’t change if you are on FCP, MC, or a Moviola), but we’re seeing a lot more of the higher ups not understanding this and feel that editing is simply a mechanical process.
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There is always some adjustment to motion tracking paths. If what you’ve tried has gotten pretty close, that might just be where you are at.
Also worth noting is that it really helps if the footage was shot with it in mind to make sure that the footage’s camera movement was perfectly smooth.
Alternatively I’d try creating a camera in AE that rotates along with the footage’s movement (leave the footage as a 2D layer) and then you can place in the 3D text as a 3D layer and leave it stationary. If the camera’s movement matches, then that should work.
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Command+W closes the active window. That’s all it did was close the window and you should be able to get back to it either by changing your workspace back (you did save your workspace right?) or by opening the window from the top menu.
The default for “fullscreen” (maximizes the current window to the current monitor) is ` the grave on the top left of the keyboard. Its a toggle, so hit it again and things go back. Also it will maximize the window that the mouse is currently over, not the window with focus.
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If the objects are in 3D and the 3D pathing is correct then it shouldn’t need to have its “scale” adjusted as the object will start to take up more space on the screen as it gets closer.
Its less clean and can be more difficult to work with later, but the most immediate solution should just be to keyframe the object scaling up as needed. I’m not sure how the ‘hologram’ object is created, but if its just a single layer then its just an easy adjustment of scaling. If its not a single layer, you should be able to subcomp all the layers that make up that object and then adjust scaling on the subcomp. Though as I said, it is the quick solution and if you need to make changes later then its going to be more work as you will have to adjust both the track and the scaling; I’d try to get path to work correctly personally.