[John Corbett]

This is fantastic workflow advice. If someone has ClipBrowser installed and is pulling clips from an external SxS reader, is the SxS driver also required? Or is that only needed if you’re pulling the clips directly off the camera? Thanks in advance for any advice!

[John Corbett]

That did it. Your original post didn’t have the crucial step that involved going to OBJECT -> COMPOUND PATH -> Release. That was an amazing fix! Thank you so much for your help, I am very grateful for the assistance!

[John Corbett]

Hi Adolf,

Thanks so much for responding. I attempted this last night, but any color changes I make to the transparent area affect the entire outline group, so I decided this wasn’t going to work. However, on your advice, I tried again, and realized that if I copied the transparent areas and pasted them OUTSIDE the outline group, I was able to change their color without difficulty. It’s clunky, but it’ll work. Do you or anyone else know of a way to change the color of the transparent area while it’s inside the outline group? That would be much easier. Thank you again!

– Jc3

[John Corbett]

Thanks for the advice, Kevin – it worked great! I ended up using the Displacement Map effect with an expanding ellipse from the Generate menu. Making that 3D allowed me to view the expansion at any angle. It’s not quite as smooth as Ripple Pulse, on account of that effect having a sort of puckered “after-wave” but it still does the trick. Here are some stills:

No FX:

Displacement map with Fast Blur:

Full FX:

[John Corbett]

Thanks again for helping me see something new! That was it: I’d chosen 29.97 so I could provide the best framerate for the client’s video presentation. This caused the keyframes to land on fractions. I made a new comp at 30fps and all I had to do was slide the keyframes for each of the layers by one to make up for the extra frames.

Kevin, you suggested rendering at 30fps, importing that, and then interpreting the footage as 29.97. The client’s final output will be HD 1920×1080 at 29.97. Would it make a difference if I left it at 30fps or should I attempt to maximize compatibility by making it 29.97? I’m pretty sure his final distribution method will be DVD. That’ll be my last question – thanks once more!

[John Corbett]

Kevin, thank you very much for your suggestion. I went into the composition to see about sliding the different layers around and discovered something VERY interesting: when After Effects added the extra frames to go from 15 to 30 fps, the keyframes were suddenly set on fractional values. So, instead of a key at frame 19 or 20, I have one set at, like, 19.85. (no actual value is given – I’m judging from the keyframe indicator’s position on the timeline) I would never have noticed if I hadn’t zoomed the view into its maximum level of detail.

Is there a function that will allow me to force these keyframes to snap to a whole frame value? Ideally I’d like that to happen when upping it from 15 to 30, but I’m willing to do it manually if it means I don’t have to reanimate 30 balls. I know how to do this in Maya when switching between 24 and 30 fps, but I’m not familiar enough with After Effects to say for sure. Thank you again for the outstanding detective work!

P.S. – Dave, I did try Andrew Kramer’s FPS converter, and although I didn’t know it at the time, I believe the fractional frame issue noted above prevented it from being effective. I may also be suffering from an inability to interpret the original footage because there is none; it’s a bunch of PSD files whose rotation, position, and opacity I’m manipulating.

[John Corbett]

Any way to delete this post? Turns out the problem was with the Magnification ratio popup, which officially makes me an idiot. Thank God I live with a UI designer…

[John Corbett]

I’ve seen this issue in footage that was exported from Final Cut Pro and given to me for use in After Effects. I’m not sure why it happens, though.

[John Corbett]

My wife actually figured this one out. She right-clicked on the MOV files in the timeline and noted that “Frame Blending” was checked. Removing this took out the strange ghost image, which I guess was an attmept on the part of Premiere to smooth the transition from one frame to the next. Oddly, I have no memory of switching this feature on, so I don’t know how it became active. I am glad I know it exists, because I’ve had videos turn out like this before without knowing why. Thanks to you both for your invaluable assistance!

[John Corbett]

Sincerest thanks – I will try this suggestion. As for the discrepancy with the frame rate, the information is from my notebook, and I have a suspicion that the 24p may be something she told me verbally, whereas the rest of the data I copied out of the properties window. That would probably mean it’s actually 60i, right? In the interim, we have introduced a new complication:

The Raylight codec I’m using is the free, watermarked one, so I asked my friend to output again using another codec so I wouldn’t need Raylight. On the Web, the recommended alternatives were Animation or a PNG sequence, so she spat out a QT Animation and I went and picked it up. Now that I’m home, though, it seems that this new sequence has properties that are different from the original footage.

Original w/HD: 960×720, Frame Rate 23.976, PAR 1.333
Animation codec: 1707×720, Frame Rate 29.97, PAR 1.0

Any thoughts on how this happened? Is there any chance I’ll be able to use this? It now produces the OPPOSITE problem in that the footage looks too stretched instead of too squashed! Thanks again for everyone’s help!

EDIT: I opened the properties window in Premiere and the video data block for the QT animation sequqnce lists “frame size” as 1280×720. Not sure if that’s helpful or not. She also sent me a much smaller version compressed with the H.264 compressor, but it’s also stretched.

EDIT 2: Brendan, what codec should I use while rendering your nested composition suggestion? It looks good so far…