[John Cuevas]

If the page is open to start, then this animation will be pretty easy in AE.

First step is to find the place in the video where you want it to freeze for the “picture look” and Time Remap the video(cntl + alt + T). Time Remap automatically creates a start and end keyframe, it’s important to keep that in mind when you start adding and moving keyframes that they may need to be adjusted. At the place you where the video freezes add a keyframe and copy it. Go to the beginning of the video and paste over the existing keyframe. Now your video is frozen and unfreezes at the 2nd keyframe. So all you have to do is move the last 2 keyframes to when you want it to unfreeze and start playing normally.

Now you just need to enable 3D for the video layer, open up position and rotation and add keyframes. These will be your ending keyframes. Place these where you want the video to start playing again. Now using rotation & position, move your layer onto the album page.

A few things that might help to sell this will be to use the effect Distort > Bezier Warp, particularly if your album page is a bit curved. You will be able to make it look more like the page if that’s the case. Just like before you would use make keyframes for the effect immediately as these will be when the video is straight and then bend it as necessary. Another effect you might add is a CC Light Sweep as the photo goes from frozen to moving video.

I made a simple project, using this weeks free clip from pond5(very compressed). My photo didn’t match the album photos exactly so I added a mask that expands as the photo is moving to full screen. As the pages were flat I didn’t need to add a bezier warp. So check out the example project, hopefully it gives you a good starting point: 5152_photoalbumfolder.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Not possible, sorry.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Does it count if I used it in a tutorial(on the different blending modes)?

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

It’s a workaround, but it beats restarting the program and or computer(which is what I was doing before someone on the Cow told me about the preferences). Glad I could help out.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

I really can’t emphasize enough that you probably don’t want to start trying to do a project first, but should start learning the fundamentals of the program. AE has a high learning curve and you might find yourself pretty frustrated trying to do stuff without the proper foundation.

On this page are some links to some great tutorials for getting started. If they have .aep files you won’t be able to open them in CS3, but you could still follow along and much of the information is the same(and most will provide the assets needed to complete the projects). Also if your computer can handle it, you might want to go to adobe.com and download a trial of CS6, believe you can use it for 30 days. Great if you are just starting.

Getting started with After Effects (CS4, CS5, CS5.5, & CS6)

You will probably get quicker answers for your illustrator questions in the Adobe Illustrator forum(I myself have only a rudimentary understanding of that program).

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

It actually is normal, the RAM preview has to initialize all of your CPU’s(I believe this is syncing/dividing the work between each CPU) before the preview can start. If you have your info window open it states exactly what is happening.

I have found that when it stops working/taking to long, I will go to preferences, multiprocessing and turn off the multiprocessing and do a RAM preview. Then after 1 preview I will turn it back on and it will work faster again. I’m not exactly sure why this works, but others here have confirmed that it does on their systems as well.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

The first video looks like she was shot on a green or white screen and moved around in post production to add the graphics. The key to that video is story boarding ahead of time to get her to look and interact with the graphics at the right time. Thought it looks like they strobed the video a bit—so you could cut out a bit of time and probably not be very noticeable. The graphics all could be made in illustrator(or even AE if you really wanted), then doing the final composite in AE.

The second two are traditional animation, whether computer assisted-I don’t know. You might want to google search and see if somebody breaks down the technique.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

If I was at work I would be using a wacom, but I’m just on my home system and I’m using a mouse right now. It actually took 3 or 4 attempts on each feather, then using “alt” a few times to deselect areas. Like I said, this is going to be a pretty time consuming roto. Instead of using the mouse to zoom in, I use “cntl + plus” or “cntl + minus”.

Depending on the length of the clip and the trouble you are having, it might be worth thinking about a re-shoot.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

I’m just an editor and relatively new to monkeying around with AE, but the results I’ve seen look great.

Haha, that’s how I got pulled into this AE world, just a humble editor until somebody had to learn how to make some text glow…

The first frame is the hardest, but if I were you, would get a good pot of coffee and some good tunes, cause even with the rotobrush this is going to be very long job. It will get easier with time, but there isn’t a much in the way of separation in the colors there. Take some time to watch those tutorials. The 30 minutes spent watching them will probably save you hours down the road.

Anyway, here’s the project and settings I was used to roto that one frame—hope it helps and good luck: 5145_rotobrushfolder.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

It doesn’t, form is a different animal all-together.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.