[John Cuevas]

I linked to it above, guess you missed it…here it is. BadTV

It’s $129(you can download a trial), but it’s made from scripts a bunch of scripts and effects within AE. So if you find a look or certain effect that you want to try, let us know and it’s probably very easy to recreate using the standard effects within After Effects.

For instance here is a camera shake/split RGB look I whipped up awhile ago. It’s an old effect where the red/green/blue tubes sometimes would come unaligned. You’ll find stuff like that in the BadTV bundle, but it’s all stuff that can be created in AE.

https://f1.creativecow.net/4050/rgb-split-effect

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]

Nope, it’s not there anymore. You can probably follow the same steps though. You would make your button design and precomp it.

Your precomp layer would be have to have the prefix (+)
If you want a highlight you would add the prefix (=1)layername
Highlight 2 would be (=2)layername
Highlight 3 would be (=3)layername
Video thumbnail would be (%)layername

The last step is to go the composition pulldown and choose “Save Frame as Photoshop Layers”

I tried to upload a sample project, but the COW ain’t having it tonight. I’ll try again in the morning, but if you follow the formatting I showed there you should be good.

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]

You could create a lot of that in AE. Effects -> Noise & Grain -> Noise. You could create the mosaics pattern with the Stylize -> Mosaic or by using Noise -> Fractal Noise and changing the noise type to block and adjusting the other settings. However, in this particular video I think the author used the BAD TV plugin package.

If there is a particular effect you want to recreate, it’s possible to do it all in AE. Just tell us the specific time code and someone here will probably be able to help you get the look you are trying to achieve.

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]

How are you watching the DVD, DVD player(or Blu-ray) and a HD monitor or are you watching it on a SD television. Some TV/Players don’t upscale very well. I see this all the time in my projects.

Also, remember when going from HD to SD you are losing 75% of your resolution, it’s going to be a noticeable loss. Can you post before and after screen grabs?

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]

Your computer monitor uses square pixels, Standard Def TV does not, it uses pixels that are in ratios that are either .9 or 1.21 Wide to Height. When you create a 720 comp, you have created 720 pixels and for clarity it’s easier to work looking at the pixels displayed in a square pixel composition. When you toggle that button it stretches everything 1.21 to show you what it will look on a wide screen display and that stretches things and makes it look bad on your monitor, but it will be fine on a tv set.

If you want to see the effect of this choose the circle tool, hold down shift and make circle. When you press the button and go to square pixels, your circle is squished, press the button to compensate and see what it will look like on a Wide Screen it will become perfect again.

Again, I looked at your the project you uploaded, if you need to deliver a Wide screen 720×480 video, you need to work in a 720×480 comp 1.21 pixels…You can use the NTSC D1 Widescreen preset.

Check out this article on Pixel Aspect Ratio, it will explain it a lot better than I can.

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]

To paint, you need to do that directly on the layer. So double click the layer you want to paint and this will open the layer window, now press hit paint brush, you should get the paint brush window to choose your brushes and other options now too.

Make sure you start painting at the beginning of the timeline, because the layers are applied starting where the current time indicator is parked. You can move and slide them around(just like layers) but why make extra work for yourself.

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 did something very similar using multiple masks and had the same problem. One solution is that you could create two shape layers(or solids) the size of your mask line up the edges, then parent one to the other. Animate one to drive the text reveal and the blur/glow will follow. Place them over the text and adjustment layer in the layer stack and change the adjustment/text’s track matte to alpha.

Here’s a quick project where I demonstrate the technique: 4703_revealcs5.5.aep.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]

Okay, couple of things. First you are to a video rendering 740 x 480, do you mean 720 x 480? Second, If the final video is supposed to be 720 x 480, you should be working in 720×480 WS comp, not a 872 x 486 at a 1.21 PAR( you would use square pixels if you were working at that size)

I can tell you depending on how the video is being imported into the final editing application that scaling the 872 x 486 to 720 x 480 can cause the jaggedness you are seeing, most likely because fields are being flipped and text is being scaled oddly.

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 working on a project right now creating a Transformer like text effect and really could use that folder functionality right to clean up my project.

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]

From a project standpoint, there is nothing wrong with your set up, so the question is how are you rendering this file?

Toggle pixel aspect is only helping you see things more clearly and placement better when working in the comp window, doesn’t affect your final render at all. Not exactly sure what you mean by fast previews.

If you want a perfect render you need to create a lossless compression like QT_Animation using “Best Settings”. Of course a lossless compression produces extremely large files that generally don’t play back well on most computers. Here’s a little more information on final renders:

FAQ: Why is my output file huge, and why doesn’t it play back smoothly in a media player?

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.