[John Cuevas]

Let’s concentrate on the first idea, masking the video, to eliminate the hard edges.

First, press “cntl + 1”, this opens your tools window if it isn’t already open. One of the tools looks like a box, with a pulldown option, select the pulldown and choose the elipse tool(looks like an oval).

Click on your the homeless video layer and now draw draw a circle around your video, a circle that is almost as large as the video.

Now twirl down open your homeless video layer, twirl open “Masks” and “Mask 1” adjust the Mask Feather property. If the mask you made is too large, it may extend to the original video edges, you can shrink the mask by adjusting the “mask expansion” property to a negative number.

I created a quick example project to demostrate everything I did, hope this helps you finish your project.

3534_overlayingvideofolder.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]

Sorry about that, I looked at that quickly and thought you were adding an ink flow to the wall.

Few different solutions you could try. One would be to add a mask to your video. I would use select the round mask tool and select most of the video(not all) and then feather the mask significantly. That will remove the edges. If you are still seeing edges, adjust the mask exspansion to a negative number–if your feather is 48, a mask exspansion of -48 should do the trick .

Another approach would be to create organic looking mattes in precomps, perhaps a combination of fractal noise, solids and masks that give the edges some movement. Then you could take your video and create a new composition. Add the matte to your new video comp and change the videos track matte to luma matte.

Again, sorry about earlier suggestion, couldn’t see the picture on the other computer I was using.

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]

Is that an ink flow? Generally those are over black, if so, I would attempt building an alpha for it. One effective way to do that is with the handy little “Unmult” plugin. It’s free, you can find it at the bottom of the page here:

https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/free/

If that isn’t a black background, but a white background, I would probably use the Keying > Luma Key effect and “Key out Brighter”, that will remove a white background.

After that, I would apply a blending mode.

One other thing that will sell an effect like that is to duplicate the video, make a precomp of the duplicated video, desaturate it and increase the contrast.

Then to your ink layers add Distort > Displacement effect and displace a tiny amount. It will look like the ink flows are being affected by the bricks in the wall.

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]

Could you repost a picture showing the “harsh boxes”? It will be easier to diagnose and offer solutions if we can see exactly where the problem lies.

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]

My workflow to Avid is to render to the Avid DNxHD codecs. It’s what the Avid is going to trancode your footage to enventually, plus you get the benefit of fast import.

If you don’t have the codecs installed, you can get them here:
https://avid.custkb.com/avid/app/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=263545

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]

In the final comp(Mr. Face) he selects the mouth layer and enables time remapping(cntl+alt+t). This allows for the layer to be longer than 8 frames.

AFter that he uses hold keyframes to move between the different mouths as the speaker speaks.

If you go back to about 6:20 in the tutorial, that’s where he explains about how he acccomplished time remappinng the layer.

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]

Link to the tutorial please, I’m not familiar with that one.

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]

Take your rotobrushed layer and precomp and make sure you select “move all atributes into new compostions”. Now in your final comp, turn your precomped layer into a 3d layer.

Particular can act a little strange sometimes if you have already made selections, so it might be easier to just reset your particular settings and delete anything extra it created(lights that have been created named Obscure). So starting from scratch, under the visibility settings choose the precomp as a obscuration layer. You should be able to tie your emitter to a light now, circle around your subject and be good to go.

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 would precomp them into position, then use the puppet tool to animate the blink.

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]

There are a few different ways one could make this look, but here’s one recipe. Create your text and using hold keyframes, animate the scale and position very quickly. Use 3 or 4 keyframes, so it jumps from frame to frame, changing the position and scale…use your own judgement.

Add an adjustment layer and add the effect Distort > Turbulent Displacement. Change the displacement to horizontal and adjust the amount, size and complexity, keyframe the evolution. Now just add some masks to the adjusment layer, so the effect is only on a portion of your text. Also in the video it looks like he added some subtraction masks to the text itself to make some of it disappear.

I made a quick little project showing you what I did, hope it helps.

3507_distressedtext.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.