[Matthew Keane]

Hi,

You might want to take a look at the Suretarget script from VideoCopilot, which is a nice easy way to get smooth camera moves between set points and, I believe, allows you to specify a bit of overshoot and wiggle on the moves. Alternatively, as others have pointed out, you could just animate a null around but keyframe a wiggle expression on the position to get a slightly wobbly version of your move.

P.S. Darn, Clint was 20 seconds faster posting than me!

[Matthew Keane]

This may not be the smartest way to do this but, since the stock video previews are often in formats that AE doesn’t really like anyway – flv or h264 – I recompress them using another codec and, at the same time, scale them up to the final HD dimensions – that way the hi-res versions can just be dropped into the project in place of the lo-res versions.

[Matthew Keane]

Hi,

Sounds like this tutorial might be what you’re looking for (demonic face optional):
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/Demon_Face_Warp.php

Basically you track and stabilize the moving object you want to distort, then apply your effect, and then re-apply the tracking motion to animate the smeared footage over the original.

[Matthew Keane]

Hi,

You might find it easier to use a light as your emitter, as you can then parent the light to a Null and then animate that any way you want in 3D space. So, for example, if you offset the light from the Null to match the diameter of your cylinder, parent the light to the Null, and then set the Null rotating, your light – and your particle emitter – will spin in a circle.

[Matthew Keane]

Hi,

I think the best solution depends on how complicated the geometry of your scene is.

If you just have 3 flat walls like you say in your post, then you could just create a comp which is the combined width of the 3 walls to contain your animated stripe. Then just drop 3 copies of the comp into your 3D room, mask each to reveal a different section and place it in front of your walls in 3D.

If the walls aren’t straight and flat – like in the example video you posted – then you could use something like the Digieffects Freeform to recreate the shape of the wall and use your animation comp as the texture. That would also allow you to have smooth corners, if you needed, unlike the hard/sharp corners of the first method.

[Matthew Keane]

If you have the Trapcode Form plugin, then that might be another approach to try. Set the base form to Box-Strings to get the lines, and then apply some twist and a rotation to get the thing moving. Might also work for the sine wave, if you limit the Form to a single line, and then use an animated gradient as a layer map.

[Matthew Keane]

With DV footage – and any interlaced footage – if you move the layer an odd number of pixels vertically, you will invert the field order. Assuming you’re in a DV comp, if you move it an even number of pixels and, as the other poster says, make sure it’s a round number, the interlacing of the footage will coincide with that of the comp and you shouldn’t have any problems.

[Matthew Keane]

It’s a very good thing I found it as, having already spoken sternly to the deck about cooperating, the next step would have been to slap it around a bit!

[Matthew Keane]

Hi,

Yeah, other analog input signals have worked fine in the past – it’s just this damn deck being awkward.

Anyway, having realised that the deck was outputting a progressive SD source I thought that might be the problem. And indeed, changing the deck output to interlaced resulted in the IO HD immediately recognizing the analog input as 625i25.

So I’d just like to thank Toshiba for not putting the output format option in the setup menu, nor on the remote control, but via a switch hidden behind a small flap on the machine itself!

Thanks for your help though!

Matthew

[Matthew Keane]

Hi,

Yeah, that’s set to 625i25 OK, but the picture is scrambled. The analog input still shows as 1080i29.97, so the IO HD seems to downconverting what it thinks is a HD signal to SD, resulting in a mess…

Checking further though, it looks like the deck outputs a progressive signal (it’s a combo VHS/DVD deck) and I wonder if that is what is upsetting the IO HD.

Thanks for the tip though, I hadn’t realised I’d could set the frame buffer format like that.

Matthew