[Mike Clasby]

You should be able to limit the movement of the expression that is driven by keyframes with a slider (add “*1” to the expression, highlight the “1” link it to a slider, then adjust the slider, then the slider at .5 would cut the movement in half).

Or

I bet trapcode soundkeys has a way to Clamp the output to the ranges you want, go to Trapcode and search.

[Mike Clasby]

You should be able to limit the movement of the expression that is driven by keyframes with a slider (add “*1” to the expression, highlight the “1” link it to a slider, then adjust the slider, then the slider at .5 would cut the movement in half).

Or

I bet trapcode soundkeys has a way to Clamp the output to the ranges you want, go to Trapcode and search.

[Mike Clasby]

Dan Ebberts had a nice swarming expression, wiggle really, on his web page, but alas
it looks like he lost his domain name, a sad day for expression hackers.

This will work, not as elegantly as a particle system but quick and easy, you’ll know if you like the look
in no time.

If the man isn’t moving it’s real easy with a wiggle expression. See below if you haven’t used expressions.

Put your fly (psd, or other file with transparency) where you want it to hover.
Alt + Click the Position Stopwatch for the fly layer, type (or paste) in this wiggle expression:

wiggle (5,60)

Adjust the 5 – frequency (how often the fly changes direction, and 60 – amplitude(how far the fly goes before changing direction) to taste.

Duplicate the Fly layer (Ctrl D) as many times as you want flies, they will spread out a bit and all swarm around the man.

If the man moves, the quick way is:

Start with a new fly layer.

Make a new null layer (Layer>New>Null Object) and position it with keyframes to follow the man’s movement down the timeline, then Alt + click the Fly Position again, and pickwhip to the null position to get this:

thisComp.layer(“Null 1”).position

Add a dot “.”, and your wiggle expression to get:

thisComp.layer(“Null 2”).position.wiggle(5,60)

Dup the layer again, all should follow the null which is following the man.

You can also motion track the man’s head or something but is probably more complicated than you need since swarms are a bit sloppy by nature.

[Mike Clasby]

Dan Ebberts had a nice swarming expression, wiggle really, on his web page, but alas
it looks like he lost his domain name, a sad day for expression hackers.

This will work, not as elegantly as a particle system but quick and easy, you’ll know if you like the look
in no time.

If the man isn’t moving it’s real easy with a wiggle expression. See below if you haven’t used expressions.

Put your fly (psd, or other file with transparency) where you want it to hover.
Alt + Click the Position Stopwatch for the fly layer, type (or paste) in this wiggle expression:

wiggle (5,60)

Adjust the 5 – frequency (how often the fly changes direction, and 60 – amplitude(how far the fly goes before changing direction) to taste.

Duplicate the Fly layer (Ctrl D) as many times as you want flies, they will spread out a bit and all swarm around the man.

If the man moves, the quick way is:

Start with a new fly layer.

Make a new null layer (Layer>New>Null Object) and position it with keyframes to follow the man’s movement down the timeline, then Alt + click the Fly Position again, and pickwhip to the null position to get this:

thisComp.layer(“Null 1”).position

Add a dot “.”, and your wiggle expression to get:

thisComp.layer(“Null 2”).position.wiggle(5,60)

Dup the layer again, all should follow the null which is following the man.

You can also motion track the man’s head or something but is probably more complicated than you need since swarms are a bit sloppy by nature.

[Mike Clasby]

CC Cylinder,Kurt Murphy does the text thing you want near the end of his tutorial “Creating A Glass Globe”, bring sunglasses, this is the flashiest thing on the Cow (hey, I like the Globe, but safety first).:

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=2&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/murphy_kurt/glass_globe/index.html

[Mike Clasby]

“Worlwind” is probably what you want, but I haven’t used it yet so I can’t quite believe the hype, but might try it today since you brought the subject up, so thanks for that. Anyway supposedly you can Zoom into anywhere on earth with it, we’ll see. I don’t know how it translates into footage.

https://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

There are some great zooms at Goddard Space Flight Center, but alsa they are all in the US, that’s just the way we are here in the US I guess, a bit self-centered.

Click on “Great Zooms” near the bottom:

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html

[Mike Clasby]

Chris’ first post can produce this (with Fast Blur sandwiched between CC Threshold RGB and Levels in that top layer seems to help a lot):

https://putfile.com/pic.php?pic=4/11413341562.jpg&s=x402

Details on numbers for filters are in my first post above, idea taken from Andrew’s Tut on Blemish removal.

I agree the subject is lit poorly but looks like you might be able to get away with it.

[Mike Clasby]

I see you referenced Andrew in your original post, so the solution below involves an Andrew technique, but maybe not the same Andrew or methods you tried, anyway…

I think A look at Andrew Kramer’s Tut on Blemish Removal could apply here. He uses a Luma Matte to just apply effects to the areas he wants (a bride’s face in the tut, but he mention’s changing the color of an apple). To see Andrew’s Tut, click on his head a scroll down.

Here’s a quickie on his Luma Matte that seems to work for your Picture example.

Making the Luma Matte:

Dup the layer,

Apply CC Threshold RGB, crank the Red and Green up to 255, now adjust the Blue (I used Blue threshold 56) until the layer is just Blue and Black (he’s working with the Red since the bride’s face is pink).

Apply Hue/Saturation – Crush the Saturation (Master) to 0.

Apply Levels and Boost the Whites by pulling the little White Triangle to the left (see Andrew’s Tut for demo) until you have only Black and White.
We’ll use this for the luma matte.

Make a new Adjustment layer, drag it down to between the two layer, below the black and white we’ve been working on., and change the Track Matte to Luma Matte.

Now any effects we apply to the Adjustment layer will only be applied to the parts of the Black/White layer (now with eyeball turned off) that are matting the bottom footage layer, in other words only effecting the once blue sky.

Apply Hue Saturation to the Adjustment layer, click on the Colorize Check Box, make it a dark Blue (-137 degrees for my test on your pic), adjust the Colorize Saturation (65 ?)and Colorize Lightness (-64 ?). If the matte is making grungy edges in the trees, where the sky is peeking through, add Fast Blur (I liked 2)to that Duplicate Layer, the first on we made Black and White. Slide that Fast Blur so it Sit below Hue/Saturation and Levels:

Dupped Layer Effects Order:

CC Threshold RGB
Hue/Saturation
Fast Blur
Levels

Anyway it seems to work, with lots of adjustment available, you could tweak with keyframes as conditions changed in the scene.

Oh, yeah, I Had to draw a little mask around the fire (and Invert it0 so the Adjsutment layer doesn’t adversly effect the fire.

Hope that works for you.

[Mike Clasby]

Do you mean WMV files? If you’re going to encode wmv files I suggest you get WMV Encoder, many more options (freebie too) like 2 pass variable bit rate, pretty easy and fast. It’s only for Windows, Sorenson has some nice presets for wmv files, although I haven’t used it except the demo.

What the resolution on the 30″ Dell HD screen?

Here’s the wmv encoder:

https://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/default.mspx

I haven’t used and don’t know WMV HD but here’s some info:

https://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/HDVideo.aspx

https://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/contentshowcase.aspx

[Mike Clasby]

This might work from
Name: thehardmenpath
Date: Feb 27, 2006 at 8:11:34 am
Subject: Re: 4 free point mask tool

I made a script that puts a tracker data into a mask vertex, check it out here:

https://www.aenhancers.com/viewtopic.php?t=329

And this from crgreen:

https://www.crgreen.com/aescripts/

Connect_Vertex_to_Point.jsx

Allows the animation of individual mask vertices by “linking” a vertex to any two-dimensional point property
(like position, track point attach point, “point” expression control, etc).

Name: thehardmenpath
Date: Feb 16, 2006 at 5:11:57 pm
Subject: Re: Any way to control a mask with tracking data?

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=871496

You’d have to create your wiggly data first, then you could apply it to your mask via his script. I haven’t done this but it should work and you should have enough info to figure it out or to do a better advanced search.