[Mike Clasby]

Just remembered! If you have PhotoShop Extended, you can stabilize Video with the “Align” function, saw it in an online Seminar, here:

https://pacific.adobe.acrobat.com/p66856872/

[Mike Clasby]

Quick Stabilize run through:

Select the layer to be stabilized.

Animation>Stabilize Motion
The tracking is done in the layer Window, so go with it, when you’re done, the layer will be stable in the comp window.
Click on the Rotation checkbox, so you have Position and Rotation checked.
Move the Track Points to two spots to get a good track (can be tricky, experience helps)
Now click the Analyze Forward (one frame at a time is better, so you can see when it jumps off track. See Aharon’s link below for manually adjusting tracks that jump off-track)

If you get a good track, click “Apply” (both X and Y) and close the layer window.

Back in the comp, your footage should be stabilized.

Trouble! What to do with those black wedges around the sides of the stabilized layer. To get rid of those, you need to:

1) Scale up the layer. If the footage was real shaky, you can loose resolution in a hurry, or

2) Often you can get away with Effect>Stylize>Motion Tile. Then check the “Mirror Edges” box and change the Output Width and Output Height to 150 (or whatever it takes to cover the gaps).

You could use a combo of the two.

3) If you over-sampled in the shooting, like shooting HD for end an product of broadcast NTSC, you can stabilize the HD footage, then drop that into an NTSC comp, positioning it so the black wedges don’t show.

Most of the time Motion Tile is fine.

How to adjust frame by frame when the tracker gets cranky (Part Three of his tut, “Creating a Cartoon from Video”).

https://forums.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/cartoon_look/Cartoon_Part_3/index.htm

Andrew stabilizes motion here, in the first five minutes of this tut;

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/Demon_Face_Warp.php

(Then he goes on to destabilize it after he attaches an effect and sunglasses, so watch the first five minutes.)

Hope these help.

[Mike Clasby]

Click on Aharon’s Head (main AE Page) then scroll down to his newest tut:

Freeze Frame with Time Remapping

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/Freeze_Frame/Tutorial/index.htm

If you don’t have AE7 or above with that “Freeze Frame” function, just go straight to Time Remapping by selecting your layer, then Layer>Enable Time Remapping.

Andrew also does what you want near the end of this tut:

29. 300-like Speed Ramps & More!

https://www.videocopilot.net/videotutorials/timeremap/index.htm

Note: If you don’t have AE7 or above you won’t get that nice Pixel Motion smoothness in the slowdown.

[Mike Clasby]

Also, if you stabilize the footage, you’ll end up with black wedges where the layer tilts back and forth during the stabilization.

To get rid of those, you need to:

1) Scale up the layer (not real desirable if there was a lot of shaking originally), or

2) Often you can get away with Effect>Stylize>Motion Tile. Then check the “Mirror Edges” box and change the Output Width and Output Height to 150 (or whatever it takes to cover the gaps).

You could use a combo of the two.

3) If you over-sampled in the shooting, like shooting HD for end an product of broadcast NTSC, you can stabilize the HD footage, then drop that into an NTSC comp, positioning it so the black wedges don’t show.

Most of the time Motion Tile is fine.

[Mike Clasby]

Andrew does it as part of this tut:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/Demon_Face_Warp.php

[Mike Clasby]

If one knew AE’s Text Animator well (which I definitely don’t) you should be able to do this that way, but, here’s an expression that does what you asked for.

OVERVIEW
Type in “1324” then add the expression and four markers to tell it when to switch expressions.

First with the Text Tool, type in the numbers you want for the final result, you said… 1324.

Now twirl down the layer until you see Text, twirl that down to reveal “Source Text”. Put the following expression on source text. (to add an expression, Copy the expression, Alt-Click the Source Text Stopwatch, then Paste, then click outside the expression box)

n = 0;
if (marker.numKeys > 0){
n = marker.nearestKey(time).index;
if (marker.key(n).time > time){
n–;
}
}

switch (n) {
case 1:
“pear”//change this to change the initial word
break;

case 2:
numRows = 1;
numChars = 4;
holdFrames = 5;

seed = Math.floor(time/(holdFrames*thisComp.frameDuration));
seedRandom(seed,true);

s = “”;
j = 0;
while(j < numRows){ k = 0; while (k < numChars){ c = Math.floor(random(65,91)); s += String.fromCharCode(c); k += 1; } s += "\r"; j += 1; } s s.toLowerCase() break; case 3: numRows = 1; numChars = 4; holdFrames = 5; seed = Math.floor(time/(holdFrames*thisComp.frameDuration)); seedRandom(seed,true); s = ""; j = 0; while(j < numRows){ k = 0; while (k < numChars){ c = Math.floor(random(48,57)); s += String.fromCharCode(c); k += 1; } s += "\r"; j += 1; } s break; default: value } Now you need to place some markers to make it work. Set a marker ( select the layer, then * on the numeric pad) at the beginning of the layer ("I" takes you to the inpoint). Now the text should say "pear". Change the "pear in line 11 of the expression to change the starting word. If you don't add a marker at the beginning, it will default to the original number you typed in, then switch to pear at the first marker, so put that marker at the beginning of the layer. Now go down the timeline and set a marker where you want pear to start into random letters, then set another marker later where you want them to switch to random numbers, then a final fourth marker where you want the "1324" (the number you typed in originally) to be the final number. CHANGES YOU CAN MAKE One thing you might want to change in the expressions is the number of holdFrames, that tells them how long to hold that random sequence of numbers or letters. Also if you wanted the random letters to be Capital letters, change line 35 from s.toLowerCase() to s.toUpperCase() If you want to change the word banana to 6 letters/numbers.You would also need to change the numChars = 4; to numChars = 6; and make the initial number you typed in 6 numbers. Also, just so you know, the c = Math.floor(random(65,91)); means random letters, a-z, and the c = Math.floor(random(48,57)); means random numbers, 1-9. This expression is a hack from several Dan expressions, the shell is from this: Re: multiple expressions on one track over time - How? https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/227/7633

And the text/number random grid from this:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/ebberts_dan/ae6_exp.php

[Mike Clasby]

Only if you have the Pro version, motion Tracking only lives there.

Just select the layer with the Spaceship (or precomp that if the spaceship is it’s own layer with Alpha), then Animation>Track Motion. The default for Track Motion (type Track: Transform) is with Position checked, also check Scale. Then Set track Points 1 & 2 in good trackable spots (here’s where the Art of it comes in) and hit the Analyze Forward (or 1 frame) Button. Make sure the “Edit Target>Track Motion To” has your Engine Glow layer selected, the hit Apply. You should be good to go.

Here is an Andrew tut for manually fixing track points that want to wander, at about 5 minutes in:

https://forums.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/cartoon_look/CC_LiveTrace_Pt_3CD.mov

Here are all the other tracking tuts I know of (overkill I know, but handy when you need them):

Track It

https://studio.adobe.com/us/tips/tip.jsp?p=1&id=100362&xml=ae65tttrack

Keep motion in perspective

https://studio.adobe.com/us/tips/tip.jsp?p=1&id=100241&xml=aft65cornerpin

Using the new Motion Tracker

https://studio.adobe.com/us/tips/tip.jsp?p=1&id=487&xml=aft6ttmotiontracker

Tracking obscured objects in video

https://studio.adobe.com/us/tips/tip.jsp?p=1&id=399&xml=aft6tracking

Aharon’s tut:

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

movie here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/cartoon_look/CC_LiveTrace_Pt_3CD.mov

Andrew Kramer (AE Cow Moderator) does some AE Tracking in these tuts:

42. Advanced Sky Replacement July 16, 2007

43. Demon Face Warp July 23, 2007

Here:

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html

Here

[Mike Clasby]

If you’re using AE5.0 I think you are out of luck, I believe expressions started in AE5.5, and even the Pro version in AE5.0 was expressionless.

You could always download the CS3 demo and use it for a month.

[Mike Clasby]

“0” (zero)on the numeric pad does a RAM preview (video and audio)of the Work Area.

“.” (decimal point) on the numeric pad does a preview from where the Current Time Indicator is located.

[Mike Clasby]

Are you sure you don’t have the ability to do expressions? My first AE, AE5.5 was Student Standard and did expressions. I would be very surprised if Standard didn’t do expressions.
That said, here is a preset that is great for Shaking and Quaking: Quaker, here:

https://scottfrizzle.com/free.html

Applying Preset the first time:

Select the layer you wish to affect, and go to Animation > Apply Animation Preset.
Find Quaker on your harddrive and select it (quaker.ffx).
(If you put it in your Abode After Effects>Support Files > Presets folder,
that way it will always appear in your Preset menu.)

Quaker incorporates motion tile to fill in the edges of the shaking layer.
It is also very adjustable, sliders to control Quake Magnitude and Quake Frequency.

A pdf comes with the zip that explains all.

Now if Standard doesn’t have Motion Tile then you’d need to Scale up the comp/layer to get rid of the gaps created by the wiggling.

Andrew also does a camera shake in a tut here, he even adds a little wiggle in the rotation which is nice:

https://www.videocopilot.net/videotutorials/earthquakehdr/index.htm