Philip Bowser
Forum Replies Created
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Hey Eugeny,
Please please please inform me if I’m mistaken, but I believe there are currently two workflows which are stable, the X to 7 approach ($50), or the ClipExporter approach (open source!). ClipExporter is fantastic if your timeline is only one track, and doesn’t contain any keyframe data. Not the end of the world but really annoying for my situation, I deal with a lot of keyframes and multitrack timelines. The X to 7 approach will bring over some of that keyframe data and multiple tracks, but loses out on some other data like time-remapping, spatial conform etc. and it also costs $50.
In fact, I love ClipExporter so much, it makes me want to brush up on my object-c skills just to add the keyframing and multitrack option to the source code, but this seems like a longer endeavor than writing a script. The user-experience is really great. But like I said, just annoying when most of the serious projects I deal with have more than one track and multiple keyframes. Agh!
I wonder maybe it means reaching out to Thomas (creator of ClipExporter) and asking what kind of funding he’d need for his time to add this functionality to ClipExporter? And if it’s something a bunch of FCPX and AE users would pitch in for? I’d rather pay for that than X to 7.
Thoughts?
Cheers,
Philip. Bowser
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I’ve updated the script to bring over transform, scale, rotation, and spatial conform data. Still no keyframes.
Also some basic houekeeping.
Check it:
7043_fcpxmlaev8.jsx.zipCheers,
Philip. Bowser
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So if you have your “time*360” expression driving a slider control, you want that slider to stop counting up when it reaches a certain frame? And I’m assuming maintaining whatever value it stopped at?
Or you want it to count up until it reaches a specific value?
Philip. Bowser
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Good point Dave! Didn’t think of that.
Kind of reminds me of that old Video Copilot tutorial with simulating the muzzle flash lighting on the subjects face.
Philip. Bowser
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You can definitely achieve a look of flickering brightness with AE, but the shadows in your reference are also shifting in perspective because of the practical fire that was present. To manipulate the shadows in your footage would be incredibly challenging and time consuming to achieve with AE. But to just get the brightness flickering, I would probably use a combination of the Extract effect with a wiggle on an Exposure effect.
– Duplicate your footage in the timeline. Solo the above layer and apply the “Extract” effect. Bring up the “Black Point” until you’ve isolated only the brights of the image. Be sure to also bring up the “Black Softness” so there’s a gradual fade into it.
– Then apply the “Exposure” effect, and use a wiggle expression on the Exposure property. Option/Alt click the stop watch next to the Exposure property and start by typing this into the expression field:
wiggle(5,0.5);
In this wiggle expression the first value (5) is the frequency, and the second value (0.5) is the amplitude. So this tells the Exposure property to randomly wiggle a maximum of 0.5 units 5 times every second. Play with those two values until you’ve got something you like.
You may want to apply this expression to the Gamma property instead the Exposure property.. depending on how dark your source footage is.
Hope this helps!
Philip. Bowser
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I second Alex’s suggestions. That would be a great laptop!
You may also consider a dedicated Graphics Card. The Intel HD graphics are good, but AE is using more GPU nowadays and could really benefit from a dedicated card. Do a search on the supported Graphics Cards that AE supports and look out for those.
I love using https://www.newegg.com. It allows you to choose a lot of ranges of a variety of different parts/speeds/resolutions etc.
Plug in Alex’s suggestions and see what prices you get.
Philip. Bowser
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Are you talking about an After Effects project file or a composition within a project file?
You can duplicate compositions in the Project Bin, which will create a new, completely unique composition based on the original. Select your compositions in the Project bin and select Edit > Duplicate … or … Edit > Copy, then, Edit > Paste.
One thing to keep in mind however, if you duplicate a composition it will only duplicate one “level” deep. So any any secondary precomps that were nested within the selected composition will not duplicate as well. And this new, duplicate composition will be referencing the original secondary precomps.
However if you want to make a new After Effects project file based on the current one, using the Save As function will do so.
Does that answer your question?
Philip. Bowser
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I do not believe there is any way to reference a composition other than by name. I thought at first you could maybe use indexes.. but after some searching I don’t think comps have indexes in the project bin that are accessible by expressions.
If you are importing separate project files which each have settings comps, you could name their respective “settings” comps uniquely. For instance, if you were importing a project file which had a bunch of squares of different sizes you could call it “Square Settings”, and then your project file which has all the clowns would be called “Clown Settings” etc. I have no clue what kind of settings you’d have to implement for the clowns in this hypothetical scenario… I hate clowns… but if that is by chance actually your situation, I’m so sorry.
However if you needed two instances of square/clown compositions, I believe your way of renaming is the way to go.
Philip. Bowser
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Wow! I’ve never used this feature before! This is great. Thanks Roland.
Philip. Bowser
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Hey Michael,
I’m still not sure I understand what your end result will actually be. It seems as though this is maybe not the best way to go about it. If you could maybe talk more generally about what you are trying to achieve, not specifically using expressions, but overall what your issue is and why an expression would help you, you may get an even better solution than this one you are trying to put together.
Philip. Bowser