[Steve Roberts]

I think I have an application that might illustrate this.

You have two stars floating in the scene. Each star has a stroke and a fill. But for project-specific reasons, each star’s fill and stroke must be on a separate layer. So you have four layers: fill 1, and stroke 1 for star 1; fill 2, and stroke 2 for star 2.

Now, you want each star to be floating about with a wiggle expression, but you want each fill to be locked to its respective stroke: no shifting of fill and stroke within a star. But you also want each star to be floating independently of its partner. How to control the wiggles, knowing that wiggle is set by the layer’s position in the stack and we have four layers here?

My solution was to use Seed Random ahead of the wiggle expression for each layer.

• Stroke 1 used seedRandom(1, true);
• Fill 1 used seedRandom(1, true);
• Stroke 2 used seedRandom(2, true);
• Fill 2 used seedRandom(2, true);

(Yes, there are other solutions such as parenting and precomping, but that’s not the point.)

[Steve Roberts]

Yeah. Zoom. Ugh.

Thanks very much for the compression spec. I’ll also ask my friend to set that NLE-compatible switch should he ever want to do this again.

In the end, I gave him (before reading your last post) a decent looking file that was around 225 MB. He was happy.

Thanks again.

[Steve Roberts]

Thanks for the quick reply, Craig.

Yep, 55MB H.264, recorded by my friend via Zoom, is the original source, unfortunately: laptop camera over Zoom. Hence, the problem. 🙂

I’ve examined the data rate in Mediainfo (thanks for the pointer), and overall, it’s 216Kbps, video is 87.6 Kbps H.264/AVC, audio is 126 Kbps.

Zoom might use a proprietary encoder, or settings, so I might have to accept a much higher file size for acceptable quality, I think.

[Steve Roberts]

I see the blur in your video, James, when stepping frame-by-frame through the video (pause, then shift+ R/L arrows): yes, some of the frames are blurred. Two causes come to mind:

– the compression for Vimeo might be causing this. The way to tell if it is or not is to render uncompressed, maybe TGA sequence, re-import, and take a look at the frames.

– AE moves layers in subpixels, meaning (in case you didn’t know) that when a layer moves a non-integer number of pixels (e.g. 7 1/2 pixels), AE antialiases the image. In the case of a complex painting, this can make it look blurry. To get around this, try the expression here: https://chrissilich.com/blog/?p=288 Or … if you use the script “iExpressions,” I hear it has a “snap to grid” feature.

I think it’s the second problem. But if you snap to pixels, the motion could look a bit jittery as it jumps from pixel to pixel.

It’s your choice, but you might be running up against an old issue: not all layers look good in all forms of motion.

For example, a straight pan can exhibit something called “judder,” which is a kind of stuttering movement. It is inevitable, unless you hike up the frame rate a lot. Motion blur will not solve judder: you just see juddering blurry frames. It comes from our brains’ getting accustomed to a simple motion, to the point where we are able to perceive the static individual frames of the video.

If you can’t hike the frame rate a lot, you have to take a leaf out of the Visual Cognition (a branch of Psychology) book: distract the eye with a secondary motion. If you are panning across a scene, add a flitting butterfly. That will make the pan look smoother, because our brains will be occupied between the butterfly and the pan.

But in your case, to distract the eye and prevent the brain from seeing the blur or pixel-jumping, you might want to pan past a gallery patron in the foreground during the blurry part of the move, then lose them when the image cleans up, so we can look at the painting unobstructed. Why not?

[Steve Roberts]

Thanks, Jim.

I’m having a bit of difficulty with that (quite reasonable) plan in that even with “realtime update” selected, scrubbing (or clicking) in the “radius” window shows no results in the viewport until I click “apply.”

Ah. But if I reset the values after one try, then try scrubbing/clicking the radius value, I see a real-time effect in the Viewport.

Bug? Maybe. I see this behaviour with a new spline … then I don’t. I’ll look into it more deeply.

Thanks again!

[Steve Roberts]

Thanks for replying so soon, Joe. Yes, it’s odd!

(FYI: I’ve used Premiere since 4.1 and legacy FCP, but After Effects is my main app, since 1996. Apologies in advance if I ask n00b questions because I’ve just picked up FCPX recently.)

No, I haven’t explicitly loaded any XML files, though I imported entire folders, which included those files.
I imported the files directly from the hard drive given to me by the videographer, choosing to copy to Library, and create both optimized and proxy media. I checked those in QT Player: they both have audio, though I haven’t checked all the files.
The original drive contains MOV files from a Nikon, and MXF & XML & BIM files from a Sony.

I’ve exported an XML from the event, created a new library, and imported the XML.
No change: still missing audio from the same clips.

Now, my original library is about 6TB. Will copying that library duplicate that 6TB package? I’m afraid I don’t have the space for that.
Maybe I should move the original (copied) media from the library, because FCP doesn’t use it. If so, how would I do that without buggering things up?

Thanks, Steve

[Steve Roberts]

Hey, Dave, thanks for the hello — hope you’re well.

Yeah, I think our spherical-to-cylindrical VR problem falls between the cracks, and I might have to figure it out for myself. I’ll cross-post over at the VR forum.

(Heh — Argos are always a longshot!)

Cheers,
Steve

[Steve Roberts]

Premiere Pro CC 2014. OS10.9.5.
Mac Pro Ashcan 2014.

I may have solved this one, which really p*ssed me off. I feel your pain.

Problem:
My default dissolves (out of black and back to black) in the timeline preview (“render selected”) looked fine.
But in a rendered MOVIE, instead of smoothly going up from IRE 0 to 100, the highlights cut in at 30 and went up to 100. Vice versa on the way out: slow from 100 down to 30 then cut. In other words, the dissolves had a flatter slope and cut in/out at 30 instead of 0.

But there may be a solution:
Yes, turn off GPU.
But ALSO generate rendered previews for the whole timeline. “Render in to out.” (yeah, it’s stupid.)
THEN, in the render dialog, at the bottom, select “use Previews.” (I also had max quality and frame blending selected.)
Render (Export media).

Seems to work. Smooth dissolves.
No slower than doing a GPU-free render without rendering in to out.

Let me know if it works, if anyone’s still having this problem.

[Steve Roberts]

Emir, I was having a similar problem rendering a purchased model with GI, so I thought I’d try your solution. Perfect. I’ll bookmark it for the future.

Thanks!
Steve

[Steve Roberts]

Probably the best way is to find an image of a bullet hole in wood and composite that into your shot. Cut from no-hole to hole. For the flying debris, apparently Video Copilot’s “action essentials” may have what you need.

Now, if we wanted realistic close-up flying splinters and all, especially in slow motion, we’re probably best hiring a 3D animator. In my opinion, AE is good for faking it, not for realistic close-up CGI.