[Todd Kopriva]

This begs the question: Are people not using the Beam effect for light sabers?

It looks to me like people do.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

Using the Cineon Converter effect is only recommended if you need to animate the values over time. The recommended ways of working with Cineon and DPX footage items are these:

– (recommended) Use color management.
– (OK) Interpret the Cineon/DPX files using the Cineon Settings dialog box (which you get to through the Interpret Footage dialog box).
– (only if you need to animate settings) Use the Cineon Converter effect.

See “Importing and interpreting Cineon sequences” and “Cineon footage items”.

There’s a detailed, step-by-step set of instructions for digital cinema workflow using color management in the “Color management workflow in After Effects CS4” paper.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

> I understand 9.0.2 is out

After Effects 9.0.1 is the most recent available version.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

See “Export a single frame of a composition”.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

As Dave suggested, animated GIF just isn’t a very… um… good format.

If you really want to get your hands dirty, you can go into Photoshop and create a custom palette instead of having After Effects decide what 256 colors to dither to.

There are some tips in the “Creating an animated GIF movie” section of After Effects Help, including a document linked to from the comments on that page.

But, really, I’d do everything possible to use a different output format.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

I’m not saying that this is the most elegant solution, but here is what I came up with while waiting for some chicken to defrost.

On the layer that you want to measure, add a Point Control effect (one of the Expression Control effects). You can place the Point Control effect’s crosshair (effect control point) wherever you want.

Create a new text layer above the layer that you want to measure, and add this expression to the Source Text property:


targetLayer = thisComp.layer(thisLayer.index+1);
samplePoint = targetLayer.effect("Point Control")("Point");
sampleRadius = [1,1];
sampledColor_8bpc = 255 * targetLayer.sampleImage(samplePoint, sampleRadius);
R = Math.round(sampledColor_8bpc[0]);
G = Math.round(sampledColor_8bpc[1]);
B = Math.round(sampledColor_8bpc[2]);
A = Math.round(sampledColor_8bpc[3]);
outputString = " R: " +R+ "\r G: " +G+ "\r B: " +B+ "\r A: " +A


This will create a text layer that reports 8-bpc RGBA values for the point under the crosshair for the Point Control effect. In the image that I’ve embedded below, you can see that the effect control point is in the upper center, in the nearly pure white clouds, and the RGBA values reflect this.

You can obviously get a lot fancier with this, but this should be enough to get you started.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

I’m playing around with the sampleImage expression method right now to see if I can’t whip together a little something. The idea is simple: Have a text layer with its Source Text property tied to the output from sampleImage, with the input to sampleImage being a point control that you can drag someplace and then just leave it while you fiddle with your colors.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

If your layers are oriented to be straight up and down, then looking at them from the top is looking at them edge-on, so you’re not going to see anything but a very thin line.

Your camera (and maybe even the other layers) may also just be out of the frame for the view.

There are some instructions in “3D views” for changing your view to look at selected layers, etc.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

Audio sample rate is in the Project Settings dialog box (File > Project Settings).

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

Time-stretching and time-remapping and the Timewarp effect are all ways to do this. Time-stretching is the simplest and least configurable. Timewarp is the most fiddly and most powerful.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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