[Walter Soyka]

[Linus Kraemer] “I need to do something similar to this but want to replace a composition with another composition all from the project panel. Pretty sure there’s no way of doing this using the standard after effects tools so I wonder if there’s a script to do it.”

You can Alt+drag to replace something inside the project panel, too! Let’s say you have two comps: ORIGINAL (used 10 times in your project) and REPLACEMENT (the new comp that isn’t used anywhere). Select REPLACEMENT in the project panel, hold down the Alt or Option key, and drag and drop it onto ORIGINAL. All uses of ORIGINAL will be replaced with REPLACEMENT.

Alternately, you could right-click ORIGINAL and choose “Replace with Precomp (used 10 times).” Then you could step into the new precomp this would create (“ORIGINAL Precomp”), delete the ORIGINAL comp layer inside there, and do whatever you want in the new comp.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

Add a Compound Arithmetic effect after the Transform effect and before the CC Composite effect, and set its Second Source Layer property to the background layer you’d like to use. You may need to do some precomping and/or use the new Effects & Masks option in the layer selector.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Shahid Raza] “I’d like to change all of these comps / precomps to 60 fps so I can render at 1080p60 instead of 1080p30 for smoother animations.”

You could also change the render settings to render at a different frame rate than the native comp frame rate, like in this image:

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

These settings control how the scopes show information to you. Don’t try to match them to specific project settings, but rather use the settings you need for the task at hand.

“Float” displays data based on Lumetri’s internal floating-point processing (0.0 – 1.0 normal scale, plus superblack below and superwhite above).

“8-bit” displays an 8-bit video interpretation of that float data. This both reduces the precision of the display and effectively limits the waveform range from -7.5 to about 109 IRE, but it does show roughly what the signal would look like after 8-bit digital processing (if that’s part of your pipeline).

“Clamp signal” restricts the input to the scope (but not the actual output of the footage!) to a normal range of 0-255(8-bit) / 0.0-1.0 (float) / 0-100 (IRE). The Lumetri waveform normally uses a variable scale that defaults from 0-100, but can expand when superblack or superwhite colors are present in the signal. During video playback, this can cause the scope to “bounce” as the scale is dynamically adjusted for the data in the current frame. Clamp restores sanity in these situations and keeps the scale constant, but also prevents you from seeing just how much data is beyond the normal display range.

HDR is a special monitoring mode that displays a fixed logarithmic scale that goes well beyond the normal range on the high end; it’s meant to be used when grading for HDR displays.

For most cases, I think Float is most appropriate. Turn Clamp off when you’re trying to evaluate the potential for highlight or shadow recovery, and turn Clamp on when you want to keep the scale steady to read the scopes for playback or compare different still frames.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Rachel Kodner] “So perhaps that proves your theory, that, its the actual size of my normal project file that I’m dragging it into that is slowing things down?”

Yes. Basically, I think (but don’t know for sure) that when you import one project file into another, Ae needs to parse both project files in their entirety and make sure there are no collisions between item IDs. In other words, the delay is not caused by processing the new file you’re importing, but rather by processing the old one that will contain it.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Rachel Kodner] “I’m confused why its so big: all thats in it is Solids. animated solids. I just deleted a 146 mb voiceover file from within the project file. saved the project file and its 403 mb now.”

Project files do not store assets like audio files directly. They just store pointers to those assets. Removing a single asset will not have a significant effect on project file size — unless there are a lot of effects or keyframes on layers referring to that asset (which will be removed when the asset is).

As Dave says, there are a couple effects that can store a LOT of data in the project file. Beyond those, comps, shapes, masks, keyframes, etc. can all add up, especially if you’re doing a lot of duplication.

The easiest way to pare a project down is to select the layer or layers that you wish to keep in the Project panel, then run File > Dependencies > Reduce Project. This will delete everything from the project, except your selection and whatever is required to render it.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

I can see separate X, Y and Z curves in the graph editor on Ae CC 2018, version 15.1.1. Maybe reset your preferences?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Rachel Kodner] “ae project file size: 407 mb”

This is a really big AEP file. Is it possible to reduce that project?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

This should work:

app.project.reduceProject([app.project.activeItem]);

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

Adjustment layers work by creating a composite of all the layers below them, then manipulating the composite as if it were a single layer. When you use a Transform effect on an adjustment layer, Ae renders all the layers beneath it at the comp’s resolution, then applies Transform to that as if it were any other footage item.

As Max suggests, you could use a camera and make the layers 3D. You could also add a Null layer, make all the other layers children of the Null (using the parenting pickwhip), then scale the null (with the native Scale property, NOT with the Transform effect).

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]