[Walter Soyka]

If a panel is sized too small, you can’t see all its features — and there’s no scroll bar to tell you there’s more. Try resizing the Tracker panel by grabbing its bottom line and dragging it down. Does that reveal what you need?

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

[Walter Soyka]

[Alex Sedgwick] “Is there any way to render this in a shorter timeframe…”

Keylight can get pretty heavy. It’d be great to get a sense of your footage and computer specs for more understanding about the speed. A faster option might be to use the Ultra Key in Premiere Pro.

[Alex Sedgwick] “… with a more reasonable file size?”

Ae’s default output module, Lossless, is totally uncompressed. To save disk space, you should use a compressed format. Personally, I’d recommend rendering to a high-quality “mezzanine codec” like ProRes, CineForm, or DNxHD/DNxHR.

For a few more details, see “Why is my output file huge, and why doesn’t it play back smoothly in a media player?” here:
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/684381

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

[Walter Soyka]

And here’s a quick modification to do the same thing with END points instead of start points.

(I’d suggest naming this 02 keen-MoveSelectionEndPoints.jsx for consistency.)

// quick script to move the selected layers in time to the current time indicator,
// preserving their temporal relationship. The clip with the latest end will end
// at the CTI, and the others will retain their relationship
// written by Walter Soyka, first published at https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1123156

if (app.project.activeItem instanceof CompItem && app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers.length > 0) {
app.beginUndoGroup("Move selection end points in time");
var currentTime = app.project.activeItem.time;

// find the earliest in point among the selection
var earliestStartTime = app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers[0].startTime;
for (var i = 1; i < app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers.length; i ++) {
var currentStartTime = app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers[i].startTime;
if (currentStartTime < earliestStartTime) {
earliestStartTime = app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers[i].startTime;
}
}

// figure out the longest duration so we can make this work on END points instead of the start point
var longestDuration = app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers[0].outPoint - app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers[0].inPoint;
for (var i = 1; i < app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers.length; i++) {
var currentDuration = app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers[i].outPoint - app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers[i].inPoint;
if (currentDuration > longestDuration) {
longestDuration = currentDuration;
}
}

// figure out the offset between the earliest start time and the current time
var timeOffset = currentTime - earliestStartTime - longestDuration;

// move all selected layers by the time offset (so the earliest layer starts at the current time, and the others
// keep the same relative timing
for (var i = 0; i < app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers.length; i++) {
app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers[i].startTime += timeOffset;
}
app.endUndoGroup();
}

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

[Walter Soyka]

[Adam Leverett] “Yes, but what I meant was, if you select (for example) 3 clips that all slightly begin at different times, copy them, then paste them somewhere else, then hit ‘[‘ or ‘]’, ALL of the clips will start or end at the playhead. It will not maintain the different start points. Was just wondering if that was possible…not sure if I’m explaining clearly.”

Correct, there is no shortcut (I know of) to move layers on the timeline and retain their relative temporal positioning. However, if you’re going to copy and paste anyway, you can copy, move the current time indicator to where you want the first layer to begin, then use “paste at current time” as described above.

If you super-need a keyboard shortcut for this, I wrote a quick script to do it. Here’s the code:

// quick script to move the selected layers in time to the current time indicator,
// preserving their temporal relationship. The clip with the earliest start will begin
// at the CTI, and the others will retain their relationship
// written by Walter Soyka, first published at https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1123156

if (app.project.activeItem instanceof CompItem && app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers.length > 0) {
app.beginUndoGroup("Move selection start points in time");
var currentTime = app.project.activeItem.time;

// find the earliest in point among the selection
var earliestStartTime = app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers[0].startTime;
for (var i = 1; i < app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers.length; i ++) {
if (app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers[i].startTime < earliestStartTime) {
earliestStartTime = app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers[i].startTime;
}
}

// figure out the offset between the earliest start time and the current time
var timeOffset = currentTime - earliestStartTime;

// move all selected layers by the time offset (so the earliest layer starts at the current time, and the others
// keep the same relative timing
for (var i = 0; i < app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers.length; i++) {
app.project.activeItem.selectedLayers[i].startTime += timeOffset;
}
app.endUndoGroup();
}

Here’s what to do:

1. Copy and paste this code into a text editor, and save it as 01 keen-MoveSelectionStartPoints.jsx in your scripts folder.

2. Relaunch After Effects.

3. Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts

4. Type “01 keen” in the search filter box (located on the left underneath the virtual keyboard).

5. Locate and select 01 keen-MoveSelectionStartPoints.jsx in the list.

6. Click into the Shortcut space (next to the Command) and press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+[ on Windows, or Cmd+Opt+Shift+[ on a Mac.

7. Click the OK button to save your new shortcut.

NOTE: Ae’s keyboard shortcut system uses 19 “script slots” that are assigned by sorting the script files alphabetically. We’re putting “01” at the front of the name to force it to the front of that list. If you were to add a “00” script later, then that new script would take the first script slot and respond to the shortcut. If you want to add a number of scripts to different shortcuts, keep this in mind and use the numbering system carefully to enforce the order you want to keep the assignments from bouncing around.

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

[Walter Soyka]

The seed for the random number generator is based on the layer number, so when you add layers above your wiggling layer, the random number sequence wiggle() is using changes.

To work around this, you can manually set the random seed with an expression like this:

seedRandom(1, true);
wiggle(frequency, amplitude);

Change the “1” in seedRandom() to different numbers on different layers when you need variety (i.e., different random results), and obviously use your own wiggle() line however makes sense for your 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]

[Adam Leverett] “One question comes to mind…let’s say you’re pasting 3 layers that don’t all start at the same time. Is there a way to do the pasting and then the ‘]’ or ‘[‘ key as you suggested, plus perhaps another key that would maintain those differences in start times? I’m guessing no but thought I’d ask. :)”

As Roei suggests, “Paste layers at current time” is the way to go! It doesn’t show up in the menu, but you can do it with a simple hotkey:

Ctrl+Alt+V (Windows)
Command+Option+V (macOS)

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

[Walter Soyka]

[Dan McClelland] “Then I realized, when I zoomed in it went wrong. When I zoomed out, it went back to normal. Zoom, wrong. Zoom, right. How is this possible?”

Clear your cache. Edit > Purge > All memory & disk cache.

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

[Walter Soyka]

[Steve Bentley] “This may not be the best, depending on the footage (but it is the fastest) as it won’t give you those inbetween frames that weren’t there to begin with”

Time-remapping can do interpolation, too. There are three kinds:
– Off: skips or duplicates frames as necessary
– Frame blend: a time-weighted average of the pixels from the two adjacent frames
– Pixel Motion: use motion estimation to generate new in-between frames based on the movement of pixels from one frame to the next

You can either set them by toggling the frame blending switch in the timeline, or through the Layer > Frame Blending menu. (Note that you’ll have to enable Frame Blending for the comp viewer to preview!)

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

[Walter Soyka]

Keyframe your time-remapping, then use the graph editor to adjust the curve to ease into the final freeze frame.

See here for the idea:
AE Basics 12: Animation 2 – Easing Keyframes
https://library.creativecow.net/devis_andrew/AE-Basics-12-Animation-2/1

AE Basics – A Creative COW series for new users of Adobe After Effects. Lesson 12: In this second tutorial on the process of animation in After Effects, Andrew Devis explains how to make your animations look far better through the process of adding the appearance of weight to your assets. This is done through a change to your keyframes called ‘easing,’ which causes the keyframes to change their default behaviour to give much more realistic and real world animation. As well as showing how to add easing to your animation, Andrew also introduces the graph editor to show how to change the values of eased keyframes.

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 agree with Andrew. I’d prioritize GPU (and RAM!) before PCIe-connected storage.

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