This is about working with mask paths.

Question

This is about working with mask paths.
While using a pen tablet to draw paths frame by frame, I want to select and move individual vertices, but I often encounter unintended behaviors. Specifically, instead of simply clicking and dragging a vertex to move it, a new point is sometimes added, or the tool switches to rotation mode, making the process very difficult to control.
After Effects makes it easier in this regard because it allows you to fix the number of vertices and toggle rotation, but the software runs slowly, making it difficult to progress through frames smoothly.
I wish the clickable area for selecting vertices was a bit larger, though I understand it’s unlikely to be improved anytime soon. Also, when zooming in to work more precisely, the frequency of misclicks seems to increase even more.
If anyone else has experienced similar issues, I’d appreciate any advice or suggestions for how to deal with them.

AidanEdits · Accepted Answer

Unless your AE comp has layers with resource intensive effects applied, moving from frame to frame should not be as slow as you're describing, and it can likely be improved by purging cache, increasing Disk Cache size, letting AE use more system resources, etc.

But Ae is by definition more suited for this, which is why it has the rotobrush tool that drastically speeds up roto work by automating much of the process for you. the kind of frame by frame masking you're doing (roto) is a VFX job, not an editing job, and it is far better practice to do your editing in an editing program (Pr) and your VFX in a VFX program (Ae). It is also easier than ever to do that efficiently with the Dynamic Linking capabilities these programs have . So I truly, strongly suggest researching some ways you can speed up your Ae performance if you do this type of work often.

AidanEdits · Answer

It sounds like you're manually rotoscoping an object in your shot, yes? If not let me know. In most cases the best option is to use After Effects for this kind of work.

If slow performance is holding you back, let me know what kind of problems you're experiencing in AE. Maybe there's something we can do to optimize performance in AE so that you can utilize its more specialized masking tools that are better suited for complex masking workflows.

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