Automation Blocks: How can I write a in and out animation for every selected Layer?

[Franz Tomandl]

Hi!

I'm doing a crazy thing where I animate gaming video subtitles from Premiere Pro into After Effects to give it more quality. I'd love to have in the library a way to this:

- Go to in point

- Add a "0" value scale keyframe

- Go forward 5 frames

- Add a "100" value scale Keyframe

- Go to out point

- Add a "0" value scale keyframe

- Go backwards 5 frames

- Add a "100" value scale keyframe

And then continue to the next layers.

Also, It'd be really useful an "Un-precompose" action too, where the elements of precomposition come out of the precomp and places in time in your main comp

I used to do this actions with another automation application, but now I'd love to rely more on Automation Blocks for these tasks

If these work, I might have some more ideas in mind for these same kind of videos which are actually very requested.

Thank you very much in advance!

[Rick Gerard]

You can use a couple of interpolation expressions that take the timing info from the layer in and out point. 

Try this for scale:

// setup timing

t = time;
inTime  = 5 * thisComp.frameDuration;
outTime = 5 * thisComp.frameDuration;
inStart = inPoint;
outStart = outPoint - outTime;

//create transitions;
a1 = easeOut(t, inStart, inStart + inTime, 0, 100);
a2 = easeIn(t, outStart, outPoint, 100, 0);
// choose transition;
if (t < outStart)
	[a1, a1];
else
	[a2, a2];

I use variations of these time-based interpolation methods on most of my animation presets, so I don't have to set keyframes.

You cannot write an expression that would un-pre-compose. If a property does not have a stopwatch so you can set keyframes, you cannot change that property with an expression. I'm not sure what the advantage of pulling the layers out of a nested comp (a pre-comp in your timeline) would be. You could write a script that would place a comp from the Project Panel in the current comp, or you could write an expression that would turn the opacity on and off or even change the timing of a nested comp using time remapping. I need a better explanation of what you are trying to do to give you much help on the second part of your request.

If you are trying to improve the look of subtitles created in Premiere Pro, you would be better off creating a MOGRT than trying to import an entire Premiere Pro sequence and use animation presets or Automation Blocks (from AE Scripts) to polish an entire movie.

[Franz Tomandl]

Hi there!

I just tested the expression and it worked flawlessly! Thank you very much. I'm really amazed by the power of expressions. This might be the faster method so far, although if premiere fixes some things with the captions-to-graphics tool, that should be faster.

I might try MOGRT's some day. Honestly, I just have this workflow where I transcript the whole video, time and correct with captions, upgrade those to Motion Graphics so I can add animation and effects, then I have to nest every text layer separately (I use Excalibur plugin for the automation of that), and then I have a preset for the animation of the nested sequences.  I'd love to skip the nesting part, but it's necessary to apply the animation preset to this "upgraded" graphics text because it has some sort of time modification bug that doesn't allow keyframes to sit still when you have an scalable type of keyframes in your preset (if that's the correct way of put it). No matter how long the "upgraded" motion graphic is, the keyframes won't adapt and will extent way too much, that won't happen in any other layer, hence the nesting.

For the second request, I normally use an Automation Toolkit script that allows me to un-precompose the subtitles coming from Premiere in After and let's me animate them and sets them in their proper time instead of being a whole precompose chunk like usual. It was quite helpful when I worked in advertisement too! Graphic Designers tend to put EVERYTHING into folders when working in Photoshop and that translates into Pre-composition,

Here's an example of the type of videos I'm working on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RsLoiOBmIM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJoi-u-XdZM

I'm a huge fan of doing things as effcient as possible and I'm working my way into doing this kind of videos as fast as possible leaving the tedious parts for the tools and the creative part to me for making more fun & fresh stuff

[Mathias Moehl · Accepted solution]

I created the attached sample Automation Blocks tool for you. Before you can use it, you need to load your own custom keyframes into the script as described here:

The cool thing about this approach is that you can apply any kinds of keyframes with arbitrary easing etc. All you need is a sample layer, which contains the keyframes you want and then you load them into the script as described in the image.
Once this is done, you can use the script to apply the same keyframes to all selected layers and it will adjust to their in/out points automatically.

[Mathias Moehl]

And if you want to create keyframes on multipe properties at once (say animate both position and scale), you can simply duplicate the "add keyframes" blocks.

[Franz Tomandl]

Ooooh, man! This is amazing! 

Just tested it and it's quite very easy to modify and use. It's nice to know too that it can copy ease information and that the keyframes are save across projects.

It is quite a challenge to me sometimes to understand what does what and how to find it, but you make it look a lot easier with this kind of things.

You know what'd be good? A cheat sheet with graphics to have all block functionality. I know the program is quite more complex to make it THAT easy, but idk, maybe a cheat sheet per block category? just for basic things like this. It really saves a huge amount of time and I'm pretty sure I can save a lot more.

Thank you so much! 

I'll probably be bothering you more often lol

[Mathias Moehl]

Such screenshots as a cheat sheet are a pretty cool idea! I have to think a bit more about it. Maybe this is also a very intuitive way to document ways to customize the existing tools. Most of the build-in tools don't need customization and work out of the box with their UI. But if you start tweaking them exciting things can happen, too 🙂

[Mathias Moehl]

A cool thing about this approach is also that the keyframes.(with all their easing, timing etc) are saved as part of the script. So you can create a collection of tools to save your favorite keyframes. Like
- one tool for a basic scale in/out
- one tool for an overshooting scale in/out.
- one tool for an opacity fade in/out combined with a subtle rotation
... whatever you want.

[_nicdean]

@Franz Tomandl- chiming in a year later. I built an extension to make animating subtitles easier in Premiere Pro. You can build your own .mogrt in After Effects with any text animation, and then use it inside Premiere for your captions - Captioneer