freeze frame not working

[Michal S.]

I expected it to freeze the frame on the layer wherever the playhead is, so I can pull (extend) the footage further in time and only the last (freezed) frame will be visible. - that's how it works in Premiere at least.

In after effects, it didn't seem to do anything ? Just showed time remapping is active on that layer, but I couldn't achieve the effect I was going for.

Any tips on how to get the above mentioned done ?

More specifically, I have a background layer (video of a street), the second layer of a masked out guy, without background (so the street layer is visible). As 3rd layer I have his hair masked using the roto brush and refine edges. Since he's not moving, I wanted to freeze the processed hair layer (few frames) and stretch it over the whole sequence.. so the robo brush doesn't have to process the whole length of the video.

But no matter what I do with the freeze frame, everytime I extend the hair layer further, to the point where the roto brush has not been applied, the original (unmasked) video appears.

[Mylenium]

AE creates keyframes to freeze a layer and after that you cannot just arbitrarily extend the layer. You still have to honor the standard time-remapping behavior. I would suggest you simply read up on this stuff, such as pre-composing or pre-rendering your rotoed stuff and then generating a freeze frame or re-importing a still generated from the original sequence.

Mylenium

[Michal S.]

yea, but I just need to freeze that one frame.. and then use it throughout the whole sequence.. just like a static image.

This is what freeze frame does in Premiere.. I thought it would be the same in AE.

Rotoscoping the whole clip if I don't actually need the movement seems like a huge waste of resources and time..

not to say, I've tried it and it keeps crashing my system.. that's why I am desperately looking for alternatives, as I need to get the project done by today.

[Roland Kahlenberg]

PreComp the hair layer before you Freeze Frame. Take that there are two types of freeze frames in AE - (1) Freeze Frame, which holds on the current frame and (2) freeze on last frame, which holds on the last frame.

[Rick Gerard]

Freeze frame only works on a Movie. If you have an animated layer you can turn that into a movie by pre-composing. Then you can add freeze frame anywhere. if the frame is at or near the end of the layer you can extend the out point by simply dragging or by using the keyboard shortcut Alt/Option + ] to move the new out point to the CTI.

All of this info is clearly explained in the help files. If Freeze Frame or Time Remapping does not work for you then you are not using the right workflow. There are no reported bugs with the current builds of any of the versions of AE available through Creative Cloud.

[Michal S.]

okey, now I get it..

But I am still confused about the roto brush workflow..

I've let it render and had almost the whole sequence processed (see the green marker on the screenshot), then I clicked on freeze and the green bar (processed frames) disappeared and it only freezed the first 10 frames or so...

[Rick Gerard]

Freeze in rotobrush does not freeze the frame, it locks the rotobrush so frames are no longer analyzed and the matte not going to change. You have to Freeze before you do other compositing and you need to make sure the entire range you want to freeze is selected.

[Roland Kahlenberg]

Clicking on Freeze will render the duration (in-to-out_ of the RotoBrush Span. Did this not happen?

[Michal S.]

yea, exactly what I thought it will to..

the in-to-out is the gray area, right ? (displayed on my previous screenshot)

It rendered just the first few frames..

[Roland Kahlenberg]

There are lots of grey areas in the UI!

When you click on the Freeze button you should see a render progress bar, in green. This bar tells you the actual frames that will be rendered. It's really as simple as that. Are you getting different frames being rendered?

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Michael S,

Did you complete the project? Let us know how you did it or if you still need help.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Michal S.]

Hi Kevin,

yes I did. Thanks.

All good.