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Good evening everyone, I'm trying to use the plugin twixtor in after effects, but I don't get how anything works.
I'm a regular vegas pro user and just installed afetr effects for the first time. I've been looking at turorials and didn't understand a thing. It's like every tutorial assumes that you already how after effect works. Why the use of keyframe to create new frames in twixtor? Why isn't there a proper timeline like in vegas where you know actually see the pictures in the timeline itself, stuff like that...
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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There is really little point to even attempt an advanced workflow like retiming clips if you don't even have some basics down. Yes, you need keyframes to create variable speed setups, but you can of course just as well just slap on an effect with constant settings though the whole point of even using AE and Twixtor is lost. So with all respect, clear your mind of all your preconceptions and start by learning some fundamentals in AE. I know this all sounds rude and a-hole-ish, but there's really no way around that. AE is way too complex to intuitively understand such a thing and since it is based on old concepts and paradigms from 25 years ago it simply hasn't timeline thumbnails or any of the common conveniences of most editing tools. And I guess that's the point: As fellow forum-honcho @Rick Gerard likes to keep saying: AE is not an editing tool. That's the first thing you need to get out of your head. If you can provide a proper description of what you are trying to do, possibly bolstered by screenshots, we may be able to provide soem rough guidance, but reading the online help is seriously advised, regardless.
Mylenium
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Hy Mylenium!
I have a 29.97fps 1080p 5 minutes 51second source video that I'm trying to use to make a song clip in Vegas. But the source video is both not slow enough to fit the song's mood and not long enough ounce cut some unsuasable parts of said source video. Using slow motion in vegas does solve both these problems, but introduces a new one : ghosting and jerkyness whatever resample I use. So vegas isn't very good at creating new frames.
That's why I got after effects and twixtor. I also got after effects because I've heard it has morepluggins you can work with.
So the idea is just to use twixtor inside after effects to transform a 29.97fps 5 minute video into a 29.97fps smooth and slow10 minutes video, by adding some good frames.
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Fair enough. This sounds like a good starting point:
https://bluefx.net/tutorial/import-sony-vegas-projects-to-after-effects/
Then in AE you would pre-compose the imported "master" comp and in the resulting parent comp apply the Twixtor effect with what you deem suitable default settings for your project. Then you scrub through it step by step. Where you encounter issues you split the layer (Ctrl+Shift+D) and change the settings, making sure you have enough meat to disguise the cut. Safe for a few situations where even Twixtor may fail this should get you there 90% and look much better even with defaults without creating a single actual keyframe and only hard-setting values per segment. Depending on the situation the most important thing will be to make Twixtor analyze only in one direction, so play around with the forward/ backward settings and frame ranges on segments where ghosting appears.
Mylenium
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Do I need to import the whole vegas in after effects? There's only one mp4 file to process with after effects. I just want to double it lenght and get half speed. I have the video on the time line with the twixtor pluggin but I don't know how to use it I don't know what the settings mean. Also I don't see a "render" option in the after effects "file" menu.
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*the whole vegas project. (sorry I can't find the edit button on this forum).
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*its lenght.
*timeline
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I get it I need to know how to use the so-called "render queue". I have no idea what the setings in twixtor mean though.
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The speed setting is the key. I tried to render but it was creating a gigantic file that was going to take 2 hours to render. Very weird.
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You can employ whatever appraoch you want. Of course you can render out a clip from Vegas just as well. it just seemed to me the AAF method might avoid extra lengthy renders. The rest is not strictly related to AE. CoDecs and such would fall under the same rules in Vegas - chosing the default uncompressed options creates huge files even when you export from V. You need to study this in a broader context. Render times are also perfectly normal. Effects processing takes time and most advanced effects are slow due to their complex internal algorithms even if they use GPU acceleration such as Twixter. You simply need to get used to it. Very few things in AE are and will ever be realtime, though I would assume in such a scenario even V would become slow, no matter how snappy it is otherwise.
Mylenium
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Well I managed to do something else and overcomme the difficulty I had without after effect and twixtor. It's a pity Adobe doesn't make proper long explicit and univertsity-like courses on how to use their products. All I found was some quick youtubers' so called tutorials that last 5 minutes even sometimes 1 minute (no joke). It seems like a closed universe only accessible to initiated professionals (proud money makers).
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Thank you though Mylenium for introducing me a little bit to some principles of the software.