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EllieRThorpe
Participant
June 27, 2018
Question

Screen Roll - Slow down animation?

  • June 27, 2018
  • 4 replies
  • 4990 views

Hi,

I'm relatively new to AE and have been trying to search for some advice or tutorials but as of yet I can't find anything. So far I have the animation as I want it, however looking back I feel like it's too quick and you don't have time to read the text using the preset "screen roll" under mechanical.

Does anyone know how I can slow down the animation overall, or at least have the text stop for a second or two once it reaches the middle?

My files are below, both working space and the first parts of the animation.

Shake - Google Drive

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4 replies

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EllieRThorpeAuthor
Participant
July 2, 2018

Thanks for all the helpful answers, that's made it a lot clearer. I'll work on the suggestions you have put forward.

S
sillybomb
Inspiring
June 29, 2018

Agreed -

Something like the above will be much more effective than Screen Roll, ElleRThorpe.
Get the same thing you've got, avoid judder and you'll be able to control everything and add more items to the menu.

S
sillybomb
Inspiring
June 28, 2018

okay so I won't pretend to understand trigonometry or why using Math.tan helps to create that looping effect so I won't. I'll leave that to someone smarter. I suppose its kind of a physics type of easy way to add an easing effect to the item but again with screen roll I think its not the ideal effect for what you're trying to achieve especially because the workaround is kind of clunky that I'm going to suggest.

Honestly I don't know how complex your end goal will be, e.g. is going to be part of a consistently used template.

If you can tell me what you're going to be using it for I could probably suggest a better alternative than screen roll, maybe find an easier way for you to just drop in more names etc... but anyway lets just say for some reason it HAS to be screen roll..

then... the workaround I used was to leave everything as is but to just play with the frequency item.

frequency set to 0

  • first keyframe at 1 second - means the text will remain motionless until 1 second
  • then at 2 seconds keyframe set to 1.49 (text will do its roll out and return half way to the halfway point. I set it to 1.49 instead of 1.50 because its one increment before the halfway mark.
  • at 2seconds and 1 frame set it to 0 again. That means the position will reset but you won't notice it as 0 will look like its the next logical frame.
  • at 3 seconds another keyframe of 0 . that means for a whole second there will be no change to frequency. the text will be frozen for that whole second
  • at 4 seconds I set the frequency to 0.78 (don't ask me to explain why its pretty dense but it has to do with the time at that point and the tan equation being factored in to it. If anyone cared to long enough you could probably track it but lets just get this over with! )
  • at 4 seconds and 1 frame set it back to 0 and you're back to step 1. text motionless
  • make sure there are no keyframes after this and it will now have a pause on all 3 menu items of 1 second.

Again as far as I can tell this is definitely not the ideal way to do things.

Let me know what your end goal is for this and I will suggest an alternative.

off the bat if it just these 3 text items and a one time thing, it would have been faster just to use the position keyframes even and save all the hassle.

if you're making a template of this that you would use for multiple items you might use your own expressions to create a template using ease() , and maybe use index or the inPoint as beginning time references so its easy to duplicate and control forever. you could put settings in a null to control duration of the ease etc... how long it holds for so forth.

good luck

R
Community Expert
Rick GerardCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 28, 2018

There are certain speeds that will work for a credit roll or a crawl (horizontal movement/vertical movement). If you run at the wrong speed you WILL get judder. This happens because of the stroboscopic effect of shutter speed (frame rate) and movement. If you want nicely readable text you have to follow the rules. There is no way around it. Basically, you want to move exactly an even number of pixels per frame and the text must be properly lined up with the pixel grid if the font is thin or small.

The only way to adjust the timing and to maintain clean text is to adjust the leading between lines for horizontal movement (credit roll) or leading between characters or number of words for a crawl.

If you break the rules you can try to hide the problem with motion blur but the results will not be ideal. The speed depends on the frame rate of the delivered video. The lower the frame rate the pickier you have to be about speed.

Personally, I never use the Text animation preset for rolling or scrolling text because it is not tied to the frame rate. To tie to the frame rate you use an expression. Simply multiply the frame duration by a whole number and add that to the Y value. Change the whole number and change the speed of the roll (scroll).

Here's the expression that I use. It even allows you to add motion blur.

s = 4; // number of pixels per frame;

t = time/thisComp.frameDuration;

y = s * t;

[value[0], value[1] - y]

4 is a pretty readable number. If you want to make it easier tie Effect>Expression Crontrols>Slider with Math.Floor to the slider value to keep it whole numbers then save it as a custom animation preset.

I wrote a good description of how all this works in the After Effects FAQ section of this forum. Find it here: FAQ: Why does horizontal motion stutter (judder) in my movies, such as during pans?

R
Community Expert
Rick GerardCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 28, 2018

Good advice.

But how will OP achieve ease in / out and stop in the middle using this

though

Also text is very large and moving very quickly in and out should avoid

the jitteriness?


Speed up and slow down and stop is:

  1. Kind if difficult to pull off and make readable
  2. Easily done by pre-composing the credit roll and applying time remapping. As long as you grab all keyframes to the right of where you want to slow down and drag it's easy to keep things in sync.

If you really want to stop and read credits I suggest nonmoving or extremely slow moving credits and a transition between each.

Dave_LaRonde
Dave_LaRonde
Inspiring
June 27, 2018

If you can't extend the time for the roll, you can't slow it down.

You're going from Point A (the start of the roll) to Point B (then end) in a certain time.  It's basic arithmetic: Speed = Distance / Time.

Now, what you CAN do is shorten the distance if you can't change the time.  Tighten up the distance between the lines of text in the roll.

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EllieRThorpeAuthor
Participant
June 27, 2018

I'm using AE's preset effect for the scroll so it's not an easy edit like I would do with position and keyframing as it uses Adobe's own default settings.

I couldn't find where to adjust the effect to slow it down when the text reached the centre then speed back up again to the bottom of the composition. I think I've managed to do it using the slider and keyframes, but it's still not perfect (and I'm far from knowing what I'm fully doing - just playing around)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UR4I6EKU3212SxUatHOqasmMoYCCWNg9/view?usp=drivesdk

S
sillybomb
Inspiring
June 28, 2018

can you add your .ae file to the shared folder I'll dl and have a look for you. not sure whats being used but happy to help

AFAIK presets just set themselves up in the effects controls as a family/group/bunch/bouquet of other effects and settings

I tried to have a look for a scroll preset and I think perhaps you are using the autoscroll? which might explain why in your example file elephant stomp scrolls back around to the top after its done.

Unsure exactly what you want to create so can atm only suggest these things

If you have knowledge of position and keyframing and it suits your end goal I would abandon the scroll preset

If you are using autoscroll preset -- and if the scroll preset is somehow unavoidable - you just need to work on keyframing the "Autoscroll - vertical" element of the autoscroll preset under the Effect controls. By the looks of your animation you already have some keyframes in place by the speed changes. A speed of 0 will cause the text to stop at that point.

so you could have say keyframes like this:

At 0 seconds - Speed = 0

At 1 seconds - Speed = 0

At 2 seconds - Speed = 400;

After that thats where I think autoscroll falls apart b/c if you set autoscroll speed back to 0, the scroll will reverse rather than slow down as you would expect. Pretty sure its meant to be used for say tv screen scrolling images like an old broken tv-set style look and other things along that kind of usage

TLDNR - I dont think autoscroll is what you need at first glance

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