Depends what you mean by "little by little".   If you want the area inside the mask to gradually appear starting in the middle, then just keyframe the mask's Expansion parameter, going from a negative number towards zero.   If you want the area inside the mask to appear in random pieces, then you can luminance mask your already-masked layer with a second layer that contains something like a fractal noise effect, and keyframe its brightness slider. ... View more

Catalina works with Acrobat DC, Acrobat 2017 and Acrobat 2015. Anything prior to that is off the table.   If you have a subscription then you should be using the latest Acrobat DC version, not Acrobat X (which hit end-of-support four years ago). ... View more

The question has no answer - the "best" codec depends entirely on what your output is being used for. What makes sense for Snapbookspace is totally different to what is required for broadcast or hand-off to an editor. Then add in the demands of resolution, color space, bit depth and audio that may or may not be supported by each codec... There's a reason why there are so many different file formats and encoding options! ... View more

Unless there are specific reasons not to, you should render though Media Encoder and use the built-in H.264 YouTube presets. ... View more

It's not how After Effects works, or is intended to work. The "work area" is purely to set the playback/render region, it has nothing to do with the composition itself.   You can trim the selected layer with scripting, so you could assign it to a button or keystroke. Something like this:   app.beginUndoGroup("Work Area Trim Layer"); var C = app.project.activeItem; var L = C.selectedLayers[0]; L.inPoint = C.workAreaStart; L.outPoint = C.workAreaStart + C.workAreaDuration; app.endUndoGroup(); ... View more

Nothing automatic, but there are some manually-triggered "punch clock" scripts such as https://aescripts.com/timespan/ ... View more

It was promised for the next "sprint", but yet again it's been dropped. ... View more

You can't "set up" After Effects or Media Encoder to do what you want, they were never designed for such an obscure workflow and so there is no access to the low-level operation of the output codecs. You still haven't explained why you want to do a bitwise swap inside the original file instead of just rendering out and using a brand new one. The only time I can recall seeing this done was someone trying to create fake evidence. ... View more

This isn't a question about frame editing at all - you've successfully filled in the bad data on your corrupted frame - but you are asking After Effects to then render out something which you can hex-edit back into the original DV data file. After Effects was never designed to do that, and I cannot see why you would possibly want to. Just render the whole sequence to a new file! ... View more

Sorry but respect has to be earned. Try thinking like a customer for once, who visits this place for the first time. It doesn't make sense! The sections aren't explained, there's no help on how the forums work. Many features are broken, or have to be used in a secret special way to make them do what you want, like the Big Blue Button. As an ACP you're privy to our discussions on those workarounds, but nobody else is. None of these issues should ever be allowed to make it to production in 2019 - it's not some accidental oversight when creating cutting-edge algorithms for Photoshop, it's basic HTML and CSS. There's a "For Dummies" book on it! ... View more

Adobe ID logins use the registered email address, not the forum username. Public visitors to this site cannot look up someone's email - unless they're daft enough to use it as their username too! ... View more

It's not, and that wouldn't work for accessibility. In all sensible forums the table of sub-topics on the "home page" includes a brief description, date of last post, etc. but Adobe have this fеtish for empty space, rather like the heads of their web programmers... ... View more

How about adding a sentence or two explaining what each forum is for! But we can't do complicated things like that anymore... ... View more

It just is how it is. Adobe don't claim that the RAM Preview is going to reach full speed, and the only reliable way to watch a composition in real-time is to render it to file. I agree it seems to have become worse in recent versions, and while a more powerful PC means it can struggle to full speed more often, but even on the best workstations there are times when it just refuses to cooperate. Your PC specs are fine, and as you said it worked in the past. It's usually not worth trying to figure out the reasons why AE does what it does - work as far as you can using the stuttery playback, and some imagination, then render it out and play from your desktop. ... View more

This community is for help with Adobe software and services only. For general problems with your operating system and hardware, contact the vendor. ... View more

Yes you can. ... View more

The (slightly handwaving) explanation:   All video encodes the pixel colors in each frame using channels, either red-green-blue (RGB) or luminance-chrominance (YUV). Those 3 channels only define the color, not the transparency; for that you need a fourth 'alpha' channel. Since it's impossible to record alpha with a video camera, nor display it on a TV, all the 'consumer' video formats like H.264 stick with 3 color channels to make the files smaller and the processing easier. Video codecs that have the 4th alpha channel are either designed for a very niche application (such as Quicktime Animation, an ancient format created for doing graphic overlays like the lower thirds on TV news) or they are designed as high-end "mezzanine" formats for post production (such as ProRes 4444, or EXR image sequences) that have massive data rates to preserve every ounce of quality. You have to choose either a rarely-suported codec, or a monumentally huge file.   But, since you can't play a transparent video to an audience, whatever you want this for it's eventually going to be composited over something else then encoded to a delivery format, like H.264. Now all the transparent pixels are full of background, there's no alpha channel any more. A huge file that never leaves your computer is no problem.   If you are sending the video to someone else for compositing (e.g. selling lower third animations to a TV station) then ask them what they want, and supply it. If that means posting hard drives instead of uploading a link, so be it. They're paying. ... View more

No. ... View more

What final effect are you trying to create? The API for Gradient Fill may be useless, but there are other ways to create a graduated color which could be more scriptable (adjustment layers with blurred masks/tints/glows, etc.) ... View more

Towerguy is correct, when you copy and paste a composition, you only ever make an instance of it. But whatever is inside the composition cannot be changed with Alt-drag, even if it was a truly unique copy. So you have two issues to deal with:   All the layers in your main composition are undoubtedly just instances of the same sub-comp, and to make them act independently you have to duplicate them and everything in them; The easiest way to do that is with a script, such as this free one: https://www.vdodna.com/blog/true-layer-duplicator-script-for-after-effects/ You are trying to Alt-drag an image into a layer, but that layer doesn't contain the image, it contains a composition. You will actually have to open each of those compositions, and Alt-drag the images into the correct layers within them. There are no one-click fixes for that! ... View more

Impossible. After Effects is not a real-time effects system, nor does Adobe make any such software. ... View more

Presumably you have set your RAM Preview option to "play around current time" ... View more