Turn on suggestions
Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type.
Exit
Dave Merchant
LEGEND
Dave Merchant
LEGEND
Activity
‎Jul 19, 2019
05:34 AM
DUPLICATE: LOCKED https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2639145
... View more
‎Jul 18, 2019
03:22 PM
1 Upvote
OBS cannot see screen regions that are hardware-accelerated. Under After Effects Preferences > Display, turn off Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer and Footage Panels
... View more
‎Jul 17, 2019
11:09 AM
2 Upvotes
You can use the 3D camera tracking tools to "select" the plane of the wall, and position an object upon it. For a projection you need to set the layer blend mode for the projected image so it's not just a solid rectangle - the physically correct choice would be "Add", but that only works properly in linear color, so most people live with "Screen" then dial back the opacity until it looks right. You should also blur the image a bit since projectors are never pin-sharp, and maybe add a subtle glow. If you want the light from the projected image to bounce back onto other things in the scene then it gets very complicated very quickly. For an into on how to track planar surfaces, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ToPGhr_muI
... View more
‎Jul 16, 2019
10:48 PM
sarapixels wrote if you do the math Anywhere you can type a number in AE, you can do math. For example if you're at frame 1234 and want to move ahead 567 frames, just type "+567" in the composition time box.
... View more
‎Jul 16, 2019
01:23 PM
You can switch the timeline into frame-count mode by CTRL-clicking the time panel on the top left of the layers panel. There is no way in AE to switch the timebar to "clip-based" mode, but you can use markers to align: Switch to frame-based time display, so the mini-timebar below the comp window shows frame numbers. Open the longer clip in the footage window (double-click the clip in the layers panel). The frame numbers you now see in the comp window are absolute clip-based values. Navigate to frame 600 and place a marker (using NUMPAD-* or Layer-Markers-Add marker. It will appear in the main timeline too. Do the same with the shorter clip, then slide it in the timeline to align the two marker symbols (you can zoom right in to see singe frames).
... View more
‎Jul 16, 2019
01:10 AM
3 Upvotes
If you are referring to https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2635516 then you have already made your opinion known. Moderators (who may or may not be an ACP, MVP or staff member) are tasked with enforcing the Terms of Use and Guidelines, and curating the content to best serve the goals of Customer Care. That means ensuring questions have a clear and relevant set of answers, and that content which is contrary to those goals is actioned. Irrelevant follow-up questions are branched so they will be easier for other visitors to find, and so they will prompt more answers. Threads which are duplicates or are descending into conflict are locked. Content in the wrong place is moved, and spam is deleted. That is all we do, but we deal with hundreds of action items every day. Moderators do not get points for doing their job, and do not have quotas. Every one undergoes training and their conduct is monitored by the forum management team. By joining the forum you agree to be subject to the TOU and Guidelines, as is everyone else - even staff. The forums serve to provide customers with help using Adobe software and services. That is all. We do not expect everyone to be happy, but we do expect them to be professional. By all means you can start threads about deficiencies in the software, missing features, bugs, etc. but not to rant about Adobe the corporation, or to attack specific people (whoever they are). If you don't like how the company is run, buy shares and vote for change. Apply for a job. Start your own business and go up against them. If you have a grievance about your experiences with Adobe, file a formal case with Customer Care through chat or phone support. These forums are not a conduit into the corporation; 99% of the people on here are just customers like you.
... View more
‎Jul 15, 2019
07:49 AM
I assume you meant to type "Aux.Channel".
... View more
‎Jul 15, 2019
04:47 AM
The forum does not allow attachment of generic files for obvious security reasons. To share a document with another user, upload it to a file-sharing service (Creative Cloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.) and send the link via a Private Message. We do not suggest posting the link as part of the public thread.
... View more
‎Jul 14, 2019
04:32 AM
1 Upvote
Just delete "White Solid 1".
... View more
‎Jul 13, 2019
12:59 AM
2 Upvotes
The unfortunate answer is there is no true equivalent, which is why RSMB remains popular long after AE included their "free" inbuilt Pixel Motion Blur effect. PMB has extremely basic features, all you can do is control the global shutter delay. It can look OK at first glance for general live action footage where objects move across frame without changing shape (e.g. traffic in locked off shot) but the details are usually not physically correct. The way colors mix when several things move past one another is not trivial to calculate. PMB doesn't understand the difference between a foreground and background object, it just sees blocks of pixel colors changing and interpolates between them. Under the hood, PMB is based on the old Timewarp effect. RSMB will look equally suspicious if applied as a simply click-and-hope effect, but it exposes a bunch of tools to fix the problems. You can fine-tune the blur direction for objects in the scene with masks, motion splines and track points, and for CG footage you can feed it 3D motion data from a velocity render pass. It takes time to teach it what's going on in the scene, but the results can be extremely accurate. For SnapTuBook "I just want to make my drone footage blurry" clips the internal PMB effect is probably good enough, but to be blunt there's a reason it's free...
... View more
‎Jul 10, 2019
05:37 AM
gazd wrote Thank you https://forums.adobe.com/people/Dave+Merchant Can't you can create your own digital ID for free though? Yes, but Acrobat/Reader will show a big error banner for anyone who hasn't manually installed that self-signed certificate, and you're talking about a form that is "made available to the general public" so the last thing you want is a warning message saying the file "has problems". Self-signed = scammer. That is why the vendors on the Adobe Approved Trust List (AATL) can charge a lot for the certificate. It's legal proof of the signer's identity that can't be faked.
... View more
‎Jul 10, 2019
01:11 AM
You're talking about a certifying signature, which is part of the Security tools in Acrobat, not part of the fill & sign system. It protects the document, allowing only specific types of change - but to do it you need a digital ID, and if it's a document going out to the public then that ID should be recognized by Adobe's Trust List - which means buying a hardware-backed certificate from one of the official suppliers. It's not cheap. See https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/certificate-based-signatures.html
... View more
‎Jul 07, 2019
03:25 AM
1 Upvote
Basically all variations on the halftone effect, which simulates the way photographs are printed in newspapers. You can do it manually, and there are several paid plugins (search 'halftone' on aescripts.com) which speed up the process if you're doing it often.
... View more
‎Jul 04, 2019
06:48 AM
1 Upvote
New users are forbidden from advertising third party products and services, no matter who they are. TOU 5.2L is perfectly clear about that, and does not restrict the concept of "promotion" to posting hyperlinks. Someone saying in plaintext "You should use SuperTools from XYZ, it's much better than Photoshop" or embedding a promotional image is treated the same. The team of staff and moderators read most threads within minutes, and users report any content that slips through the net. We review hundreds of items every day. Even users with good standing will have their content removed if they promote something against the rules. Any post with a well-formatted off-site hyperlink is intercepted by the content filter and held for review. Deliberately mis-typing a URL with extra spaces so it is readable by a human but not detected by the content filter, something only ever done intentionally to trick the algorithm, is obfuscation and is prohibited. As to our language filter, the decision to allow obfuscation depends on context. There are cases where a banned word exists legitimately in other languages, or has several meanings. Since the language filter is real-time and for obvious reasons Adobe will never publish the word list, we consider posts on a case-by-case basis. All moderation decisions are final. End of discussion; back to the original topic.
... View more
‎Jul 03, 2019
09:54 AM
ls_rbls wrote I posted something back and the content was moderated and deleted. These forums are part of Adobe Customer Care. Promotion of third party products is forbidden except as defined by the Terms of Use. As a brand-new user you do not qualify to post ads, and attempts to bypass the moderation system by obfuscating web addresses will get you banned.
... View more
‎Jul 03, 2019
06:35 AM
1 Upvote
Both those layers are clips containing a composition, and they both use the same one. By default whenever you duplicate a layer with a composition, it creates an instance of the contents rather than a true copy. To break the link: Find your "CP1" composition in the Project panel, and duplicate it (Ctrl-D). Back in the comp with the two layers, select the "cp2" layer by clicking it once. While holding down ALT, drag the duplicate composition from the project panel and drop it over that layer. The layer contents will be replaced with the duplicate, preserving any effects or cuts, and can now be edited independently. If you have multiple layers of comps-within-comps, splitting them all apart can be cumbersome. There are some third-party scripts that can do it for you, but for this single-layer situation it's just a couple of clicks.
... View more
‎Jul 03, 2019
02:06 AM
I assume you are aware that it is illegal to use CC 2014. All licenses were revoked in May. Users running versions before CC2018 can be sued for trademark infringement, so not the best plan to advertise it with screenshots. Upgrade to CC2019, export your MXFs through Media Encoder, and none of this "millions vs trillions" stuff matters.
... View more
‎Jul 02, 2019
04:03 AM
You must be using a legacy version of After Effects - MXF rendering is now done in Media Encoder, where the bit depth is handled behind the scenes. All you get is the "render at maximum depth" box, which you should tick if the project depth is less than the output file can support. Unticked the headless link to AE uses whatever the project depth was, ticked it temporarily toggles to 32bpc. Normally when you select an output codec in AE's render queue settings window, the "Depth" menu is automatically restricted to the correct value(s). Obviously I can't test with MXF anymore, but for AVI and image sequences it works properly - e.g. selecting an 8-bit AVI codec only allows "Millions", selecting EXR only allows "Floating Point", etc. Nothing in any of the menus or codec information tools will say if the data inside a 10-bit codec has been limited to only 256 possible values, you have to inspect the frames. So if you want to verify the differences in your setup, create a solid layer with a gentle gradient ramp (mid-gray to slightly-lighter-mid-gray), and export it through to MXF in various combinations of bit depth. Bring them back into the project and switch the project depth to 32bpc, so the gradient ramp is calculated in floating point, whack an extreme contrast boosting adjustment layer on top and compare the posterization, or lack thereof. You will certainly be able to see a stark difference between the original gradient ramp and the re-imported files, but probably not much between the 8 and 10 bit flavors. There will be more variation in color than in brightness, thanks to the RGB<>YUV transforms.
... View more
‎Jul 01, 2019
06:52 AM
1 Upvote
Acrobat is intentionally not optimized to handle proper "bulk file" operations, as it would be competing against Adobe's LiveCycle enterprise software (now part of Experience Manager).
... View more
‎Jul 01, 2019
06:40 AM
michalb21118868 wrote Hi, I have the same exact issue of after effects freezing and crashing for small moments with 32gb of ram while previewing footage. I was working 2560x1080 60fps and I have alicated 26gb of ram to ae and yes I am read and writing cache to a ssd. You are leaving 6gb for "everything else" - the operating system with all its background processes, anti-virus, the Creative Cloud app, etc. - for Windows 10 that's often not enough. First thing to do if a system is struggling is to watch the memory profile (e.g. in the Process Explorer app) and see how many pages are being swapped out. After Effects will stall if the underlying operating system stalls. Try reducing the allocation to AE - the previews will get shorter, but they might actually play faster. The marketing shill around RAM Preview says it's just click-and-play, but actually it's often not. AE just assumes there will be an infinite amount of RAM. The "disks are too slow" mantra is an outdated concept but Adobe is sticking with it. To preview a decent length of HD+ footage at full res might consume 64gb+, but there's no "Disk Preview" option even if you have a tower full of blazing fast SSDs. To escape the RAM bottleneck you have to render the composition to file and play it back externally. Even when 'cached', a lot of compositions will not play back at full speed. Audio is often a problem, but I've seen countless silent comps that tick along at <20fps even on a top-end workstation. There's no logic to what will cause a preview not to work, only Adobe know the elements which are/are not recomputed for playback and they aren't talking.
... View more
‎Jun 30, 2019
10:09 PM
1 Upvote
The color depth for the project decides the accuracy of calculations when all the layers and effects are combined together. Even if your source footage is all in 8 bits per channel, adding something like the Glow effect can generate pixels which are in between the 256 allowed color values, so you gain smoothness by changing the project to 16pbc or 32bpc, at the expense of slower processing and much more RAM. The "Depth" menu under Video Output uses the old fashioned way of describing bit depth. It multiplies the number of possible values for R, G and B, and shows "+" if it also includes an alpha channel. For 8bpc data (0-255) we get 256*256*256 = 16,777,216 = "millions" of colors. 16bpc = "trillions" (32768 values per channel) 32bpc = "floating point" (in 32bpc we use decimals to represent each channel) "256 colors" is a special case where only one 8-bit channel is exported We stopped using this descriptor years ago because it falls apart when you have extra channels (e.g. in EXR). After Effects never bothered to change the menu. However this is only the bit depth of the data that After Effects sends to the encoder library. The bit depth of the exported file also depends on what the particular codec can support. If you send 16bpc "trillions" to a codec that only stores 10-bit numbers, then your file will only be 10pbc. If you send 8pbc "millions" to a codec that always stores data in 16-bit, then the file will contain 16-bit numbers but they will be limited to only 256 possible values. Also if your project is in 8pbc, changing the Video Output menu to Floating Point doesn't magically increase the quality.
... View more
‎Jun 26, 2019
07:08 AM
And this is pertinent to you how exactly?
... View more
‎Jun 25, 2019
05:10 PM
denisr70421873 wrote RAM 16,0 GB There's your problem.
... View more
‎Jun 25, 2019
08:56 AM
After Effects will hoover up all the available RAM for the frame cache and during rendering, even if you have many hundreds of gigabytes. You need to adjust the memory allocation settings in After Effects Preferences to give your OS room to breathe. Windows 10 x64 can require 5gb just to tick over, it depends how much background stuff is running. If you're near the limit and then something like Windows Update kicks into action, everything dies. Trying to do anything in After Effects with less than 32gb of system RAM is just asking for trouble. As soon as you start working heavily with 4K footage, 16-bit color and Cinema4D objects then you should be looking at 128gb and above ("above" means a Xeon processor). Consumer software it ain't.
... View more
‎Jun 25, 2019
04:00 AM
1 Upvote
Unfortunately not. Updates have free rein to do anything they want to their own installation folders, and automatic saves in After Effects are (1) not enabled by default, and (2) normally in a subfolder next to the project file, so equally vulnerable. If you had enabled auto-save and changed the location to somewhere permanent, then you'd be able to recover from there. The only case where user-modified stuff is (or should be!) preserved is when upgrading between CC versions (e.g. CC2018 to CC2019) because they use separate folder names. Every sub-version with the same year code overwrites the same locations, there's no warning about user-generated stuff being eaten along the way. It would be nice if AE threw a warning if your project folder is within the installation tree, but it doesn't.
... View more
‎Jun 24, 2019
01:35 AM
3 Upvotes
https://forums.adobe.com/people/Rick+Gerard wrote Any color picker in AE can pick a color in the color swatches library. There is nothing to it. And any fool can run for public office. Doesn't prove they can do the job. Maybe you should read one of these: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2588885 https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2599346 Let me say this again, slowly, for the people at the back who just walked in. The swatch previews in CC Libraries are just that. Previews. Not color accurate, not intended to be. The After Effects user interface (outside of the video frame) is not color managed, not intended to be. IF you happen to have a swatch in sRGB/8 where the preview just luckily has a matching pixel value, and you are in an RGB/8 project, and you have linearize colors set properly, then the picker will give the "correct" result - in every other case it will not. Right-click on a CC Libraries color swatch. See the tools menu? No? That's because IT IS DISABLED. Worrying about whether blue is #000090 or #000091 in video is utterly stupid. Unless you're calling round to every audience member's house, one at a time, carrying an RGB master file and a calibrated IPS reference monitor, they will never see the colors you are "using". Go film a Macbeth chart, and try to make a video that displays the chips accurate to 0.5% on a TV, a cellphone and an IMAX theater screen. I dare you. The only "bug" in all of this is that the shared code which draws the CC Libraries panel cannot simply hide assets that are not supported by the parent application. Welcome to agile design.
... View more
‎Jun 23, 2019
03:41 PM
2 Upvotes
As I explained in great detail in a previous thread, CC Libraries is not designed to be used with an eyedropper. Period. After Effects does not color manage the user interface. CC Libraries does not create color-accurate swatch preview chips. In a very trivial case where everything is sRGB/8 you might get the right value - but it's simply not intended to be done. The only way to use an asset in a CC LIbrary is via the right-click menu or by dragging it into a receiver window. After Effects disables both those options for color swatches, and does so intentionally. Other apps like InDesign have always had "swatches" panels because they can have very complex colors that must be accurately preserved, with RGB/CMYK/SPOT all mixed up together. CC Libraries can store those swatches, for those apps. After Effects talks in RGB. Nothing else. Even if you type in every RGB value by hand the colors will change at render time, and change again when the video is played back. We only care if things look right. In video, anyone who says "ZOMG we absolutely must use the corporate Pantone mauve on SnapTube!" should be made to lick the Tangent balls clean.
... View more
‎Jun 23, 2019
07:37 AM
2 Upvotes
davechapfilms is correct that the color swatches in CC Libraries don't work in After Effects, but it's not "something wrong". They were never intended to work. CC Libraries swatches are only designed for the print/photo apps (InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator) but unfortunately they cannot be turned off in the video apps, because the code that draws the CC Libraries panel is shared across all of Creative Cloud. Basically, if you can create a Libraries asset in an application, then you can use it. After Effects only allows creation of footage clips. Everything else is off limits.
... View more
‎Jun 20, 2019
03:31 AM
Keying with multiple layers has always been the solution for footage which is beyond the limited abilities of the keying software. It harks back to the very origins of matte keying, where physical film was masked with a specially processed copy. Splitting the processing into layers can get better results, but if the footage is awful then it's hardly ever going to come out perfect unless you spend weeks rotoscoping every frame. 99% of keying is about capturing the best footage, on the best camera, with the best lighting; and 1% is about complaining when the footage is awful. There's no "recommended" keyer for every situation; which works best depends entirely on the footage, and some of the best are only available in one product. While Keylight is technically a third party tool, the suite of key and spill effects bundled with AE is only available in AE, and things like the new Delta keyer are only available in Fusion. Independent products like Primatte will work in most editors, though being more expensive doesn't make something better. Since most have a free trial, the most sensible thing to do is take advantage of that and see for yourself which you prefer.
... View more
‎Jun 20, 2019
03:02 AM
OK, first thing - unless your data contains complex objects, forget JSON. After Effects can read CSV or TSV files just fine, and more efficiently since there's less packing. Remember the data file is read continually just in case a value has updated, that's the point behind the "dynamic" data feature. Let's suppose you have a CSV file that begins something like this... Speed,Battery,Gear 80,99.6,D 82,99.5,D 81,99.4,D etc. In scripting, row and column counts begin at zero, so the "data " for speed starts at [0,1] - ignoring the column header - and continues [0,2] ... [0,3].... etc. It's important to have the header row as we'll see shortly. Second thing - don't put your data into the composition as a layer. You simply read it from the project panel directly. So, import the CSV file - let's say it's called "data.csv" - and create a text layer in your composition. Twirl down to "Source Text" and alt-click the stopwatch to create an expression. Assuming your composition is running at 50fps and the data is 50 samples/sec, all you need to get is the data point for the frame number (since frame numbers begin at 1, that header row in the file is automatically ignored). You get the frame number using timeToFrames(), and you get a CSV cell using dataValue()... so for "speed" write this in the expression: t = timeToFrames(); footage("data.csv").dataValue( [0,t] ) For "gear" just change the column number t = timeToFrames(); footage("data.csv").dataValue( [2,t] ) If the composition frame rate doesn't match the sample rate, insert a line that does some math with "t" before using it. If your composition is NTSC 29.97 and your sample rate is 50Hz, that math will hurt. Blame the NTSC. Notes: Rather that writing footage("data.csv") every time you can pickwhip the data file directly from the project panel while the expression editor is open. You must have enough data - if AE reads beyond the end of a file, it'll throw an error. To "pause" on the last entry, you can use a simple restriction on the value of t, such as if (t>1000) t = 1000;
... View more
Copyright © 2025 Adobe. All rights reserved.
AdChoices