I think you have me confused with the OP. I'm not the one teaching. Though I also want to know how to do lengthy (maybe hundreds of words) kinetic typography videos in the shortest amount of time (no more than a few mins if possible). Can After Effects scripts do anything to semi-automate the process (eg. take a long pre-written text and put sections at a time into the text animation presets)? edit: Though the After Effecs help says that the text anim presets were created in a "NTSC DV 720x480 composition" - so,. like it mentions they may not work well for bigger projects (full HD) and the presets (according to the help) when used for bigger projects may not enter from fully off the screen or fully exit because of the res difference. ... View more

Kudos for knowing what the technique is actually called.  AE is perfect for this type of thing. It's basic key frame animation of text over a video. But for Kinetic Typography videos in general surely there must be quicker ways to do it than having to manually place and keyframe the text. There are text presets in AE (though they're built based on low res text I think) and it would still be time consuming doing a lot of text with those. I have another program that does this (kinetic typography videos in general, not exactly like the example) where you select templates to place the text in but that can still be time consuming to make it look right. Isn't there a way to create great looking kinetic typography videos (in general) with text (2D or 3D) moving in lots of different ways that people would want from these types of videos, but which would take hardly any time to do (such as only required only minor editing of the whole text such as which bits of text should be on the same line or a particular colour or whatever)? eg. can anything/any method create a great looking kinetic typeography video  (maybe hundreds of words, lots of different 3D movements in/out of the frame) in just a few minutes? ... View more

Thanks. I used option 1 (1st paragraph) and that worked well enough (at least the person I created it for was happy with it - I wasn't sure the end result was totally accurate but it was probably at least partly due to the source graphic - the way/shape it was drawn etc. but it seemed good enough when spun at high speed with motion blur). So the 1st paragraph is the correct solution (or one of them) for oval shaped graphics like I described I think. Thanks for your help. ... View more

If you want the picture to start off small and then get larger the 2 options are: 1) You could keyframe the scale property with the village picture in a 2D layer (though that would probably be hard to get it to move towards the camera (get bigger in the frame) at the correct speed). 2) A better way would probably be to put the picture on a layer and make the layer 3D and create a camera layer and move the camera layer towards it. That should make it moving towards the camera at the correct speed easier I think. It might be hard to make it look realistic though. You'd have to rotoscope the person on the bike though unless it was shot with a green-screen type background. An easier shot would be non-moving camera shot of the bike going into the distance and add an image of the village in the distance (sort of like a digital mattte painting) to the shot (not getting bigger in the frame) and probably create a mask to place and blend the 2 things in the frame. ... View more

Maybe draw a mask path on a still image of the map using the pen tool and use the stoke effect to show it so it moves along the mask path? You could also move the image (or pre-composition of a section of the image) as well as doing the above or (move the virtual 3D camera if the layers are set as 3D?). ... View more

Thanks. I'll try the 1st option of duplicating the layers etc. I'm working with 1 pre-done graphic image (in vector .pdf format). The squiggly lines are actually decorated, curved arrows (only 4, but taking up nearly all the green area) in the actual graphic image (.pdf). ... View more

Here's a rough idea of the shapes involved (it's not the actual graphic but I don't think I can show that). Basically it (the actual graphic) is 1 vector image (vector .pdf), with graphics (like in the green area above, but obviously better graphics), the graphics in the green area need to rotate around the rest of the image. But the green area still needs to look like an upright oval green area and the central area needs to still look like an upright oval. (note: the actual graphic is less narrow but still not circular and the example graphic illustrates the issue more). Like I said, I masked off the outer area (like the green area of the example graphic above with the illustrations that are part of the green area) so it can be rotated (ie. the graphics within the green area rotate around the central portion), but using the normal rotate option will cut into the central part and it won't keep the upright oval shape of the graphic. ... View more

You could keyframe the dot (eg. a circle graphic) moving over the words/parts of words. ... View more

Thanks for the replies everyone. Is there any reason why rendering in the webm format (VP8 or VP9 codec) from Media Encoder doesn't export the transparency? Unlike some of the other codecs that render the transparency properly and show a chequerboard pattern in a video player (and make it transparent in Premiere), rendering with WebM (VP8/VP9) renders a mostly grey background (with the top of the frame showing a bit of green - which shows transparent in other codecs), even though I said "Include Alpha Channel" in the settings screen in AME. Is there a reason why (note: this is including when I set the quality to 72 for VP8)? Is this a bug in AME? ... View more

Thanks. I'll stick to QuickTime & Jpeg2000 for now as that was the best codec for it I could find so far. I can't use a thumb drive for it - it needs to be sent online. Thanks. ... View more

To me hours of rendering for a 7 min video even with green screen does sound a lot though. I'm sure mine takes much less, though I've recently have better success with the Colour Range keyer and Spill Suppression effect instead of using Keylight and that (colour range+spill suppression) goes reasonably fast on my machine (minutes for a few mins of footage - though the most recent one wasn't full 1080p and was only 23.976 fps - though i still don't think it would be hours on my PC with 1080p30 unless there were lots of other effects etc. in the video). edit: I've just done a test at 1920x1080p29.97 of a 35 sec 25 frame vid with Colour Range keyer and Advanced Spill Suppressor, VBR2 pass, 16 Mbps (for target and max) and that took 2 mins 18 secs to render. ... View more

Speaking of high frame rates, have you seen that TV show with the two guys who shoot with a camera that does something like 10,000 fps?  It's stuff exploding and shattering.  I can't remember the name of it.  Humming birds and bees can be fun to shoot at 240. If you mean Mythbusters I've seen quite a few of those where they sometimes would shoot with very high fps, but if it's not I don't think I've seen that show (maybe it's not available in the UK). Though I've seen other TV shows with very high fps and on youtube (obviously normally slowed down. I've not seen anything natively shot at >120 fps playing back >120 fps). re: Frame rates, I still think that Media Encoder is making their own limitations for what frame rates are available for what codecs when a lot of the time they shouldn't. Even though some devices or websites may be limited to some (but they could and do have specific presets for certain devices eg. Blu-ray), for where it isn't limited by a particular device, Adobe shouldn't add limits where they are unnecessary (they can always highlight the most common frame rates in the list but still allow any supported by the codec (and any level within the codec)). ... View more

Thanks. I was wrong about the max frame rate for After Effects (ie. it being now 999 fps not 120 fps, at least in CC 2017 - I assume it's the same in CC 2018). I looked at the max in the list box which was 120 fps. Though there are still consumer(ish) cameras that allow frame rates of 1000 fps etc. I'm looking at the H264 specs (on itu.int) and I only see maximum frame rates depending on various luma widths and heights and H264 levels (eg. for 4Kx2K at level 5.1, max fps is 30.0 fps. (I thought it was higher but maybe that's H265). But for H264, according to that document the frame rate seems to be represented by "time_scale" (eg. 30,000) and "num_units_in_tick" (eg. 1001), eg.  30,000/1001=approx 29.9700299... fps. So it seems you can set those two variables (time_scale and num_units_in_tick) to any reasonable number to represent any frame rate up to the maximum frame rate depending on the H264 level and width & height in luma samples. eg. if it's progressive I don't see why any reasonable frame rate can't be used. ie. there's nothing limiting it to the specific ones chosen in Adobe Media Encoder - if it can be represented by those two integer variables (and within certain limits, depending on the H264 level etc.) it should be okay. ... View more

Thanks for your reply, though I'm on a PC so I can't use some of your suggestions. As mentioned it's a clients video/videos that I'm working from. He wanted green screen replacement done on one of 3 the videos he had encoded and wanted me to pick one of them to do. These are the specs of the original files (before I did green screen replacement) according to Media Info: Writing Library: Apple Quicktime Res: 1080x720 (3:2) 1 video at 16.997 fps, 1 video at 16.991 fps, 1 video at 20.000 fps. I don't know why they're the odd resolution and frame rates. I suppose I could have asked the client but I wasn't sure whether I should. The client liked the video produced but he's not the end client and the end client could want changes. They also never specified where they wanted them played but I assume internet, but at least 23.976 fps will give more options to play it in more places (maybe some sites only accept certain frame rates up to their max eg. up to 60 fps?). edit: In another view in MediaInfo (Text View), two of the client's videos say "variable frame rate" and one says "constant". And it says "Original Frame Rate: 25 fps". So I'm a bit confused about what happened there. Maybe they were shot at 25 fps but then the client (or his client) encoded them into odd frame rates/variable frame rates. But really Adobe Media Encoder (and AE) should allow practically any frame rate because there can be reasons why they are needed, even if they're not the final frame rate for the delivered project. There's no reason why H264 has so few. H265 (HEVC) has more but still not ones that matched the source videos the client sent (eg. 20.0 fps etc.). Also, HEVC in Media Encoder allows up to 300 fps but After Effects only allows comps up to 120 fps. There could also be reasons why you want very low frame rates like 5 fps (eg. if you're trying to remove judder caused by dropped frames in a low fps video by interpolating them or maybe for a slide-show etc.). The codecs themselves only care that the data rate stays within the allowed range and for frame rate that it is 1 number (integer) divided by another (as far as I know) eg. 24000 & 1001 for 23.976 fps? So I think i'ts just 2 numbers so the user should be able to enter them if they're not in the list currently. It should also give you an option to encode to a particular frame that you don't want stored in the list (eg. because it would be so rarely used) - ie. to just type in a frame rate instead of it only allowing you to select from a limited list. ... View more

Hello. Thanks for your reply - it's made me figure out what the issue was. I just tried setting it to a lossless codec (.PNG) in Adobe Media Encoder (CC 2017) and also keeping the alpha channel and in the preview in AME it still looked blocky.  When rendered to the PNG+alpha and then one of the frames loaded into Photoshop Elements it seems the colour difference and blockyness is because of the transparency. In the Adobe After Effects composition settings I had set the composition background colour to a shade of yellow. So what was apparently happening was the bits of that colour were showing through (or partially) in the After Effects preview, but when I changed the composition background colour to black (RGB 0,0,0), the look of it looked the same as in Media Encoder and the blockiness was the same as in Media Encoder (ie. it looked more blocky than with the shade of yellow as the background). So basically while the yellowish composition background colour had been visibility affecting the image, it must be that because it was a more similar colour to the pixels in the video being keyed (than black) it disguised the blockiness more (less visible blockiness). When I used the older version of After Effects I was used to rendering from within After Effects most of the time rather than using Media Encoder to render and rendering from After Effects used to render the composition background colour within the rendered video file - without you needing to add a new solid or something to make the background a different colour (so with the old way at least the rendering would have looked about the same as within AE), whereas with Media Encoder (at least the current one) it doesn't keep the composition background colour you specify in AE. So at least now I know what it was for in future, so thanks a lot for that (for the particular project like mentioned above I had replaced it with the colour range keyer (and also used advanced spill suppressor) so the final project in the end wasn't affected by this issue I was having with the Keylight effect (and with AE previewing to a different background colour than AME). ... View more

If you danced in a bigger location it would be a lot easier since you could have 3 of you in the frame with less overlap, so less keyframing of masks. You could also dance 3 times in front of a green screen and replace the the green screen (keeping shadows would be harder with that. Though you could add digital shadows). My guess is maybe something using differencing (Keying->Difference Matte and making the frame with no one in it (just the background) the length of the comp). If the camera is stationary maybe you can separate yourself from the background by taking the difference between the video and the frame without anyone in it. Perhaps using the difference matte in some way you can do that (or similar procedure in some other program eg. for each pixel, if the absolute difference between empty frame (no one in it) and current frame's pixels rgb value > some threshold, make it (the video pixel with the person in it) not transparent, otherwise transparent. And/or the more different it is, the less transparent it (the pixel from the video with the person in it) is). Check tutorials of Difference Matte with After Effects on YouTube - I think that is likely what can do it. ... View more

That's why in the video above where they are explaining how they get their green screen backgrounds the person mostly keeps their hands out of the frame to avoid the problem. So just keep your hands out of the frame. I suppose it might be possible with green gloves but I think it would still be a problem. Rotoscoping around the hand if it was visible would likely be a lot of work and you'd likely obscure parts of the puppet. That's why I said using sticks (eg. green sticks)/wires (and I meant inflexible wires) - for any time the full puppet is in frame (any time you can't otherwise hold the puppet). You might need to use various techniques to remove any visible wire/stick if it shows (maybe CC simple wire removal/eraser/painting out/rotoscoping). I think you can see one of the wires around 3:07 above one of the heads in the original video. ... View more

Update: I've had a go at using Mocha to track the (A4?) paper but that goes all wrong when the bottom of the paper goes out of the frame. I'll try to find a tutorial on it/read more about it etc. ... View more

Thanks. I'm trying it with Mocha now. I've never really used that before. I did have a go at tracking the camera in 3D with After Effects but couldn't figure out how to get it to position my composition of a piece of paper/text over the paper in the video (basically I couldn't do it with using AE & 3D camera when I tried - I might watch some tutorials on that). Thanks a lot. ... View more

Probably videoing them in front of a green screen, recording them in real time and moving them using sticks/wires etc. ... View more

Note: I've replaced the Keylight effect with the Color Range effect and now the rendered/previewed output from Adobe Media Encoder looks okay (looks approx the same as the RAM preview from After Effects, without all the added blockiness). So that's solved it for this video but not the issue itself, ie. it should still be able to work correctly with the Keylight keyer too. ... View more

H264 is a codec and will compress your video. What are you using the final video for? What will it be shown on? It may be that H264 is not the best codec to use for your purpose? Also, what file type is the source video? Is it a Quicktime Movie? Also, though I'm compressing it to H264 even when I set the bitrate high (20 Mbps) it still renders a blocky video with different colours to the original. I'm replacing a "green screen" in the video with a made up screen (basically a made up mobile phone app - which is a composition (pre-comp), and I've tracked the "green screen" in the source video and perspective-corner pinned my pre-composition onto the "green screen" in the video.). Note: the person who sent me the source video with the "green screen" in it hasn't specified what it will be used on, but I assume it will be shown on the web. Also, H264 is the codec I normally use for videos I do for people. The extension is .mp4 but it has "mov" just before the extension as the file name. This is what MediaInfo says about the source file I'm using to key: General Format : MPEG-4 Format profile : Base Media Codec ID : isom (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41) Overall bit rate mode : Variable Overall bit rate : 4 959 kb/s Movie name <file name here>.mov Performer : MacX Video Converter Pro Genre : Video Writing application : Lavf56.40.101 So the above "movie name" ends with ".mov" but the file name on the disc ends with the extension ".mp4". Note: I'm using Windows 10 and I'm using a source video someone sent me to key/composite. These are the colour settings this project is currently using (8 bit colour): I don't need to alter that "Match Legacy" checkbox do I? But shouldn't Adobe Media render/preview approx the same (colour wise etc.) whatever the project settings in AE were (especially if I'm "display final output" in the KeyLight setting). ... View more