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When shooting film or video, there are several options for how to achieve camera motion while keeping the camera stable. If you’re a professional filmmaker, you might have access to a Steadicam rig, which uses gyroscopes to allow a camera operator to move freely while the camera stays still. However, for an amateur, this isn’t really an option due to the expense of such rigs.

But now in After Effects CS5.5 Adobe has introduced the Warp Stabilizer, which can take handheld camera footage, and stabilize it to the degree that it appears as if it was shot with a Steadicam. Stabilizing features have been part of After Effects for a long time, but the degree to which you can stabilize motion with this new effect is absolutely amazing. Watch this video to see an example of the stabilization and how to use this new feature.

Stabilize Shaky Footage with After Effects CS5.5

The next feature we will look at is the Camera Lens Blur effect. On a real camera, we can change the focal length of the lens as the shot is going on, which is a way to point the viewer at specific parts of the shot. This is called Rack Focus, and is quite complex to complete on an actual film set. It requires excellent timing and a second camera operator, called a Focus Puller in order to change the focus as the shot is happening.

Now we can do this in software with After Effects CS5.5. As long as the entire shot is in focus, we can use this effect to blur out specific parts of the image, and animate it so that it mimics the focus of an actual camera.

Camera Lens Blur in After Effects CS5.5

We also have a new effect for the people who work in 3D. After Effects CS5.5 has added some new light falloff features that more closely mimic real world lighting conditions. This can improve the look of your 3D effects in After Effects.

Light Falloff Effect in After Effects CS5.5

However, by altering some settings, we can also make it reveal a drawing over time.  This is a common effect used to make vines or trees appear as if they’re growing.  In this video, we examine the different settings available in the Write-On Effect, and show how to make a drawing appear over time.

After Effects: Using the Write-On Effect

The ‘Roto’ in Roto Brush refers to Rotoscoping,which is a process used to separate objects or characters in a video from the background.  In the past, this process usually involved going frame by frame and creating a mask for each frame.  At a video standard 30 frames per second, this could take a very long time for almost any video.

With the new Roto Brush feature though, we can simply select the area we want to isolate and then After Effects will track it through the video, while we make minor adjustments to keep it on track.

In this video presentation, we will show you how to use the new feature and give some examples of how you might use the technology to your advantage.

After Effects CS5 – Introducing the Roto Brush

CS5 is now shipping, and it will be available to Indiana University students faculty and staff soon.

Adobe CS5 Production Premium Preview

This presentation covered the new features and interactivity of Adobe Story, OnLocation, Premiere, Encore and After Effects CS5.

And don’t forget, on April 30th, we’ll be back discussing the Design and Web apps.  Keep an eye on the Web Community page for details.

In this post we will explore how to go about organizing compositions in a way to make them more manageable, while still maintaining complete creative control over the project.

I’ll also show you a trick about duplicating Transform properties across multiple layers that should save you lots of time in certain scenarios.

Before we look at the video though, let’s talk about pre-composing. Pre-composing is the process by which we can turn multiple layers into their own composition. Every After Effects project is made up of compositions, which can contain any type of media, including audio, video, graphics, and other objects in any combination, or even other After Effects compositions. We must create a composition to begin working in After Effects.

Let’s see how to do this after the break.

With perfect planning, we probably wouldn’t need to pre-compose layers in After Effects, but we live in the real world, and sometimes projects take an unexpected left turn, and you have a Layers panel that looks like this:

As you can see, there’s 28 layers in this project.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be this complex.  For instance, the project could be exported, and the sound could be added in Soundbooth, removing 9 of those layers.  Or perhaps there’s a method for only using one instance of the “First 2″ comp, and animating it to achieve the same effect in the final project.  Either way, occasionally, you will find yourself in this scenario.

In the video below, we will show you how to go from the Layers panel above, to this one:

Same project, but this one has the layers pre-composed into a cleaner format. Also, the Layers panel above shows an incomplete project. In the video, I’ll show you how to finish it off, and come up with the ticking clock seen here:

Let’s examine how to be more efficient in After Effects with this video presentation:

Increasing Efficiency in After Effects with Pre-composing

Resources:

Graphic digits used in this post

But since I don’t have a fancy computer controlled camera, I decided to do this old school.  It’s actually pretty simple in After Effects.  Check out the final result:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPmiCJpVe_o

See how to do it yourself after the break.

The split screen effect I’m showing today requires precision and planning. We need to shoot two sides of a video that will need to match and have a clear space to split it into two.  This means that you need a single actor (you can use multiple actors, but it kind of defeats the novelty of a split screen), preferably in different wardrobe for each side, and they must not pass through the split section of the frame.  The frame can be split horizontally or vertically, but this decision needs to be made in advance, and the actors instructed in their placement before shooting.

You also must have a camera, and it must be on a tripod or some other stationary device, and you must shoot your video in identical lighting conditions. This usually means you’re shooting the videos on the same day, but if you have a tightly controlled studio, you can shoot them on separate days.  Any variation in the two sides of the video will ruin the transition.  The video used in the example was created by hitting record on the camera, and then creating both sides before stopping the recording.  I then edited the video into separate pieces. This ensured that the lighting and positioning would be identical.

Once we get to the point where we have two matching pieces of video created, the rest is actually pretty simple. We’ll be using the Linear Wipe effect which is generally used to make transitions between two scenes (think the screen wipe in Star Wars).  But today, we’ll be using it in a different way. Let’s see how in this video:

Creating a Split Screen in After Effects

The video starts with a composition created. If you need more info on how to work the basics of After Effects, you can attend our training class After Effects: Video Effects & Text Animation Basics, or you can check out the Lynda.com training library.

Then we hit play…

And we quickly discovered that though corner pin is an incredibly useful effect, once your video starts moving, it loses it’s utility very quickly.

This is where motion tracking comes in.  We have a couple of options for motion tracking in CS4.  After Effects has a built-in motion tracker, which we can access through the “Tracker” panel, and there is a helper application called “Mocha for After Effects” that is included in the Production Premium install (assuming you didn’t de-select it). We’ll explore both in this post.

With the power of Mocha motion tracking, you can accomplish results like this (low quality video):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WfKY5WDlvk

Learn how to accomplish the results in the above video after the break.

Before we get started, here’s a few files if you might find handy as we go along:

The video used in our examples, with tracking points attached

Text file with tracking data from Mocha for left screen

Text file with tracking data from Mocha for right screen

Motion Tracking in After Effects

Tracking motion in After Effects is a reasonably straightforward proposition.  It works by tracking an object within your video, creating a motion tracking point in every single frame.  It can then translate these points into keyframes that can control various properties like position, scale, rotation, or even the 4 points needed for a corner pin of a specific object (assuming you have 4 points in the video to track).

To make this work, After Effects needs a point to track in the video.  Hopefully, whoever shot the video thought ahead, and put some specific tracking points in the shot while they were filming.  These can be anything that is visible in the video.  This could simply be a piece of paper attached to the location with a specific mark on it, or a sticker that can be easily removed, or even something that already exists in the video, like a button, or a mark of some kind.  Here’s an example from our video:

A video still, with tracking points marked in red.

We need to keep some things in mind with these points.

1. The tracking point must contrast with the background – We need to make sure that the point is clearly visible in the background.  The more contrast we have, the easier tracking the motion will be.
2. The tracking points must be visible throughout the entire video – If the tracking point goes off screen at any point, After Effects will not be able to track the video properly.
3. If you want to track the scale, you need two tracking points, if you want to track a corner pin, you need 4 tracking points (in After Effects; we will see later, that in Mocha we don’t need this).
4. Ensure that the points are located in such a way that the super-imposed video or graphic will cover up the tracking points – There’s nothing worse than doing all of your motion tracking, and then discovering that after putting your video in place, the tracking points are still visible.  There are healing tools in After Effects, but you’d need to heal them on every single frame in the video.
5. Attach your tracking point as close to the location of the super-imposed video as possible.  If After Effects is tracking something on the opposite side of the screen, it might not accurately capture the location you want to track.

Unfortunately, in some cases, you might find that the video you’re working with doesn’t have these tracking points, or they go out of frame, and there might not be any natural points in the video to track.  In the example above, the buttons on the monitors could possibly work, but without those, we wouldn’t really have a good point to track.  So it’s best to plan ahead when you anticipate the need to motion track a video.

Let’s look at how to do motion tracking in After Effects in this video:

Motion Tracking in After Effects (~12 min)

Motion Tracking with Mocha

Mocha is an application that creates tracking points for After Effects.  While After Effects is perfectly capable of tracking motion, it has some limitations.  It’s biggest problem is that the tracker is based on points within the video.  If these points go out of frame, or are obscured in some way the track will be much more difficult to accomplish.

But Mocha does things differently.  Instead of tracking points, it tracks planes.  We can map out a plane in the video (like a video screen), and then Mocha can track it throughout the video, even if part of it exits the screen.  It also creates a much smoother track in many cases, since After Effects might be selecting slightly different locations on a point, and as a result, the superimposed video might jump around slightly, like we saw in the After Effects Motion Tracking video. Sometimes this might be acceptable; but especially for a video screen, the superimposed video should be as stable as possible.

In these cases, Mocha works much better, because it tracks a specific plane in the video.  Because of the larger area, it can make smoother transitions.  It can also use it’s perspective tracking to translate it’s tracking data into corner pin data, which will animate each corner individually.

If you want to try this out, the exercise files are located above, including the tracking data I used to achieve the video at the top of the post.  You can copy the contents of each file individually, and paste them onto a selected video in After Effects the way we see in the movie below.

Let’s see how to do motion tracking in Mocha in this video:

Motion Tracking with Mocha and After Effects (~14 min)

So there you have it.  You should now have a good sense of what is required to track motion using After Effects, and I hope that you can take the time to experiment with different kinds of tracks to see what is possible.

Our great enemy in this second case is perspective.  If you aren’t careful, the new video will appear out of place in the background video, ruining the effect. Coming to the rescue is the Corner Pin effect.  The Corner Pin effect allows us to control each corner of the image or video individually, which lets us “pin” the foreground videos corners to any four points we want in the background video.  The best part about it is it’s extremely easy to use.

In the training video below, we’ll explore how to attach a new video to two blank monitors in our background video.  It requires a small amount of After Effects knowledge to follow along, which you can acquire by attending IT Training & Education’s After Effects workshop, or by browsing the Lynda training library.

Aligning Video in After Effects with Corner Pin

At the end of the video, we’ll notice a small problem.  As our background video zooms and pans, the foreground video stays in its original position.  That’s a problem that can only be fixed by motion tracking.  Check back next week, and I’ll post another video that describes how to use motion tracking to allow your foreground video to follow the motion of the camera.

Video Basics – An Overview of Tools and Resources – In this workshop, Donna Jones will discuss the basics of video, starting with a discussion of cameras, and what features to look for, and then using Windows Movie Maker to edit a short video.  While working on editing the video, the process of shooting a movie will be discussed, including setting up lighting, getting good quality audio, and setting up good shots.  Donna will also discuss some simple ways to make your production look more professional.

After Effects: Text Animation and Video Basics – Adobe After Effects is an animation program focused on video production which allows you to combine video and animations into a single project and then export it into many common video formats. In this workshop, Andy Hunsucker will guide you through the creation of a short movie trailer that combines text animation, video, and background music, along with some animations created entirely within After Effects.  Participants will get a chance to spend time working in the interface, and learn the basics of the animation system and the effects system.

See the workshop descriptions to sign up.  If you can’t make it next week, we’re doing a rerun on 11/17 and 11/18.  And don’t forget about the same workshops being held at IUPUI.