That Wasn’t In the Script…

First, the bad news: There are two ways you can ensure After Effects CS4 will crash on exit:

1) Boot AE CS4 with an add-on script open in a docked panel.

2) Quit AE CS4 with an add-on script open in a docked panel.

Now, the good news: It’s a relatively benevolent crash; you won’t lose data or take down any other programs as well. Also, it’s fairly easy to work around this bug: Either open your scripts that have user interfaces in undocked (floating) panels, or make sure all scripts (such as Ease and Wizz, or TrackerViz) are closed when you quit - perhaps create a Workspace that has them all closed, and select that before quitting.

Yes, Adobe is well aware of the problem. No, it is not fixed in the AE 9.0.1 update. But at least now you know what’s going on, should you be suffering persistent and mysterious crashes on exit…

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10 Most Innovative Concert Visuals ‘08

I have few regrets in life, but one is that I’m yet to have the opportunity to design visuals for live concerts (helping on a couple of videos for the Las Vegas Fremont Street Experience is as close as I’ve come so far). U2’s Zoo TV concert video
remains a transformative experience for me; while Ultravox’s gray set plus colored lighting was one of biggest influences on me on how to colorize motion graphics in 3D.

If you’re also into seeing motion graphics on the big stage (not just the big screen), then I suggest you take a trip over to Accent Feeds’ 10 Most Innovative Concert Visuals of ‘08, including the likes of Kraftwerk, Daft Punk, Massive Attack, Madonna, Tool, Nine Inch Nails, and the best act you’ve never heard of: Etienne de Crecy. All come with videos, although they are of varying quality, ranging from hand-held audience shakeycam for Daft Punk to the professionally multicam edit for de Crecy (have patience; it gets more amazing the longer you go). Even if you have no interest in concert videos, there’s some great ideas in there for creating motion graphics in virtual environments.

Props to Rich Young’s AE Portal News, which turned me onto this. BTW, he also has a good round-up on tilt-shift photography, which has become rather hot recently.

Cool After Effects Tutorial - Rhythmic Motion Typography

As a video editor, I posses a very basic working knowledge of Adobe After Effects. I can zing around in Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack Pro, but my grasp of AE is still a work in progress. So when I happen across a tutorial that I’m able to quickly grasp, you know I have to share it. Here’s one such tutorial video compliments of AETUTS that shows you how to do that currently-popular dynamic text/lyrics thing, bringing simple words to life in time with music. The video is embedded below.

After Effects Tips - Installment 3

There’s a line in the movie “The Wedding Singer” that I often hear when teaching After Effects: “This is information that I could have used yesterday!” This is usually followed by: “How long has that feature been in the program?” (Usual answer: “About a decade…”). For some reason, there are little gems inside After Effects that escape the notice of even experienced After Effects animators.

So to celebrate the New Year, I’ve assembled a list of small but useful features inside After Effects that often go unnoticed. See how many have escaped you:

Getting Animated About Human Rights

I greatly admired this video when I first saw it during the past election season, but could never carve out time to write about it. Perhaps this will serve as a good way to finish off the holiday season and kick off the New Year, both creatively and spiritually.

Wardrobe! Weatherman + Green Tie = Chromakey Fun

What AE’s Still Missing…

We had an idea here on PVC that we would make lists of what has been most interesting this previous year, and what we anticipate in the new year ahead. Several of us planned to write these, but unfortunately few of us have so far. You know - we’ve been busy with work, the holidays, and such. After all, there’s only so much a person can do.

Well, it’s the same for many software tools as well, such as our main tool After Effects. AE CS3 was (in our opinion) one of the best updates ever for motion graphics artists, and AE CS4 has its charms (here is our roundup of the new features that caught our eye; here is Todd Kopriva’s more comprehensive list). Still, there are many features that remain unimplemented or underimplemented - because either resources weren’t available, a new feature caught a programmer’s eye, or not enough people have jumped up and down screaming for the feature we personally want.

Following are some of the features we’re still waiting for. As we have a personal policy of “you’re not allowed to complain about something unless you are also willing to offer a solution,” we’ll also mention some ideas for cheats and workarounds inside AE, from third parties, and in alternate applications such as Apple’s Motion. The first two pages will focus on issues in 3D space, and then we’ll move onto issues such as mask shapes and text.

Automated Video Production

We’ve all been there: A client asks for a job that requires complex editing and effects, and they say (as part of the negotiation over price): “Don’t you have software where you press a button and it does it automatically?”

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