Video "sequence" effect?

ReedSkis~

ReedSkis~

Active member
Could anyone shed some light on how i could create this effect in after effects?

It appears at 1:32 in this video

Thanks

R
 
sorry about the vid, hope this helps
flash_video_placeholder.png

 
^ yea thats what i've been thinking
but im kind confused how he gets each layer to overlap so perfectly, does he use some sort of "lasso" tool such as the one in photoshop?
 
And i understand there is most likely tracking involvedbut how does he get the background to move behind the frozen boarder?
 
First thing I gotta say is this effect is not any simple little drag on preset in your NLE program, it involves a good little bit of compositing.

The background isnt moving behind the stills, the stills are moving with the background which tells you its definitely tracked. So this is how you would attack this (Assuming you have after effects and know it enough to be somewhat proficient in it):

Make the clip you want to do it on into a new comp. Create a null object and motion track something in your background and apply that tracking data to that null. Now just duplicate your main clip a whole bunch of times to make each of your still layers and turn off the visibilities of all of them accept the one you are working on and your background layer (work from the bottom up and leave the bottom most layer as is for the BG, lock that layer so you dont mess with it)

Now go to each point in time that you want a still to appear and (working from the bottom up) select a leyer and right click and go to time>freeze frame. Then go in and make a mask around the rider in that shot , just a square will probably work (with the layer selected you can use the rectangle tool at the top to make a mask, or you can draw it with the pen tool, just make sure that layer is selected) and feather the edges a bit. Now also at this exact spot in the timeline you need to link the still you just masked to the null object so it will stay where its at at that point. Also drag the clip in your timeline so it starts right at this point too.

Do that however many times you need and that should be it.

The thing is with this stuff is there are probably a whole bunch of different ways to attack it and this is just how I would do so. I know the guy that makes these is really good at compositing so dont feel silly is yours doesnt look as good as his on your first try. And this particular effect is not the easiest one to achieve if its your first time trying something like this.

Also if you have After Effects but dont really know how to use it then go to:http://www.videocopilot.net/basic/ and take their free basic training, you can essentially do anything you need if you learn that stuff.

Good luck man!
 
i doubt the AE tracker could track that shot very well. I bet they used boujou or something and had poopload of null objects tracked in 3d to make it look that good
 
Nah, AE tracking is a bitch but you could track that shot pretty easily with it. Also the CS4 version of AE comes with Mocha which is a much stronger tracking program/plugin so maybe he used that.

I looked into it and Mike Benson (the guy who edits these) has a forum for this stuff, check it: http://knifeshowinc.com/forum/
 
stonebroke's way is how i do it.

just practice with shots that are easy enough to track. like a pan from a tripod or something.
 
Thanks so much StoneBrokeYeah i new that this effect would take alot of work and am ready to try iti'll post up once i get itthanks againR
 
Yeah, same basic technique but it will involve a whole bunch of null objects with different tracking points along the rail. So each place you plan on doing a still you will need to track that point on the rail and link it to a null, and each still will go to a different null, where as on that other shot everything could be linked to the same null/tracking point. And by tracking the rail instead of the background on a shot like the one at 3:08 thats how you will get that perspective change that makes it look cool.

Oh and on this one you will have to make the masks clean around the rider, so zoom in close and use the pen tool to make the mask (when the layer you plan to mask is selected)

Just start messing around, thats pretty much the only way to learn this stuff, trial and error.
 
Alright guys i made one
I'll post it once it's down uploading to vimeo
Keep in mind, its not the best footage, and i could have spent more time on this clip. I didnt have the original footage, so it was just cut out of one of my edits
 
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Good job man! Looks great,especially for your first attempt. One thing I noticed that I forgot to mention is you might want to deinterlace your footage before doing this, that way your still will be more crisp.

Either way, good work!
 
^Thanks man, I appreciated the advice on how to go about it
As far as the footage goes, I literally just cut it out of a previous edit i made, since i don't have the original footage anymore. I had probably deinterlaced it before i exported the original edit from final cut, so i didnt think it was necessary to do it again
 
oh, yeah I messed that one up a little bit, because it was cut off in the begging and then the camera moved a little
 
i read StonebrokeFilms tips and all, and i understand them; but is there a way i could do this sequencing by using sony vegas platinum 9 (which obvi doesnt have after affects) ...??
 
i def need to get after effects from my buddy and start playin around with this. looks so sick and great job man, looks almost the exact same IMO.
 
I want to bump this with my video I just tested this effect with. This is a very cool effect and more people should try it using Trent Palmer's excellent advice, thanks again!

Courtesy of Newschoolers.com

critiques?
 
because it was a panning shot it definitely was a LOT harder for you to do it, so the skier did jump around as the camera panned, but for your first time you had everything figured out very well! Find a still shot maybe and work with that will probably avoid the shake of the stills.
 
Wow! came out sick!

But I agree with Jamie that the pan must have made the shot harder to track... It still looked awesome though!
 
I took jamie and reeds advice and updated the tracking null with better tracking points:

Courtesy of Newschoolers.com

anything else I can do better next time?
 
To be honest, it was pretty much perfect. You can always add more "freeze frames" but that is a personal preference.

Good job!
 
thanks man

for the clip that I did ^^^ I was lucky that someone (JacheOReally) happened to get a shot like this, everything I shot last season would not have worked for this effect. Next season when I shoot I wanna keep this effect in mind for another clip, and definitely add more keyframes/clean up the masks more.
 
Sick, Mike Benson from Knifeshow uses that effect as well.

Anyone have any ideas on how to tackle this one?

here's the embed:

DVS- "Daewon Echo" from Bucky Fukumoto on Vimeo.
 
prob shot in 4k and then you just layer the video then the camera movement is I'm assuming done in post. Then when you playback at say 1080 you still have all the available resolution to fill up the enire frame.
 
great advice, Ive been wondering how to do this effect for ever. Going to take some old footy soon and get it down over the summer so Im good to go for winter.
 
Alright I got this down sort of...
I need some help. So I got all the frames frozen, tracked motion, and have the null object. So the shot is a tripod non movie shot and the skier goes off the jump as the skier gets to the points where the single frame is stopped it does but then as the video continues the skier for the next 3-4 frames is partially under the mask box and this happens at each freeze frame. Was that explained enough? basically how do I get the skier to be above the freeze frames so it looks like it comes out of it rather than being under it and being hidden by the mask box for the next couple frames?
thanks.
 
You don't want the moving skier on top of the other still frames, you just want to mask very closely around the still skiers and feather the edges a little.
 
Nice, great job!

Only things I would change would be to add maybe 2 or 3 more freeze frames at the end, and also maybe add some motion blur on the snowboarder (just a thought) because it almost looks like the frames are sort of "skipping"... Not really sure how to describe it, but if you pause in the middle of the video you can see that the the boarder is kind of in between frames. This can be fixed by shooting at a higher framerate with a higher shutter speed.

Awesome work though, glad this thread was revived!
 
all of these are sick so far, and while were on the topic of after effects does anyone have a torrent for any version of it for mac, a keygen with the download would be nice too.
 
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