Looking for direction on adding multiple video sources to be played within 5-6 vertical panels in CS5. Anyone have experience or a relevant link?
ye gods of r/Editors, have mercy on a beginner. I'm looking to make a music video for a friend's band, and while I have the idea set in my mind the scope is beyond my experience.
My main issue is that the only terms I can think of to describe it are already used within the huge CS family. So here it is: I'm wanting to have a sort of a blank, black canvas (standard aspect ratio) and want say five or six vertical "panels" (please excuse) to enter the screen scrolling vertically alternately from the top ad bottom of the screen, each with their own video source. is this possible within AE?
I only come here as all searches have given me totally unrelated results, and am simply looking for a link or a site to check out to learn more. thanks!
Posted Sep 21, 2012, 3:51 AM UTC
Do you know how to create 5-6 layer solids and move them through space?
Can you do the same with 5-6 imported graphics or pictures?
If you can, then just substitute imported videos for the solids or graphics.
If you can't, then try this...
http://www.crishdesign.com/
I don't but this is helpful, thanks!
EDIT: actually, this gives me the same issue. does anyone know what particular tutorial to look through? it's all too broad and I'm on a friendly deadline. any help?
How much AE do you know, are you picking it up for the first time?
I'm having trouble visualising what you're talking about. Are you talking about something like the Brady Bunch opening, where multiple separate video clips appear one at a time on the screen? Or are you talking about a kind of transition effect, where one scene transitions to the next by introducing vertical slivers of it one at a time? Something like this, where each coloured bar is a video clip? That would be easy, I can post a step-by-step guide for that.
I've used AE for several projects now, but I stuck to affecting just the picture qualities and not anything like the moving panels I'm describing. while it's much different, I think knowing how to do something like the Brady Bunch opener would point my in the right direction!
however, my idea is basically to have the screen divided vertically into 6 columns or panels that could each play their own video and (hopefully) be able to scroll either up or down. think like a slot machine but with different video tracks
Import clips into AE, then drop them onto your canvas. You can crop and scale them until they're shaped the way you want. To animate their position values over time, click them in the timeline, press P, and press down on the stopwatch. Now if you move your playhead to a certain time and drag the clip's position up, it will create a keyframe that says "the clip is here at this time". If you create a keyframe that says the clip is at the bottom at 00;00;00;01 and a keyframe that says the clip is at the top at 00;00;01;00, then during the time in between it will be scrolling to make that change. That's how you scroll it. It's just a matter of queuing up multiple clips in this way.
If you find your system slowing down, you can use coloured solids as proxies. To do this, you just import your clips, but then right-click in the timeline and select New->Solid and choose a colour for it. You make a red, a green, a yellow, etc etc. You put them in your canvas, and pretend they're your video clips. Set up all the cropping, scaling, animation, etc, make sure the timing's right and that everything looks good. Then, in the projects panel, alt-drag a clip name onto a solid's name, and that solid will be replaced by the clip. The benefit of doing this is that rendering a bunch of blocks of solid colour is a lost faster than rendering 20 videos playing at once, so it's faster to set up and preview. But you don't have to.