PremierePro.Net by Jarle Leirpoll is an awesome resource

 

I was watching a Maxon series on Red Giant Universe, and one of the presenters was Jarle Leirpoll, who I hadn’t heard about. I quickly went and checkout out his web site Premiere Pro.net and it is an awesome resource.

He wrote a book on Advanced Premiere Pro Editing Techniques called The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro.

And he has a Free PDF book on making MOGRTs or Motion Graphics Templates in After Effects for use in Premiere Pro. 

Certainly a resource to check out.

A Keyboard based Launcher for After Effects, check out Andrew Kramer’s VideoCopilot FX Console

 

So recently I wrote about the awesome Mac keyboard based launcher LaunchBar from Obdev, and now I am writing about something Andrew Karamer wrote from Video Copilot wrote for After Effects called FX Console, which is the same type of thing for After Effects, he calls it a Work Flow Plug In, and it is free.

It blows away that this is listed in their Products, but must be searched for. They really need a free section for his awesome free products, to go along with his amazing paid products, that I will write about later.

This plug in just adds a quick new way to use a keyboard to add effects & presets, and create FX Shortcuts, and export Snapshots as PNG. This is a must use plug-in that will always speed you up, and once again when I get on a machine that doesn’t have it installed, I feel stunted.

Anything that speeds up your workflow is always a good thing, and this can speed up your workflow each and every day. And because of this I would easily pay for it, but it is free. So there is no reason to not download and install it.

Adobe Creative Suite Video feature request, easily copy and paste a Lumetri color from Premiere Pro to After Effects without exporting a LUT

 

As someone who works extensively between After Effects and Premiere Pro, I do love Adobe Dynamic Link (though it could use an update for sure), there is one thing that I wish could come easily between the two programs, and that is Lumetri Color Effects.

Yes you can pass the Lumetri Effect them through via Dynamic Link, but that is better for sequences, than individual shots. And yes you can export a .cube effect from your Lumetri Color, which is a LUT. The LUT can then be added in Lumtri, but it isn’t just repeating the Lumetri Effect, it is a Lumtri with a LUT added to it (and since After Effects and Premiere Pro use different Color spaces since After Effects uses RGB vs YUV), it is easier to tweak a bit if it is the Lumetri Color effect.

Now the easiest for the user would be if you could copy and paste the effect.

The Lumetri Color panel is one thing, but it is also an effect.

And the Lumetri effect shows up in After Effects as an effect as well.

Now I am assuming copy and paste would be difficult as some program would need to be running to catch the copy and move it over (something in creative cloud), but this would be absolutely ideal.

Now the solution is to make all your selects in Premiere and send it over via Adobe Dynamic Link then use the lumetri off those. And this does work, but it isn’t as easy as copy and pasting from one to the other for sure.

Or you can send out individual LUTS from the Lumetri Color Tab.

And select Export Cube to export a LUT that you can then add onto a Lumetri basic correction or a look you can use in the Creative section of Lumetri (and this is good because you can control the strength of the effect).

Now they could put in a Creative Cloud sync like you can do with Essential Graphics templates, but most of the time I am using my own Adobe login so the sync is useless, and I have always thought it needed some more job specific settings, like they only show up if you select the job you are on, and would download the templates to the job folder so that when you back it up they are there for anyone using the job especially in the future.

Stu Maschwitz has updated his Prolost EDC Presets to version 2.5

Stu Maschwitz, author of the DV Rebel’s Guide and designer of the Magic Bullet color grading system for Red Giant and now Chief Creative Office of Maxon has updated his Prolost EDC Presets for Adobe After Effects. You can pay what you want, though they default is $4.

EDC, as in “everyday carry” — the stuff you don’t leave the house without. Whenever I install a new version of After Effects, these are the handy little timesaving presets that I drop in first.

Most of the EDC presets are simple. Shortcuts to common settings, better defaults for often-used effects, or better interfaces for my favorite expressions.

But hey, Prolost EDC has been around since 2015, and some of these tools have gotten quite powerful. Check out Prolost Array, or Prolost Levels, both new in v2.5.

I update this set from time to time, and you’ll receive a fresh download link every time I do. It’s like subscribing to my personal After Effects toolbox.

And these include 2 new powerful filters, Prolost Levels and Prolost Array, for a total of 48 presets. Well worth picking up for any price.

Adobe releases March 2021 of After Effects version 18

 Adobe has updated After Effects to version 18.0 with it’s March 2021 release.

They added Media Replacement in Motion Graphics Templates and essential Properties.

Real-Time 3D Draft Preview.

A 3D Ground Plane to give a sense of 3D Perspective.

Improved Composition Toolbar.

Team Projects Performance Improvements.

And the most exciting thing to me that is currently in beta testing, which is Mult-Frame Rendering using multi-core CPU that can have up to 300% Render improvements.

Why do the font engine in After Effects no include the ability to underline text?

 

So this the font style selection box in After Effects, which lets you select faux bold, faux italix, Upercase, UpperLower Uppercase and subscript settings.

Premiere Pro is exactly the same as After Effects.

This is the Type Options in Photoshop, which includes Underline and Strikthrough, as well as more options.

Why is there no Underline option in After Effects and Premiere Pro? Sure you can add a line if you want to, but it won’t follow the text.

Really this is the dumbest thing. WHY WOULD YOU NOT IMPLEMENT AN UNDERLINE ADOBE?

****

OK so the latest version of Premiere Pro’s Essential Graphics now includes the underline function, but not After Effects. This makes it even weirder and more glaring.

Adobe After Effects is improving it’s 3D experience!

Coming Soon to After Effects Beta – New ways to work with 3D

Discover these new 3D tools to help you navigate in 3D space better and faster, including improved camera features and 3D Transform Gizmos. pic.twitter.com/CXpef2DNo7

— Adobe Video & Motion (@AdobeVideo) September 15, 2020

Awesome After Effects is updating it’s 3D tools, and looks like it is a borrowing from C4D which can only be good. The 3D tools have always been way too basic, and this could be a huge improvement.

Does anyone else lament the loss of Red Giant’s Keying suite from the VFX suite?

 

Now it isn’t like I don’t love the Red Giant VFX suite, but I have been a Red Giant user for many years, and I miss all the tools of the Keying Suite. 
Now I am not complaining about Primatte Keyer 6 which is included in the Red Giant VFX Suite. It is very powerful and easy to use, though since Primatte 5 doesn’t really seem to work with 2020 or Beta it had better be good, but I do miss all off the ancillary plugs ins of the Keying suite, and I do know that many of the effects have been incorporated in SUPERCOMP, but I want all the controls of the individual plug-ins again.
I will admit that I am using keyers in a different method than most, as Primatte works great for a standard green screen (which I am using as well), and I find it vastly superior to the build in Keylight. The thing is I am doing puppeteering and using a green glove to puppet a teddy bear, so instead of just the green, I want to expand the green beyond the glove, instead of objects inside the green screen. And yes I can do that with rotoscoping, but that kind of negates using a green glove as I have to animate every frame.
And I have to admit I had an easier job doing that when I had the tools all in separate plug ins. I miss the key correct plugs in. I miss seperate versions of Alpha Cleaner, Light Wrap (which I know is in SUPERCOMP), Matte Feather, Smooth Screen, Spill Killer (I know this is in Primmate 6) and Wire/Rig Remover, which is more what I am trying to do. And yes I still have the old plugins, but they really don’t work in After Effects 2020.
Now I know I am using the plug ins out of their comfort zone, but using the separate plug ins I was much better able to do what I wanted to, and with Primatte 6 only having some of the plug ins integrated I am not as happy with what I can do.
And that is beyond the whole SUPERCOMP not working with Motion Blur thing which really needs to be fixed.

Roto Brush 2 in the After Effects Beta is a vast improvement

So I have been using Roto Brush for years in After Effects. It was a tool that worked with a lot of user input, but it was so incredibly slow. And honestly with footage getting larger I think it had actually gotten slower, but Adobe has finally been working on an upgrade that is available in the current Beta.

Roto Brush 2 stills needs user input and it doesn’t do well with a lot of motion blur, but it is so much faster! It used to take sometimes minutes to calculate a single frame, and now in minutes it can calculate a whole clip.

I am not sure how much better of a roto that it does than the old version, but the speed in which it works means you can make changes and even work frame by frame, and work quickly enough to do a basic roto very quickly.

I am so glad for the public betas and them letting us use unreleased features.

Now I know why Adobe denied my request for years on apps, they have made all apps in the same category the same color, so they are harder to tell apart!

So I opened Adobe’s updates today and low and behold, they have updated a great swatch of apps, but even worse they have updated the icons so that applications in the same category are the same color. Sure it means you can tell this years apps from earlier versions, but now it is easier to confuse different apps for each other as all the video apps are now the same damn color, WTF! And this will get even worse when they release next years versions with the same damn app icon (why can’t they put some versioning in the icon?).

These are the swath of Adobe Apps I keep in my Dock, and without dragging over them with a cursor it is a pain in the ass to tell them apart (and yes I need the different versions as some companies I work with run older versions because of stability issues).

Hell even the beta icons are changing already, though at least they will let me keep breaking up the apps

I guess at least this year for individual apps it will be easier, but what about when the previous 2 versions have the same damn icon, and they are all the same color?

For a company that makes applications for designers they sure have a shitty sense of design!