omino pixel blog » Handy Scripts

Tasks Beget Subtasks

That’s always how it is, I’m trying to do something, but then a new jig or tool is needed along the way.

Just lately I’m finally “remastering” some ancient (80’s) video of my own. Captured it off VHS video in 2004, been sitting on my hard disk since then. Tragically, the capture introduced some awful drift between audio and video. I probably used iMovie for a 30 minute capture, just like they say not to.

Why am I using AE for this? Because I haven’t upgraded the stupid final cut pro to the stupid expensive intel version, because I stupidly missed the $50 upgrade special window.

And as long as I’m complaining: How come AE doesn’t have some fine-numeric control for time-bumping the layers?? Ok. So it goes.

But meanwhile, I need some fine-control to shift the layers left and right.

I’m thinking, should I write a script for this? But something tickles my memory. A yes, this is just the sort of thing that can be found on Jeff Almasol’s most excellent redefinery blog and scripts collection. Many useful scripts there; solid work-a-day workflow helpers. Also, exquisitely coded. Excellent style, thrilling examples, and so forth.

Happily, redefinery’s rd:scooter was just the tool to nudge things back into place!

After nudging around my 30 minute audio and video layers, I wanted to snip out just the 2 minutes for the particular song-section. But the in- and out-points were far off to the left and right of my dinky 3 minute comp. So I wrote a script panel for this last bit:

I tried to keep it nice and narrow, to fit in easily with the other built-in palettes. It’s ugly, but then it worked so I stopped coding & used it. Click here or on the picture to get it from my scripts collection.

After Effects Scripting Bug

Ah yes, there’s a bug in After Effects CS3’s scripting that I came across. If you set layer.inPoint = t; it also sets the outpoint! My workaround was like so:

	// bug? setting in seems to corrupt out. save and fix.
	var outPoint = layer.outPoint;
	layer.inPoint = myComp.time;
	layer.outPoint = outPoint;

This workaround should be safe even after they fix the scripting bug. (Not sure where to report Adobe bugs…)

So… Then What?

And lastly, some excerpts from the product of this endeavor: Vintage 1986-era animation loops done with Macromind’s Videoworks ! Orchestrated with my own long-forgotten music software, “Synthestra” (MIDI) and P-Drum (sample player), both for the Apple II, distributed by Dan Retzinger’s company, Decillionix.

Check it out. 30 seconds of techno-stalgia.