aescripts + aeplugins

joseph lemons

When will this be updated for CC 2015??

Victoria Nece

It's not only updated for CC2015, it requires CC2015. Credits Are Due takes advantage of the new way After Effects handles expressions.

Bram Vreugdenhil

Really nice script! Thanks! 

I would like to slow down the scroll speed at the end of the credits, but when I keyframe the speed, the credits roll backward instead of slowing down.

Am I doing something wrong? 

Victoria Nece

Really nice script! Thanks! 

I would like to slow down the scroll speed at the end of the credits, but when I keyframe the speed, the credits roll backward instead of slowing down.

Am I doing something wrong? 

You're not doing anything wrong -- that's an unfortunate quirk of the way things are set up. The quickest workaround is to precomp and time-remap the scroll.

Bram Vreugdenhil

Hi Victoria,

Thanks! The problem was that I wanted to slow down the end of the credits, the final part was an animated comp that run while scrolling. With time remapping that's not an option. I found a work around.

Micah Johnson

Just wanted to say thank you for making this plugin.  It saved my butt!  I was able to add and make changes quickly!

Jeff Kryvicky

Hi Victoria, first off, I want to say this script is friggin genius! I bought this the day you released it, but I only recently got a chance to put it through it's paces on a couple smaller crawls (Wiener-Dog by Todd Solondz and Manchester by the Sea by Kenny Lonergan). It worked out great for both!

I hope you don't mind, but I'd like to dump a few things down here in no particular order while I'm still thinking of them in the hopes that you are still maintaining these scripts and are planning some sort of update.

As you know, one of the worst things about After Effects is the lack of proper character and paragraph styles. They have them in InDesign, of course, and oddly enough Illustrator, but not AE. So a huge part of the time savings in your script is adding proper spacing before and after names or groups of names. I love the Section Spacing dialog that takes care of the spacing throughout the crawl. Almost always you have a target time to hit (usually around 4:30) and being able to quickly adjust the spacing to extend or delete crawl length is great. One spot it doesn't seem to work properly is if you change the leading on a group of names (I like to tighten leading on multiple names in a category to show that they are in the same group, and it also saves a few pixels when I'm tight on time). It seems to keep the original leading and adds the extra space, so the spacing is larger than it should be. *edit* I just checked this again - it works as expected. This was a note I had from way early on, so I must have been doing something wacky - sorry! I normally do my crawls in lots of layers in Illustrator using paragraph styles so tweaking like that is fairly easy. I know I can still do it that way and use Credits are Due on the Illustrator layers, but I'd love to keep everything I can in AE. 

So, speaking of timing... as much as I love the idea of a Scroll Speed setting for everything, its one of the first things I threw out years ago when I started doing crawls (I used to use a null with an expression I wrote). At least on feature films, you always always have a set time to work with, and you have to match the in and out to the exact pixel of the text entering the frame and leaving the frame. So using this system, I had to adjust the slider in thousandths, click off to see the change, click back on, move the beginning marker, check the end, tweak some more etc... until I got it right. One name added, and go through the whole process again. I'd love to see some sort of system where I can add maybe a begin and end null exactly on the pixel I need and/or maybe a begin and end slider that I can make very minute pixel adjustments to that overrides the Scroll Speed Slider. Or maybe just a begin and end marker to force time? I know this is exactly the same as just adding a null and animating the position, but maybe there is some way to have them auto move to the correct spot if text is added/deleted? I don't know - just spitballing here The begin marker works pretty well, but there needs to be a way to add negative time - I work on a full app pre comp, then place in another full app comp with a field chart for checkers, then finally whatever the projected comp size is for render. The in and out need to be set for projected back in the full app pre comp. So now that I'm writing this, I'm realizing markers aren't the way to go, In and Out sliders (with minute adjustments) are, where I can give exact timings and keep my pre comp to the exact frame count of the rest of the crawl. Right now I have to make my pre comp longer and math out (I know, it's just subtraction, but I HATE MATH, I want my damn computer to do it!) the correct frame count. I'm just talking out loud now, if I'm not making any sense feel free to contact me, I can probably work up a few examples.

The last thing... that trim tool.... yikes. It is way awesome when it's finished, but there HAS to be a way to optimize it! Is there really no easy way to math out the scroll speed vs layer size? It doesn't even need to be exact. Adding a bit of head and tail (maybe user defined, or user override) for safety is fine. On double columns (pretty much my entire crawl) just make them both the same size (obv the right column is almost always the longer one), there goes half the computation. Trimming is the final thing I have to do before render, and render is always a last minute rush (you know they always add or delete someone 5 minutes before it has to go to Sundance). Waiting an hour just to trim is super painful when the director is waiting in DI. Maybe there can be an option for a gross trim for working (and rushes) and a fine trim when there's time? I haven't looked at the script source yet, so I'm not sure what it's doing, but there has to be something....

Oh, last thing... the gutter. Would love to have a global gutter width setting! (unless there is a way to set the gutter that I'm missing?)

Anyway, overall, I love this script, I hope there are enough folks out there buying it to keep you interested in updating it. For easy, untimed scrolls this is a no brainer, anyone on the fence you should buy this in a heartbeat, for medium size crawls this works really well, but I'd be super happy to see at least #2 and #3 above addressed, for a large crawl I'd still use this, but go back to Illustrator layers just to keep the layer count down.

Victoria Nece

Thanks for all your comments!

if you change the leading on a group of names (I like to tighten leading on multiple names in a category to show that they are in the same group, and it also saves a few pixels when I'm tight on time). It seems to keep the original leading and adds the extra space, so the spacing is larger than it should be. 

Huh. That's odd. That should work -- at least it works for me. Are you on OSX or Windows? I have a sneaking suspicion it's actually updating but the changes aren't propagating through fast enough. When you have this many connected expressions CC2015 sometimes doesn't recalculate them all right away.

that trim tool.... yikes. It is way awesome when it's finished, but there HAS to be a way to optimize it!

This is trickier than it looks, because the trimmer has to account for several additional features, primarily the one that makes it possible to do things like scale and offset layer position in the scroll and still keep position relative to neighboring layers. There's a trick to making it faster, though, which is to do it in chunks and set the work area in/out as you go. It's already not 100% precise (it only checks every 10th frame), but I could add something even less precise (maybe every 5 seconds?) as a shift-click? 

Try dropping this expression on the scroll speed slider to autofit to a precise time:

var timeInSeconds = 60; // Change this to your total scroll length

posterizeTime(.00001);

var scroller = thisComp.layer("Scroller");

posArray = scroller.text.sourceText.split(",");

var lastElementPos = [posArray[posArray.length - 1]]  + ( thisComp.layer(thisComp.numLayers).sourceRectAtTime().height * 2 )+ thisComp.height;

var totalFrames = timeInSeconds / thisComp.frameDuration;

lastElementPos/totalFrames;

I've only tested this briefly; so let me know if it works. If so, I'll add it to the documentation.

Side note: I'm not going to be allowed to update this script after next week, as I'm joining the AE team. I'm hoping to pass CAD on to someone else who can do some bigger feature additions (e.g. gutter width -- it's a great idea, but definitely not something I can get to in time).

Jeff Kryvicky

Side note: I'm not going to be allowed to update this script after next week, as I'm joining the AE team. I'm hoping to pass CAD on to someone else who can do some bigger feature additions (e.g. gutter width -- it's a great idea, but definitely not something I can get to in time).

ahhhh.... such sad news (good news for you though - congrats!)! I hope you can whip them into shape and at least get us folders, and actual loops that don't involve kludgy scripts! (I'm sure theres more I can think of, but I won't bore you - I've been asking for those 2 since AE 2.0). I hope you can find someone to take this over, it really is a great script. Oh - character and paragraph styles! Make them add those! (I know, like you'll have so much control over what Adobe does or doesn't do...)

The leading thing was definitely me - I updated that above probably while you were posting. I'll try the chunks of layers trick on the next pass (I'm sure they'll both want revisions after sundance). I'll give the auto fit script a go as well, but I'm not sure it will be precise enough. I'll probably go in and add an input box myself that fine tunes the speed.

Thanks again! 

Victoria Nece

If it works as designed, that expression should set the scroll speed so the very last pixel on the bottom edge of the last item is at the the top of the screen at an exact time, and it should stay updated even if you change spacing or text size. All you have to do is set the time in seconds at the top.

Jeff Kryvicky

If it works as designed, that expression should set the scroll speed so the very last pixel on the bottom edge of the last item is at the the top of the screen at an exact time, and it should stay updated even if you change spacing or text size. All you have to do is set the time in seconds at the top.

Awesomeness, will give it a go! 

Matthew Phelan

Creating a new left formatted or moving selected works fine. Bur right screws up everything. Also there's no option to realaign to center if you change your mind??

Victoria Nece

Matthew Phelan said:

Creating a new left formatted or moving selected works fine. Bur right screws up everything. Also there's no option to realaign to center if you change your mind??

What do you mean by "screws up everything," exactly? The right column credit setup is not the same as right-aligning the text -- it expects a left-column counterpart for each credit and doesn't add its own spacing unless you uncheck the "subcolumn" box. If you just want to right-align your text, set your layers to standard body text and right align them in the Paragraph panel. 

If you decide you want to swap left + right credits to centered with headers, ctrl-click the left column button to select all left side-formatted titles, then click "Subhead" to make them subheads. Do the same with the right-aligned names -- ctrl+click the right column button to select, then click "Body" to move them back to center. Like so: 

You can then override any of these settings with the standard AE text tools.

Greg AUSINA

Hi, 

I bought your script today to make a big  end credit roll ( almost 200 layers !). It is really clever and quick to learn. Congratulations.

I have a little question though. My scroll is pretty fast ( around 9 ) and I would like to apply some motion blur to it. Would you have a hint?

Thanks, regards, Greg.

David Byrd

Hi There

I love this script, super easy to use. My question is do you have any recommendations for some "jitteriness" I am seeing on my renders, I added a motion blur and and brought the whiteness of the text down a bit. Any suggestions would be much appreciated

Victoria Nece

David Byrd said:

Hi There

I love this script, super easy to use. My question is do you have any recommendations for some "jitteriness" I am seeing on my renders, I added a motion blur and and brought the whiteness of the text down a bit. Any suggestions would be much appreciated

It's about the visual jump from frame to frame. The bigger the shift, in distance/contrast etc. the bigger the "jitter". Motion blur and lower contrast between text and BG can both help, as can smaller type (thus, smaller visual steps) and/or slower speed motion.

Victoria Nece

Greg AUSINA said:

Hi, 

I bought your script today to make a big  end credit roll ( almost 200 layers !). It is really clever and quick to learn. Congratulations.

I have a little question though. My scroll is pretty fast ( around 9 ) and I would like to apply some motion blur to it. Would you have a hint?

Thanks, regards, Greg.

I have gotten the best motion blur results when using this script by precomping and adding Pixel Motion Blur. 

Kevin Anderson

Victoria,

Love the script and have been using for a while.  But there's one issue that I'm having.  I've been able to work around it before but I'm stuck this time.  My problem is that the first line of the scroll doesn't start off screen.  The first line of the scroll starts about 3/4 of the way on screen.  Much more than a single frame of movement.  The first line starts on a layer that starts on frame one of the comp.  I'm using CC2017 on an iMac running Sierra.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

K

[Deleted User]

Victoria,

how do you do the "move things around" lines animation   and  add "images"  text matte  in the promo video? 

i want to do text matte easily