General Specialist

2006-06-22

AE Presets: Smooth Vertical Scrolls for TV

UPDATE: The presets now come in both PAL and NTSC variants, and include a flicker-reducing filter that adjusts itself to the chosen speed.

Working at a TV station, I see so many jumpy titles that were created in After Effects. This comes from the fact that interlaced video gives a sort of venetian blinds effect to your content, making vertical scrolls flicker if you don't scroll at certain fixed speeds.

In version 6.5, it was easy to tell people to set two keyframes and then just move the last keyframe so that the pixels/sec velocity read-out was an even double of the framerate. This was a useful feature that was actually removed when the Graph Editor was introduced in version 7.0, since you can't see this value until you release the keyframe.

When I got the question the last time I couldn't find where to enter the value anymore, making me feel kinda stupid. In a vain attempt to look like I was on top of things, I came up with the simple and unsofisticated solution of three Animation Presets for the three common scrolling speeds.

The layer that you apply the preset to will start to scroll upwards from its original position as soon as it appears in the timeline. The nice thing is that you can just drag it around to set the starting position, without having to modify any code.

//Smooth SD vertical scrolls by Jonas Hummelstrand
// Version 1.3, http://generalspecialist.com/
// Can be applied to a non-square NTSC comps or to both square and
// non-square PAL comps.

// Change the value of "intPixelsPerSecond" below based on the speed you want:
// Normal scrolls are 100 for PAL and 119.88 for NTSC
// Fast scrolls are 200 for PAL and 239.76 for NTSC
// American Idol scroll speeds are 300 for PAL and 359.64 for NTSC

intPixelsPerSecond = 100;

y=position[1]-((time-inPoint)*intPixelsPerSecond);
[position[0],y]

Here's a ZIP file with the three PAL and three NTSC speeds pre-configured.

Thanks to Nathan Shipley for the error-correction.

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8 Comments:

  • According to Trish and Chris' CMG Volume 2, 2nd Edition, you would want to avoid odd multiples of the field rate. They say it pretty well, so to quote from page 51:

    "AVOID any speed in pixels per second that is an odd multiple of the field rate of your video: for NTSC, this means 59.94, 179.82, 299.7, and 419.48 pixels per second; for PAL, the poison numbers are 50, 150, 250, 350, and 450 pixels per second. Using these numbers causes details of the text to be displayed on only one of the two fields, resulting in a loss of half your resolution.

    The best numbers are even multiples of the field rate: 119.88, 239.76, and 359.64 pixels per second for NTSC, and 100, 200, 300, and 400 pixels per second for PAL."

    So, you might want to consider removing some of the odd rates you've got in your presets. Thought I'd post since I had the book available!

    Thanks for the great blog and keep up the good work.

    - Nathan S., Indianapolis, IN.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Thursday, June 22, 2006  

  • I stand corrected! Thanks Nathan, I'll update the post and the presets!

    By Blogger Jonas Hummelstrand, at Thursday, June 22, 2006  

  • I've updated the post and the ZIP file so that they now have the correct speeds. I'm still unsure of if this preset can be applied to a non-square pixel NTSC comp.

    By Blogger Jonas Hummelstrand, at Thursday, June 22, 2006  

  • What would the side-effect be if this was applied to a square pixel comp?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Tuesday, June 05, 2007  

  • It works on a square PAL comp (since PAL's pixels are non-square horizontally) but on a square NTSC comp you would need to modify the speed somewhat so that the speed becomes correct when the square comp is scaled to non-square NTSC. Sorry, I'm really busy right now so I don't have the time to figure out what the needed speed change would be, but please share if you come up with a formula!

    By Blogger Jonas Hummelstrand, at Tuesday, June 05, 2007  

  • Hi Jonas,

    thank you so much for providing generously these presets.

    i'stucked in a problem creating horizontal marquee text and graphics in Ae. The text ist stuttering horribly, how can i avoid this?

    Thanful for any answer.

    Thomas

    By Anonymous Thomas, at Friday, April 17, 2009  

  • Thank you for making the creditroll headache a lot less painfull!

    Fredrik

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Sunday, April 19, 2009  

  • Hey dude, you saved our night-shift ;)

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Wednesday, December 23, 2009  

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