Edit Ninja: Super Fast Video Sampling Workflow with After Effects Scripting
Like to cut up and sample video? Sick of all that time-consuming scrubbing, slicing and rearranging in Vegas or Premiere? Well I’ve figured out a workflow using a collection of After Effects scripts which turns lots of tedious editing into a very quick process to output a series of video clips for your VJing pleasure.
This technique uses the following After Effects scripts:
AEScripts‘ “Magnum - the Edit Detector”
Reverse Selected Layer Order
Precomp to Layer Duration
Redefinery’s RenderLayers
and ScriptLauncher, to speed things up even further.
My first test run for this technique was on The Arctic Monkeys - Brainstorm:
As you can see, this clip has an extremely choppy edit. My plan was to remove all of the band shots and leave just the dancing girls and UVA’s LED wall animations. With cuts coming at a rate of several per second, this would have been extremely time-consuming using a traditional, manual editing workflow. With the following technique I managed to cut out everything I didn’t want and reassemble the remains into a series of performance-friendly video clips in about 15 minutes.
The Workflow
Install your scripts: ReverseSelectedLayerOrder and Precomp to Layer Duration go to the folder “After Effects/Support Files/Scripts/”. Magnum, RenderLayers and ScriptLauncher go to “After Effects/Support Files/Scripts/ScriptUI Panels” (you may have to make this folder manually if it’s not already there). Restart After Effects, and choose Menu: Window > rd_ScriptLauncher.jsx to get the handy Script Launcher panel up, and Menu: Window > Magnum-The Edit Detector.jsx to get your Magnum panel.
Now run Magnum - TheEditDetector on your source clip (choose sensitivity, click the layer, then click “DO IT!”). This took about a minute to run through Brainstorm, and at the default sensitivity level it found 529 edits! You may have to experiment with this level depending on your source, and of course it’s designed to find cuts, not fades, so this won’t work for all videos.
After Magnum is finished, you’ll have a series of layers. Select all of them, then use the ReverseSelectedLayerOrder script to, yes, reverse the layer order. This will be useful later when we come to render individual layers.
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