After Effects : Camera Shake...Help please !

[Michael Egerle]

I have After Effects 7.0, and I want to add a camera-shake effect to a pre-existing video.

I have read a tutorial on how to add the camera shake, and it works very well, but I have one problem... I don't want the shake effect to last throughout the entire video, which it is doing now. I only want it to appear, for say, frames 800-900.

How do I make it do this ?

I have already tried making keyframes on the timeline, for the 'shake' layer, but I can't seem to get them to work....I can get the shake to not play until the first keyframe, but then it keeps playing even past the last keyframe, all the way to the end of the video...

I'm a total noob at video editing, and I just got AE 7.0 a few days ago...

If anyone could help...thanks.

-Michael

p.s : The shake tutorial, if anyone is curious, is located here : Camera Shake

[Nick Jushchyshyn]

Did you watch the tutorial through to the end? He does explain how to do this by modifying the expression in the Adjustment layer.

Here's a synapsis....
A) Create the shaking look with the Motion Tile effect applied to an adjustment layer.
1- Add an Adjustment Layer
2- Apply Motion Tile from the Stylize group of effects
3- Turn Motion Tile's "Mirror Edges" parameter On
4- For a PC, Alt+Click the clock next to the Tile Center parameter to enter an expression (Option+Click on the Mac)
5- Enter the expression "wiggle(10,100)"

B) Control the amount of wiggle over time
1- Add a Slider Control (from the Expression Controls group) effect to the adjustment layer
2- Name the Slider something useful ("Camera Shake")
3- Apply the slider to the Motion Tile effect...
a) Go back to the expression you entered in part A).
b) Add a new line BEFORE the "wiggle" expression.
c) type "Shake=" into this line
d) with the cursor still just after the "=" drag from the spiral pick-whip button to the slider control in your "Camera Shake" effect.
Now, the slider will control how much wiggle there will be.

4- Finish by key frame animating the values in the Camera Shake slider.

For your shot...
Go to frame 799, click the clock next to the Slider control (enables animation) and set the value to 0.
Go to frame 800 and set the value to 100 (or any other value you like depending on how much shaking you would like to happen)
Go to frame 901, set the value to zero
Go to frame 900, set the value to 100 (or whatever else you used on frame 800)

OK ... all done
The wiggle amount should be zero up to frame 799 ... so no shake.
then at 800 the slider will pop up to 100 or something and Motion Tile will start shaking until frame 901.

Does this help ???

[Michael Egerle]

Yes, it does...

I thought the Slider was only for making the shake fade in and out...I guess it's mandatory.

Thanks, Nick !

Edit-

Oh, and I also thought that it wouldn't really be the same for his scene, which is separate layers for the text, etc, and mine, which is just a flat video layer.

Edit again -

It works great ! Thank you Nick !