Warping a movie with bones

JCook · Post by **JCook** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 2:33 pm

I remember someone posting a method they had figured out to put bones into an imported movie and warp it, like you would warp an image, so that the movie plays and warps at the same time, and I've searched but I can't find the post. Does anyone know what post it was, or how it's possible to do this? I think it was in 2006 or 2005. Anyway, I'd like to try this in an animation I'm doing, where I've imported a movie, and I'd like to bend it if I can.

Another related question: Is there a way to control an imported movie in AS as far as having it start at a time other than frame 1? I can start it and make it repeat (happens automatically), but I'd like to start it at a certain time instead of right away.

thanks,

Jack

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 2:48 pm

- to distort a movie with bones, you only must to put the movie inside a bone layer, just like an image or vector.

- if you want that the movie start in a different frame, turn off its visibility in frame one, and turn on in the frame you want to start.

tip: if you want to make disappear and appear the video, but without affecting the continuity, put it inside a group layer (or the same bone layer) and turn off or on the group layer visibility.

JCook · Post by **JCook** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 3:08 pm

Thanks, Selgin. I couldn't get it to work at first, but then I found that it works as long as you're not at frame 0 when you move the bones. I wanted to bend the movie along a line and have it stay that way, so I had to do the bending at frame 1 and it worked perfectly. Thanks for your tips!

Jack

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 3:26 pm

Reading the question from JCook I have thought how can I do the same with AS but for linux (that don't have video import feature).
I think I can do the same just importing a image sequence inside a switch layer and then manipulate the still images with the bones from the switch layer. As well as the images are wrapped by bones and all of them are affectd by the same skeleton I can manipulate a "pseudo video" inside AS.
Also another benefit is that I can modify the frame rate of the "movie" just putting more frames between two switch keyframes.

This tip can also be applied to a Windows or Mac version of AS.

Regards
Genete

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 3:29 pm

Genete wrote:Also another benefit is that I can modify the frame rate of the "movie" just putting more frames between two switch keyframes.

ey, that's smart. anyway, why linux haven't the import video feature?

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 8:57 pm

selgin wrote:
Genete wrote:Also another benefit is that I can modify the frame rate of the "movie" just putting more frames between two switch keyframes.
ey, that's smart. anyway, why linux haven't the import video feature?

Hehe, ask respectfuly to Lost Marble.
There are several very common packages in linux that can do that job. One is mplayer. Usually is not included in mostly lunix distributions due to it have some not fully free licences, but you can download and install it from several other mirrors.
Also there are no video export in linux version.
I use a small utility called png2yuv what is part of the MJPEGtools package. With this I convert a sequence of png images into a yuv for mpeg stream (lossless quiality). Then with ffmpeg I can conver it into a master video (huge size) finally with ffmpeg or other different video converter make a flv or a divx or a mpg video.
I hope in the next version we can have video inside AS and video export hability.

Best
-G