Scaling Up Automation

Alessandro

Hiya all fellas
A question about Excalibur.
I often work with images/clips to which I apply a 100% to 110% scale up (first to last frame - regardless the length).
Is there way to create an automation directly from the Motion in the Effect Control panel? So basically, whenever I press a specific shortcut, Premiere adds a Scale keyframe on the first frame of the clip at 100%, and one on the last frame at 110%.
I hope it's clear any many thanks
Alex

Sir_Ivan

Best way to do it now is to create Effect Preset in Premiere Pro and then apply it with Excalibur.

To create preset:

select any video clip
add 100% scale keyframe at first frame and 110% scale keyframe at the last frame
select Motion effect, right click it, choose "Save Preset"
in save preset menu, select Type "Scale". This way preset will create keyframes regardless of clip duration

Alessandro

Damn you're good!

Thanks!!

Alessandro

Hi Ivan, thanks again for the help yesterday. The shortcut works and it applies perfectly as I needed.

I have however noticed something: if I apply it, and then undo it with CTRL+Z, Premiere won't undo the preset, but the previous action. It's like it doesn't recognise it's been applied, though it's there and works perfectly.
Any idea why this may happen?
Many thanks

Sir_Ivan

Alessandro this happens because some actions of API are not recored by Premiere Pro. To be certain to undo Excalibur commands, use Excalibur Undo command:
https://manuscript.knightsoftheeditingtable.com/extensions/excalibur/commands/special#undo

Alessandro

Sir_Ivan Great, thanks. Would you recommend to set up the Excalibur undo" for every action, or just for the Excalibur actions?

Sir_Ivan

Alessandro if you don't plan to undo text you typed inside active text box (e.g. you are in process of renaming bin in Project panel), then yes!
I use Excalibur Undo as my standard undo.

Alessandro

Sir_Ivan Hi, I set up as CTRL Z the Exalibur Undo, which is great.
Is there an Exalibur Redo as well?

E.g. I apply an Exalibur command, I want to remove it so I hit CTRL Z, it's undo'ed, however I want to redo it, the standard SHIFT CTRL Z won't work.

So I was hoping to know if there was an Exalibur Redo!

Cheers

Sir_Ivan

No, Excalibur Redo doesn’t exist, it is in feature requests. I need time to code it 🙂

Alessandro

JMG7822 Sir_Ivan Hiya, I noticed the same. I've been trying to find a pattern, but so far no luck. What I can say is that the only clips where it doesn't some times apply are nested or multicam ones.
Also, I have 4 scale presets I use, and I noticed that it's only the "100% to 110%" that it doesn't some times work.
E.g. > I often edit big events, so I have multicam sequences. Whenever I cut on a static camera for a couple of seconds, I then apply a scale to it to make it look more interesting. Usually it's 100% to 110%. When I press my shortcut and it doesn't apply (I'd say 1 out of 10 times), I find that my other presets (like 110% to 100%) always work.
I never noticed the number 64 however.
Hopefully this will help.
Cheers

JMG7822

I do a lot of scale presets on images, and Excalibur has been amazing at automating with a shortcut. I mainly use the shortcuts via Touch Portal. However, i've recently run into a problem where sometimes those scale presets or even a NEST shortcut stops applying. I even try the shortcut directly from Excalibur and it also doesn't apply. I do notice sometimes a small white text bar pops up with the number 64, not sure if that is an error message. I try a bunch of different shortcuts, refresh, restart premiere and then everything goes back to normal till the next time it gets unresponsive again. Anyway to try and debug the error or see why they stop running? Thanks!

Sir_Ivan

JMG7822 Could you record you screen next time when you will get this problem?
Send it to support@knightsoftheeditingtable.com
Also I will let you know how to enable logging for Excalibur.

Sir_Ivan

Alessandro when you say that preset is not applied, do you mean there are no shortcuts generated and you can see that clip doesn't scale up towards the end?

Alessandro

I have given a shortcut to each scale preset I create:
100% to 110% > f8
110% to 100% > f9
50% to 60% > f10
60% to 50% > f11

Whenever I need to apply the preset, I select the clip and hit the shortcut. In case of f9, this generates a
keyframe on the first frame with the scale at 110% and a keyframe on the last frame of the clip with the scale at 100%.
What I noticed, is that when I hit the shortcut of the last three preset above described, they always apply to a clip (ie the animation generates correctly) while when I hit f8 it sometimes (1 out of 10 times) does not apply. In case it does not apply, two things may happen:
1) no keyframes generate
2) only the first keyframe generate

On the clip where f8 does not work, the other presets work correctly. It's just that 100% to 110%.

I have also noticed that this issue happens only on nested or multicam clips.

I will take a video next time it happens so it can be helpful to understand better.