Ae Roto Brush

[Lynne Pruskowski]

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Generally work has gone smoothly with Roto Brush 2 in AE 17.5, but I'm about halfway through a 900-frame shot, and suddenly each corrective stroke causes a 30-second delay while it propagates the change. (I had previously jumped through the shot, beginning about halfway through, and applied Roto Brush strokes every five frames, and experienced the same long delays after each stroke.) I've tried narrowing the Roto Brush & Refine Edge span, but as soon as I make a new stroke, the span automatically expands back out to the full length of the shot. I've tried freezing and unfreezing propagation, which doesn't solve my problem. For bonus points, can someone explain how I can get propagation to go back towards the head of the shot? It always indicates it's going towards the end of the shot. Thank you in advance for any suggestions!

Correction to my original post: It appears the delay after making a correction stroke is while AE is rendering the correction, not propagating. If I jump the gun and prematurely try to add another stroke, it says I need to wait until the current frame finishes rendering. But is there a way to eliminate, or greatly reduce, this long delay?

Processing time depends on the shot, the codec, the frame size, and the size of the matte. Faster systems help. Making sure that you have at least 4GB of ram allocated to other apps and your ram allotment for Adobe apps is an even number also helps. Starting at frame zero and analyzing a frame at a time to check for errors and corrections also helps. Just letting Rotobrush propagate and then going back to fix problems isn't going to save you any time.

I'm having a similar problem with the propagation, too. Let me simplify. I use the rotobrush once and it takes forever for it to load on After Effects 18.2.1, like over ten minutes. I have to save the project, close it and open it again just to use the rotobrush. Why is this happening? Is there a problem with the 18.2.1 version? Do you guys know any way that I can fix that?

1200 frames is an eternity in almost any movie. The average time between cuts is now around 4 seconds. Is there any way to cut up the clip? Is there any way to use procedural mattes or animated masks to simplify the Rotobrush workload?

I try and never work on any frames in AE that will not end up in the final edit. I learned to do that in the early 1970s when I was hand painting mattes on acetate animation cells to replace the sky in a shot I was working on for a documentary. My partner in the project had been doing visual effects for more than 20 years. I never forgot the advice to edit first, then do the visual effects. A great deal of the ways After Effects works with its multi-plane and animation capabilities come directly from the work and patents of Max Fleischer in about 1915.

Whenever I finish rotobrushing a video clip and go back to the composition window, when I change anything in the composition that somehow triggers the Roto Brush to completely restart the propagating process, which can be very time consuming. Those changes don't even need to be something related to the rotobrush, even stuff like adding a text layer or just looking at a different part of the compisition can trigger this to happen.

Did you Freeze Rotobrush? Are you stacking a bunch of other layers in the same comp as the Rotobrush layer? If so, that's not a good idea. Your Rotrobrush layer should be the only layer in a comp. If you need to use the matte that is created you nest the comp in the main composition with the other layers. If your roto is complicated and longer than just a few seconds it is a really good idea to Pre-render the Rotobrush comp so you end up with a visually lossless source file with transparency. This is doubly important if you are using Dynamic Link and Premiere Pro.

I seriously don't beleive that anyone who ISN'T experiencing this issue A) understands the actual issue or B) understands how absolutely infuriating it is. I have watched DOZENS of videos on how to use the rotoscope brush and never have I seen anyone's video propagate constantly. My file just auto-saved which triggered another 999 frame propagation. The more you do, the longer you're going to wait EVERYtime you stop to fix a border error.

This is true. I have been researching this issue for a few days now, and it seems like there are just a few people in this unlucky "club" while everyone else just spews random useless suggestions on how to fix some alternate issue they made up in their head.

This is what is happening: We double click the layer in our comp so it opens up the layer panel. We select the rotobrush and work on a frame. Some random green rectangle covering an arbitrary number of frames that isn't the entire comp appears and an arrow somewhere in the middle of it points either left or right (I guess it flips a coin or something). Then as soon as we try to click literally ANYTHING, After Effects calls timeout and forces us to wait while the Rotobrush "propagates frame [n] of [m]".

When I say anything, I mean ANYTHING. If you try to fix a frame, Propagate. If you simply move the playhead to a different part (even something you have already brushed), Propagate. If you click Save, Propagate. If you click a different window, return to After Effects and accidentally click something to get back into the window, Propagate.

Like, all I want to do is brush the first frame, advance automatically, and then fix it when it makes a mistake, just like I would with a Track Mask or in Mocha. I don't want it to go back and re-do the first 50 frames (while stopping me from doing anything else) just because I spotted a mistake on frame 51. Just let me fix frame 51 and continue working.

Before someone gets brutally murdered over this, here's how I do it. JUST READ IT.

Firstly, I've been in your situation too. It is infuriating, and frankly, this should be addressed seriously by Adobe. Just dropping name of big companies who use AE doesn't mean nobody never got the same issues too.

Firstly, "Automatic Propagation" is stupid. In AE2023, there should be a way to stop and constrain the propagation in time, other than Freezing the complete job. Once you're happy with a portion, you should be able to just lock it, so AE don't come after you and just mess with it. Just this, not having being made to work this way is puzzling. I know you can reduce the span or have multiple ones, but that doesn't change anything.

You won't be able to roto brush a 5 minutes video with a subject jumping and moving around with black hair over a black pixelated background, from start to finish, UNLESS, you split and prep your video before. Unfortunately.

For instance, suppose you don't have a MP4 with no alpha channel (such a YouTube video), and you can't color key the background without loosing too much details that you want to keep.

Here, I will create a pretty loose mask surrounding the subject so mask-tracking gets done fairly quickly. Then, I will end up with a video with an incompleted alpha channel with a matte surrounding the subject that I want to get rid of.

Since AE messes up or starts to struggle beyond the 20 seconds mark when rotoscoping, I, then split my video in 20 seconds numerated segments that I will reassemble once all done. Premiere here is the way to go for this, trust me, even if AE can do it too.

20 seconds it the magic number for me. I never got any issue rotoscoping with AE since, no matter the complexity of the scene. And I just have an average gaming desktop with an unsupported AMD GPU.

IMPORTANT - When the Layer windows loses focus and your computer idles after a predetermined amount of time set in the Preview Preferences, that's when AE starts messing with you. It will start rendering non-rendered frames and that's can be time consuming (and nerve-wracking) on a long video. You may even decide to quit and contemplate starting a new life right there, hence the 20 sec. segment.

Now, once you're done determining the background/foreground and refining your edges on the subject and you're happy with your roto brush setting, use the Pg UP/Pg DN keys to advance. - You MUST watch carefully the thin green progress bar just above the propagation ones with chevrons (that is there only to add confusion). This is the obscur Rendering Frame Bar that tells you if a frame is rendered or not. As you move, frame gets automatically rendered when going slowly (a 1-3 sec. pace between each Pg DN, depending on you computer power). Go one by one slowly, watch the RF bar, and the Layer windows. Any correction applied will affect already rendered frames and you will have to go back. That's OK. As long you go slowly, things are fine.

Using this Brute Force approach, you want to render every frame as you move forward in time. Again, this means every time you move one frame, wait that AE has done rendering the frame. If you've moved 10 frames forward in time and AE has suddenly "UNRENDERED" few frames after you made slight adjustment with the brushes, STOP and move backward using the Pg DN key. Most likely AE need your help to fix few contiguous frames here (or just one). But that's nothing and usually very quick to fix and you won't have to fix them all. When you move, they often fix themselves of if the frame was rendered, it will stand that way. As long you stop and fix and render them, you'll be back where you were in no time.

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