Archive for Advanced

Converting a Web Color to an RGB float array for After Effects

May 29, 2006 at 1:59 pm · Filed under Advanced, After Effects, Scripting

I’m writing a script that needs hexadecimal color input, sometimes referred to as a web color, converted to a value usable for a solid in After Effects. After Effects wants an array of RGB values in the range 0 to 1: [R, G, B]. Luckily Javascript supports bit-wise operators so the conversion is pretty straight forward. I used this function.

var hex = 'ffaadd';
var colors = hexToRGBArray(hex);

alert("red =" + colors[0] + " green=" + colors[1] + " blue=" + colors[2]);

function hexToRGBArray(hex){
	var rgb = parseInt(hex, 16); 
	var red   = (rgb >>16) & 0xFF; 
	var green = (rgb >>8) & 0xFF; 
	var blue  = rgb & 0xFF;
	
	var colorArray = [red/255.0, green/255.0, blue/255.0];
	
	return colorArray;

}


Source for this script
Downloadable version of this script

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Moving toward reading FCP source timecode from imported Quicktimes in After Effects

May 9, 2006 at 8:59 am · Filed under Advanced, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Scripting

A recent thread on aenhancers discussed reading source timecode from Quicktimes imported from Final Cut Pro captures in After Effects. Seems like a perfectly reasonable request, there could be a bunch of situations where this information would be useful in an After Effects project. Problem is, it doesn’t seem really easy to grab that data. When you view the timecode track in the imported quicktime, the timecode is in reference to the source Quicktime not the source tape from the capture.

Correction

Mark Burton posted on the thread mentioned above that actually the timecode is written to the Quicktime. He offered a link to Sebsky Tools as an example of an app using that info. I simply misread the Quicktime player info. There is still useful info from Final Cut we can access and I think the ideas in this article are interesting so I’m leaving it up with this correction. Thanks Mark.

At least until Apple decides to put that information into the captured Quicktime We’ll need to find a workaround way to read FCP info and that’s what I’m going to cover in this post.

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