Numbers + Timecode | Effects of After Effects

[Music] numbers and time code can both be found under the text category and these are actually the only two effects in this category and we need something to apply them to so i'm just going to make a new solid by going up to layer new solid make sure it's the size of my comp and click ok and then i'll just start with the numbers effect we'll drag that out and we're immediately going to get a prompt asking us a little bit about what we want our text to look like so we can choose the font i'm going to change that to one called abolition you can change the styling of your font right here and we have the option to change this from being horizontal text to vertically stacked text i'll leave that at horizontal and we have alignment controls right over here so by default it's going to align it to the right meaning right justified i'm going to change that to left but you can choose whatever you want here and then click ok with those options set we have numbers generated now these are teeny tiny numbers because when this effect was created the standard comp size was probably 640 by 480 which would have made that text look a little bit bigger regardless all you need to do to change this is now go to the effect and find the size property to increase the size now this color is hurting my eyes so i'm going to change the fill color right here under the fill and stroke section and i'll make that a different color maybe just a nice light gray click ok then let's start at the top here and work our way down so first of all we have the type and we're currently set to number but we have a lot of different options for the type of number that's being displayed if we say number leading zeros then that's going to show us five zeros before the decimal point and i can increase or decrease the value to see how that changes the number i'll undo that and look at the other types we have time code for base 30 25 or 24 frames per second my comp is set to 24 frames per second right now so if i change it to that then we'll have standard time code format matching this comp and i'm actually going to come down to the position property right here and scoot this over so we can see it more clearly but we're on the 15th frame so that's why our time code is displaying 15 frames you see that it's in sync with my comp now i could still offset that value and it'll play from that offset time code all right set that back down to zero and take a look at the other options we have time which is just like a clock format if i increase the value that's going to keep going around and around and it automatically switches from am to pm next up is the numerical date which if we set this back down to zero it starts at january 1st 1995 which was the year that after effects 3.0 came out for what that's worth but again the value property is what's going to offset that date so we can scoot forward in time as far as we want but there is a checkbox right here for the current time and date if i check that on it's going to pull the date from your system whatever your computer's date is set to will show up right here i'll uncheck that and we also have options for a short date meaning an abbreviated day month and then year as well as a long date with full words unfortunately there is no way to adjust the order of this format if your country uses a different format than the us you're just stuck with this format and then finally we have hexadecimal which is base 16 time code so increasing this number will increase or decrease the hexadecimal display of time just in case you ever needed to display that inside of a comp okay let's set this back down to just number turn off current time and date and point out that we have a checkbox right here that says random values so if i set this down to zero and i check on random values you guessed it we have random numbers showing up here if i move this out a little bit we can see that when random values is checked this property right here is the random max value so if i change this to say 10 then we're only going to get random numbers between 0 and 10. if i crank that up to say 500 then it'll be between 0 and 500. now i also have the ability to adjust these decimal places if i don't want any i could just change that down to 0 and now i'm getting a random whole number on every frame if you need a lot of decimal places you can crank that all the way up to 10. i'll set that back down to 0 and uncheck random values and back down in the fill and stroke category again this is where we can adjust the position of the number we can change the display options from fill only to stroke only or fill over stroke or stroke over fill just like in the character panel we have color controls for both the fill and the stroke so i could make that something that stands out a little bit more increase the stroke width and maybe change it to fill over stroke so very similar controls to what we already have for the text tools in after effects i'll collapse fill and stroke and the format section and we've already seen the size value which allows us to scale this up or down but then we also have a value here for the tracking allowing us to space the numbers out or keep them closer together we also have the option for proportional spacing which is checked on by default but may produce different spacing depending on the type of font that you're using i'll leave that on and set the tracking back down to zero and then finally we have composite on original which does exactly what it sounds like it doesn't get rid of the contents of the layer you apply it to and just lays the text on top of it now if you ever notice that when you increase or decrease this value right here that your numbers are jutting around like the one for instance is skinnier than the two so you can see that it's pushing the third number out as i toggle between those two that's because this is not a mono-spaced font mono spaced means every character has the same width so if i go into my options and type in something else i know there's a font called deja vu and that has a mono spaced version of the font i'll click ok and now as i increase or decrease this value you can see that whatever this number is right here it doesn't change position it's a mono spaced font every character is the same width and that's really the only way to know that you're going to lock in your numbers to their exact positions but that's really all you need to know about the numbers effect now let's quickly take a look at the time code effect again we need a solid to apply it to i'll apply the time code to it and this is much more of a utility if you ever need to bake in the time code on top of an animation or something that you're exporting out of after effects that's basically what this is for it defaults to putting in the top left corner of the screen and it's already compositing it on the original so after effects is basically assuming you're putting this on top of footage and you still want to be able to see that footage now i could make this bigger with the text size property but it only goes up to 128 i can adjust the text position to wherever i want i have color control for the text i have a color control for the box and i can even uncheck this box right here to turn the box off i'll leave that on for now and then we can also turn down the opacity overall on that effect independently from the layer itself now up at the top we have options for the display format which is the standard smpte hours minute seconds frames but we can also change that to just frame numbers or we could change it to feet plus frames which is a film measurement for 35 millimeter film as well as feet plus frames for 16 millimeter film i'll turn that back down to the standard hours minute seconds frames and if i scrub through again this is synchronized to our composition but it's actually pulling the time source from the layer so if i were to move this around it's going to move the time code around as well it's looking at the start or the end point of the layer i've applied it to i can change that time source up here from layer source to composition and now when i move the layer around it's not changing anything it can scrub through and it's synced with my composition you can also change that to be custom and that way we can go into this custom category change our frame rate which this comp is 24 frames per second so i'll drop it down to there you can enable or disable drop frame as well as offsetting the starting frame so if you need a time code to not be in sync with the footage you're applying it to you have full control of that but that's the numbers and time code effects in a nutshell hey thanks for watching if you enjoyed this tutorial then check out the other ones here on my youtube channel and if you like my teaching style then definitely check out my longer form content on skillshare and school of motion and if you want to support more tutorials like this one check out my patreon you can find links for all that stuff in the description of this video [Music]

Channel: Jake In Motion

Views: 3,575

Keywords: After Effects, Animation, Motion Graphics, Mograph, Motion Design, Tutorial, Adobe, Adobe After Effects

Id: EMHcq7YOhfQ

Length: 8min 21sec (501 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021