Can someone explain this...?

[The Blue Boy]

This was put up on Petapixel earlier with all the relevant links to the original website and author promising explanations about how these videos were processed in Adobe After Affects. Now since I don't have this software I'd like to know more as I think these are stunning.

See for yourselves...

http://petapixel.com/2014/01/25/scie...t/#more-128872

[Manfred M]

After Effects is a compositing tool; think of it as Photoshop for video and film. Most of the fancy titling and a lot of special effects you see on TV or in movies are composited with this piece of software.

I do use it for some fairly basic things and am by no means an expert. It is very powerful tool.

If you subscribe to Adobe CC (the suite, not just Photoshop); this is one of the tools that is part of the package.

[The Blue Boy]

Manfred,

Yes I'm in the CC cloud but would have absolutely no idea of how to achieve the above effect.

I think I'll have to "try" it.

[Manfred M]

Manfred,

Yes I'm in the CC cloud but would have absolutely no idea of how to achieve the above effect.

I think I'll have to "try" it.

The way After Effect works is that you define Key Frames (i.e. start and end points or points where motion changes) and it interpolates the effect for all subsequent frames; speed, acceleration, etc can all be defined in the x-y-z axes. From the videos, it looks like what has been done is that the birds in the frame have been replicated so that they appear to leave trails as they move,

[dan marchant]

Now since I don't have this software I'd like to know more as I think these are stunning.

It's fairly simple to do (if you have the software). All the artists is doing is shooting a bunch of timelapse shots, each with the birds in a slightly different position and then blending them to create hybrid frames that have the birds in multiple positions. The more frames you blend the longer the trail becomes.
Frame 1 just frame 1 with the birds in first position - this frame may be displayed for several frame of the video.
Frame 2 - blend frame 1 with frame 2 so the birds appear in two places in the frame - again this will be displayed for several frames of the video.
Frame 3 - blend frame 1, 2 and 3
Frame 4 - blend frame 1, 2, 3 and 4
Now you want the birds to start disappearing from the end of the trail
Frame 5 - blend frame 2, 3, 4 and 5 (no frame 1)
Frame 6 - blend frame 3, 4, 5 and 6 (no frame 1 or 2)
etc etc etc.