ae-motion-proof

Proof-read the motion

Every animation has two kinds of problem. One kind is taste — this beat is slow, that colour is wrong — and the only way to find it is to watch (ae_review_motion). The other kind is mechanical: two words sitting on top of each other, a keyframe half a frame off the grid, type nobody can read on a phone, a solo switch left on. Those are findable by measurement, and this is what ae_proof does.

It reads. It never edits. The playhead does not move, so it is safe on someone else's open project.

Run it

ae_proof {"comp": "S1_HOOK"}
ae_proof {"comp": "S1_HOOK", "start": "0.5s", "duration": "1s", "samples": 120}
ae_proof {"comp": "Master", "severity": "warn"}
ae_proof {"comp": "S4_PHONE", "staging": true}
ae_proof {"action": "checks"}

• Default range is the work area, sampled at about 60 moments. It takes

roughly a second.

• Sample densely when hunting jitter or pops. At 60 samples over 30

seconds the gap between samples is half a second, and a one-frame pop hides in it. Narrow the range and raise samples until the report says it is sampling every 1–2 frames.

• Proof each scene comp, not only the master. A master usually holds

precomps, and a fault inside one belongs to that comp.

• severity and group narrow a noisy report; action: "checks" lists

every check with a one-line description.

Read the findings

Each finding carries check, severity, where (layers), when (seconds and frames), what is wrong and how to fix it. look_at collects the times worth rendering.

Look before you fix. The sampler measures boxes, not pixels. When a box may be bigger than what shows — a precomp measured as its whole frame, a PNG with transparent margins, text with animators that hide characters, a masked layer — the finding says "measured generously" and drops a severity. Render that moment (ae_render_frame {"times": [...]} from look_at) before believing it, and before changing anything.

Then fix, and run ae_proof again. A clean report plus one watch-through is the standard to hand work over at.

What it screens

Forty-one checks in six groups. Thresholds scale with the frame, so they hold for 1080p and for a 9:16 phone cut.

Space and layout

Staging and hierarchy

Composition, measured. These are notes, never errors — design has exceptions — and they only run where judging composition is fair: a comp with its own full-frame background. For a scene comp that gets its background from a master, pass {"staging": true}. The craft behind them is in ae-composition.

Layers placed by a camera are measured flat for these, and the finding says so when that happened.

Jitter and chatter

Timing and keyframes

Motion physics

Render integrity

What it cannot see

Say so rather than implying the piece is clean because the report is.

• Anything the camera places. 3D layers are measured flat, so with a

camera in the comp the space rules skip them. The report names them.

• Effects that hide or move pixels — a Linear Wipe, a Transform effect, a

displacement. The box is the layer's, not the effect's result.

• Colour, contrast, banding, flashes. Look at rendered frames for those

(ae-color).

• Audio sync. That is ae-audio-sync plus listening.
• Spelling, grammar and whether the words are true. It only catches

typographic nits. Read the copy back with ae_text.

• Taste. Timing, weight and whether anything is beautiful: watch it with

ae_review_motion, against ae-motion-principles.

Where the fixes live

The loop

1. Build or edit.
2. ae_proof the comp you touched.
3. Render the look_at times and confirm each finding is real.
4. Fix what is real; say out loud what you decided was deliberate.
5. ae_proof again, then ae_review_motion once end to end.
6. Only then ae-deliver.

Run it on every format variant too — a layout that passes in 16:9 often clips in 9:16.