[Adam Taylor]

check out Overland https://www.overlandstorage.com

I have one of their scsi tape drives and its worked flawlessly for the past two years. I know they also make non-scsi connected drives (SAS, Fibre – maybe others as well).

One thing you might want to consider is using an older mac with a scsi card to become your backup server. I have done just this and it works really well. I installed the backup software on the old mac, connected the tapedrive via scsi, and connected my two other “working” macs via gigabit ethernet.

This way i can leave the old mac to run backups software and schedules 24hrs a day, it leaves my other machines free to work without multitasking the backups, and i dont have to worry that an OS update might upset the backup software, because once i got it working stably i have not done any updates and its worked perfectly for the last two years.

It also means that if i have a system drive fail, i don’t have to re-install the system, then the backup software before i can actually run the restore.

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

“black frame drops” hunh? you are seeing a black frame drop into view from the top of the screen?

Can i ask if you have a AJA Kona video card? Have you installed the Kona3 adobe drivers whilst also having the drivers for FCP?

I ask because i had a similar problem and it was caused by a conflict between the adobe specific drivers and the more general video drivers that AJA wrote. I was made aware of the problem by AJAs tech support, so they are aware of the problem, and it was a year ago, so the problem may have been resolved…but you never know.

The solution was to remove the adobe drivers that came from AJA.

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

or you could achieve that kind of look using the pen tool to create the lines and applying the Stroke effect and some Glows.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

i’ve not downloaded your project – but a thought occurs…are you using linear keyframes or something else?

if you have easy ease on the keyframes, try getting rid of it. Your description sounds like its something that is often cured using the toggle hold setting on the keyframe assistant.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

i’d try setting the overall min & max values of the sliders to something very small…perhaps 0 to 4, or maybe even less, then you will get much finer control over the changing values.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

In that case you will probably need to create a null, add a couple of Effect/Expression Controller/Slider and then use the expression pickwhip to link the various parts of your wiggle expressions to a a slider each. Then you can use keyframes to animate value changes on the slider and have those changes affect the wiggle expression.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

if you want the motion to look real, grab any old cheap camera…(even the video on a little still cam is good enough), get a friend to drive you around for a bit whilst you hold the camera up and record looking straight ahead.

import the video into AE, track the motion of your handheld video (it helps if you can stick something to the windshield as a tracking point), apply the motion to a null, then parent your layers to the null.

It’ll look more realistic and will definitely be uniquely your own motion…random wiggles never seem to have enough randomness for me.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

i’d try creating a layer with some animated fractal noise – set the blockiness so that the size of blocks is similar to the size of the letters, then use that layers as a track matte for an adjustment layer which has your blur / glow effect.

Thus your fractal will drive the opacity of the effect.

i’ve not tried this yet…but its certainly something i would try.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

you can also make some really nice bubbles using AEs built in effect – Foam.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not watching you!

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk