[Alejandro Benavente]

Nope, you are not alone. I’m experiencing the same issue, beachball crash and program freeze, auto save of progress in a _+1 version of the project.

[ Edit – Removed a lot of detailed info about the problem ]

Ok, I think I’ve finally solved the problem for good.
Short answer is, the Pushbullet extension for Chrome was interfering with AE and causing these crashes, odd as it might seem.

I located an After Effects error report in the system Console just before every crash, reading something about “can’t allocate a new block for a pasteboard”. Strangely enough, Chrome browser was also throwing constant errors with the exact same title, which was odd.
Googling about it I found some other users which were having the same drag&crash problem with an entirely different app, and they pinpointed the Pushbullet extension within Chrome.
I have deactivated it, and have been working in AE for hours now without a single crash.

David, hope this also solves your issue, it certainly seems to be the exact same scenario.

[Alejandro Benavente]

Ok, I know this thread is pretty old already, but I just stumbled upon this problem in my own project and haven’t been able to find a solution on the net, despite it being quite a common issue.

This is the multi-step solution I found that works for me, which I’d like to share for the record. I’ve tested it on CS6, but I reckon it should work with previous versions as well.
(Just to clarify, people often find this problem because in a 3D oriented project, we usually start up by creating a new plane and rotating it 90º to serve as the world floor. Then we build everything on top of it, but further down the development process, if you try to paste a motion path into a layer’s position property, the path will run on the x-y plane which, in your comp, will be right-left-up-down, rather than the floor’s right-left-near-far which is probably what you intended. It’s a little bit difficult to explain until you get stuck with it.)
So, on with the solution:

1. Create a new Null (1), make it a 3D layer.
2. Copy your mask/path/vector shape, paste it into your Null (1) position property (now, the null has the right motion path, but it travels on the wrong plane).
3. Create a new Null (2), make it 3D. Parent the first Null (1) to this Null (2). Rotate Null (2) 90º on the desired axis (probably x). (Now you have “knocked over” your Null (1) with its moving path onto the floor, and it is moving on the correct plane).
4. Delete Null (2). Null (1) is now moving on the correct plane (probably x-z) with no parent, but its axis are twisted (z pointing upwards).
5. Create new Null (3), make it 3D. Copy Null (2) position property, paste it into Null (3) (or paste it directly into your final moving object). Now, Null (3) (or your object) is moving on the floor plane along the desired path, and its axis are correctly aligned.

Hope this helps you out!
Cheers.

[Alejandro Benavente]

Hi,

I can confirm this version fixes the issue; SRT subtitles are imported frame-accurate into FCPX now.
Really useful tool, and very helpful and fast support; thanks a lot for that, Andreas.

Alex.

[Alejandro Benavente]

Hi all,
Slightly off-topic, but I believe Bret had his question solved already; I couldn’t find another XTI-related thread, and would be very grateful if Andreas could spare a minute to have a look at this himself.

I’m currently trying to set up some stable workflow for our subtiling needs, which would involve working with SRTs and some motion template style subs on FCPX in some cases, for which your tools seem to come in extremely handy.
I’m having an issue with XTI conversion, though… everything seems to work just fine, but my fcpxml-imported project has all in and out points rounded to a second (i.e. miliseconds are discarded, and not translated into frames, all in-outs are HH:MM::SS:00).
I’ve checked that my SRT has subtitles synced to the milisecond, and this info is correctly translated to the fcpxml generated by XTI, so I think the rounding comes up on FCPX import (we’re currently working with 10.0.8).

Any tip on this issue would be most welcome. Andreas, thanks a lot for developing this tool, and making it freely available.

– Alex.

[Alejandro Benavente]

Thanks for your input, Walter.
I’m running OS 10.6.3; Qt X; FCP 7 & AE CS4
I’ll go trough Todd’s post and report back.

Cheers!
Alex

[Alejandro Benavente]

Thanks, Jeremy.

Well, the original path works in the sense that it can be pasted as a motion path.
I think I could get around the 3d rotation pickwipping the position properties to different axes (i.e. x to y, z to x, and so on). Then apply the scale as a factor to this expressions… I foresee a lot of experimentation in the hours ahead!
I’ll report the results.
A.

[Alejandro Benavente]

Spot on, Jon!
Thanks a lot, worked like a breeze.

Really nice animation, BTW.

Best,
Alex.

[Alejandro Benavente]

Hi, Dan.
I succedeed with a different approach before reading your hint.
I’ll give it a try, though, to check if it works.
Thanks!
A.

[Alejandro Benavente]

Thanks for the tip, Bogie; yeah, I read that piece of advice from you in another thread 🙂
Indeed, the idea for the whole thing came from that Tutorial; I had already checked it out. Reasonably enough, Michael does not zoom into the earth… really nice effect he achieves, though.

Anyway, my animation doesn’t go for the photorealistic style. It’s rather vector-looking, kind of news programme style. Thus, it has no sun rising, neither atmosphere effects, stars, and so on.

Thanks for the tips anyway, guys.
Alex.

[Alejandro Benavente]

My God, this already looks like a blog rather than a thread!

Anyway, just for the info: Investigating further, I found the very interesting Adobe Pixel Bender tools, which probably would be the way to go for an extremely precise solution.
It would require some effort though.

Good luck if anyone wants to try it out!
A.