[Alon_a]

The trick with parenting is that the parented object gets its own local coordinate system. This is good since it lets you, for instance, animate rotations indpendently of what the parent object is doing. The downside is that you have to translate those local coordinates to global ones if you want to tell an expression where things actually are.

See, for instance, here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?univpostid=873210&forumid=2&postid=873252&pview=t

– Alon

[Alon_a]

Probably this:

https://www.chyron.com/

https://www.chyron.com/news/newsroom/newsroom/2004/04-04-29-nmt.html

I just Googled, no idea what those are.

AA

[Alon_a]

You can copy the mask from Illustrator and paste it onto a solid in AE, which will create a mask. Then, copy the mask shape (emphasis: the *shape*, not the whole mask object) and paste it into the position parameter of the layer you want to animate. I’m not in front of Illustrator right now so I’m not sure if you can paste the path directly into the position parameter, but the two-step process should definitely work.

(There’s a setting in Illustrator you need to take care of for the copy paste to work, I think it’s “preserve paths” and “copy as AICB”).

AA

[Alon_a]

Without knowing what you want to do with AE (visual effects? motion graphics? compositing?) it’s impossible to give a reasonable answer. Anyway, the best way to learn AE is to use it 🙂 but if you’re asking about resources, some of the ones I know are:

– This forum (do all the tutorials)
– “Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects” by Trish and Chris Meyer, vols. 1 and 2. (invaluable, possibly the closest thing to “Best Way to learn AE” I can think of)
– Lynda.com (good for starters)
– Total Training (extremely thorough, not cheap)

Have fun,

– Alon

[Alon_a]

Toon Boom is apparently the standard, check out Moho as well, Plastic Animation Paper, Bauhaus Mirage… You can export an image sequence from Flash and composite it into video in AE or elsewhere. Flash is certainly a good one to know, the other ones IMHO are more specialized – if you don’t do 2D for a living your time may be better spent with a 3D app.

– Alon

[Alon_a]

I’m not sure what’s the exact look you’re after, but what you describe is indeed possible with Trapcode Particular. Set the emitter velocity to 0, set the rate to something appropriate according to the speed the emitter moves and the desired density of the dots, and give the particles a long lifespan with the necessary color and size over life.

– Alon

[Alon_a]

If you only have 512 MB (thanks Steve!), forget the bigger processor and get yourself more RAM. Half a gig is really not suitable for creative work of any kind, even if Bill Gates said that 640KB should be enough for anybody 🙂

https://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,1484,00.html

Of course you may find that your motherboard does not support more RAM, so you may need to replace that as well. If you’re not comfortable with installing MoBos, it may be time for a new computer… that’s how it is in this world, you want to fix a $100 software and end up mortgaging your cat for a new machine. Anyway, I would recommend going for 2GB RAM. And don’t be tempted by the latest expensive CPUs, the difference between 3.2GHz and 3.4GHz is really tiny and may cost you hundreds of dollars. Then again, a dual core and Nucleo… hmmmm….

– Alon

[Alon_a]

True. My bad.

[Alon_a]

First I’d like to clear up some terminology, just to make sure that we’re on the same page with regards to your specs… when you write “One weights 30 Mo”, I suppose you mean the file size in Megabytes (Mb), but you could be referring to minutes, I’m not sure ;-

Also, you write “this has to do with my RAM? Wich is 2,08 GHz…” – I don’t know if it’s a typo or not but anyway RAM is amount of memory which is measured in Gigabytes these days, and you probably have either 1 Gb or 2Gb or perhaps just 0.5Gb? 2.08GHz could be your processor speed, which is indeed OK but not superb for video work. If you have less than 1Gb, this may be the root of the problem, and 2Gb is actually noticeably better for video work.

Reason I’m going into all that is that it is quite possible that it’s really your system specs that are holding you back, so getting a new software may not solve the problem – in fact, a modern powerhorse such as Vegas may be making MORE rather than less demands on your configuration.

Having said that, Vegas is a great tool. What I would do if I were you is just download trial versions of the main apps such as Vegas and ULead VideoStudio and see which one works best on your system and feels the most comfortable for YOU. If your needs are simple as you describe, it just might be the case that Showbiz is really the best bet – you’ve been working with it for a while, you know it well, etc. That’s sometimes more important than a nifty app with lots of bells and whistles.

– Alon

[Alon_a]

Perfect. Thank you.

– Alon