[Curious Turtle]

It may also be something as simple as caching the audio for playback too. If you’ve got a long(ish) work area, I’ve seen this take quite a while to figure this out.

Agree with Scott’s comments about multiprocessing though.

All the best,
Ben

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[Curious Turtle]

Yeah, I should’ve said they were hidden! Nasty things to find. In Vista it’s even worse (C:\Users\Ben\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\After Effects\8.0\ModifiedWorkspaces)

You’ve got nothing to lose by copying over everything you find there. If you want to be picky then you can open the XML files and do a search for “Dave Workspace” and it’ll pop up between a .

Cheers,
Ben

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[Curious Turtle]

You’re right to apply it to Opacity. Sorry, I should probably have been clearer and not assumed so much. Your reading of the expression was bang on, but you didn’t apply the data you got to the final result.

Here’s the final expression:

a=thisComp.layer("Arrow").transform.rotation;
if (a>=360) a=a%360;
if (a<180 || a>240) 100 else 50

So what we’re doing is feeding in the data we get from rotation%360 into your final if/else.

Does that make sense? And more importantly, does that work how you want it to?

Cheers,
Ben

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[Curious Turtle]

I’m not sure if this will work for V7 to CS4 (it does for CS3) and you don’t say if you’re on Mac or Windows, so I’ll do my best to give you a generic answer that works!

If you do a search for a folder called “ModifiedWorkspaces” you’ll find an xml file for your personal workspace. “Workspaces.xml” should be in the folder above where you found the previous ModifiedWorkspaces folder. It’s in the preferences folder basically, but these are hidden in different places depending on the platform. So a simple search is just as simple.

Hope that helps,
Ben

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[Curious Turtle]

I’m going to suggest something “Boris” first, then give another solution.

You could try BCC Motion Key in the Continuum Complete package. This will try to reconstruct a background image from multiple frames. There’s a tutorial on the BorisFX site.

The other way, possibly without tracking, is to create a clean plate then settle down for some good, old-fashioned rotoscoping. Basically create articulated masks to cut out the foreground elements and reveal the clean background plate.

How do you create the plate? Well, if you can’t get a good bit of clear footage when shooting, then it’s a fair bit of Photoshop work, blending multiple frames and a good amount of cloning.

I’ve got a training DVD in production that is all about roto work with Mocha. So I’ll just say, that depending on your footage, you could be in for a fair amount of post work. 🙂

Hope that helps,
Ben

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[Curious Turtle]

This will get just the degrees for you, and not the number of complete rotations:

a=thisComp.layer("YOUR LAYER").transform.rotation;
if (a>=360) a=a%360;
a

So you just need to slot this into your existing expression.

All the best,
Ben

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[Curious Turtle]

The easiest way to do this would be to use parenting rather than expressions.

i) Create a null layer and add a camera too.
ii) Add your five picture layers and turn all six layers into 3D layers.
iii) Set the z-position of your picture layers to a suitable distance.
iv) Parent the first picture layer to the null object.
v) Rotate the null object 72 degrees in Y. Parent the next picture, rotate the null 72 degrees in Y. Repeat for all the others.
vi) If your layers aren’t all facing forwards, then select the pictures, right-click > Transform > Auto-orient and orient towards the camera.

Should be job done there. You can adjust the z distance if your pictures are still crashing into each other.

Hope that helps,
Ben

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[Curious Turtle]

Are you exporting from After Effects with the intention of bringing it back into your FCP sequence? If so, then you want to keep it to your original settings.

What’s happening here is HDV uses non-square pixels, which need to be stretched out to display the image “correctly”. As long as the clips have the correct PAR assigned to them then Final Cut will know what to do with them.

Avoid resizing the footage to 1920×1080 when exporting from After Effects if the rest of your clips on the FCP timeline are still 1440×1080. When you drop your new clip in, FCP will want to render it.

Read more about Pixel Aspect Ratios in the help.

Hope that helps,
Ben

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[Curious Turtle]

Here’s a thought… Is your track type set to Stabilize? If so, change it to Transform and you’ll be able to pick your Null layer up.

Hope it’s as simple as that,
Ben

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[Curious Turtle]

And use the most important keyboard shortcut in the entire application often:
(Win) Ctrl-S
(Mac) Cmd-S

And just as useful, is to use the Increment & Save feature when you’ve reached a mini-goal in your project. If your project file then gets corrupted, you can still go back to your previous major step.

It sucks, but you won’t be forgetting to save again. :o)

Good luck with your project,
Ben

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