[Dan Ebberts]

Actually, this seems to work:

txt = thisComp.layer("first").text.sourceText;
style.setText(txt).setJustification("alignRight")

[Dan Ebberts]

I think this is all you need:

txt = thisComp.layer("first").text.sourceText;
style.setJustification("alignRight").setText(txt)

[Dan Ebberts]

Hard to tell what’s going on there, but it seems like you would need the mask applied to both the front and back layers.

[Dan Ebberts]

If you’re using the JavaScript expression engine, you’ll need to change the expression to something like this:

toCompVec([0, 0, 1])[2] > 0 ? value : 0

[Dan Ebberts]

I haven’t tested this at all, but my hunch is that your keyframe processing code changes what’s selected, so you may need to collect the selected properties for all layers before you start manipulating things.

[Dan Ebberts]

The expressions I posted are for the Position property. It looks like your existing expressions are for Source Text, is that correct?

[Dan Ebberts]

Assuming that your text layers (renamed to “Text 1” and “Text 2” in this example) are not parented to anything and have not been scaled, you should be use position expressions like these to center the combined length (plus a gap between them).

Expression for Text 1:

gap = 20;
w1 = thisComp.layer("Text 1").sourceRectAtTime(time,false).width;
w2 = thisComp.layer("Text 2").sourceRectAtTime(time,false).width;
centerX = thisComp.width/2;
targetX = centerX - (w1 + gap + w2)/2;
curX = value[0] + sourceRectAtTime(time,false).left;
offsetX = curX - targetX;
value - [offsetX,0]

Expression for Text 2:

gap = 20;
w1 = thisComp.layer("Text 1").sourceRectAtTime(time,false).width;
w2 = thisComp.layer("Text 2").sourceRectAtTime(time,false).width;
centerX = thisComp.width/2;
targetX = centerX + (w1 + gap + w2)/2 - w2;
curX = value[0] + sourceRectAtTime(time,false).left;
offsetX = curX - targetX;
value - [offsetX,0]

[Dan Ebberts]

That’s essentially what he has already, right? The issue is that it is not straightforward to animate speed in AE. I describe the problem and a solution here:

https://www.motionscript.com/articles/speed-control.html

motionscript.com

Expression Speed and Frequency Control

Dan Ebberts's resource for After Effects scripting and expressions

[Dan Ebberts]

I’m not sure this is what you’re asking, but it appears that setting the parameter list invalidates your object reference, so to change the selection afterwards, you need to re-establish the reference with a full property spec path, like this:

boxLayer.property("Effects").property("Dropdown Menu Control").property(1).setValue(2);

[Dan Ebberts]

I don’t think there’s any practical way to do that with expressions. You’d have to use sampleImage(), and I think it would take forever to analyze enough pixels to determine two frames were the same.