[Dan Ebberts]

This is how I’d approach it, although it doesn’t have the sliders, or making the pause proportional to the height of the destination layer (it wouldn’t be hard to add those features):

spd = 100;  // pixels per second
pause = .5; // seconds
startIndex = 2;
endIndex = 5;
curIndex = startIndex;
accumTime = prevAccum = 0;
while (accumTime <= time){
  curLayer = thisComp.layer(curIndex);
  curRect = curLayer.sourceRectAtTime(time,false);
  curPos = curLayer.toComp([curRect.left+curRect.width/2, curRect.top+curRect.height/2]);
  nextLayer = thisComp.layer(curIndex+1);
  nextRect = nextLayer.sourceRectAtTime(time,false);
  nextPos = nextLayer.toComp([nextRect.left+nextRect.width/2, nextRect.top+nextRect.height/2]);
  v = nextPos - curPos;
  dist = length(v);
  moveDur = dist/spd;
  totalDur = moveDur + pause;
  prevAccum = accumTime;
  accumTime += totalDur;
  curIndex++;
  if (curIndex >= endIndex) break;
}
delta = time - prevAccum;
delta > moveDur ? nextPos : curPos + normalize(v)*ease(delta,0,moveDur,0,dist);

[Dan Ebberts]

I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking, but if you set your comp name up like this:

“First_Second_Third”

Then you could have expressions like this for your first line:

s = thisComp.name.split("_");
s[0]

and this for your second line:

s = thisComp.name.split("_");
s[1] + " " + s[2]

or, like this for your first line:

s = thisComp.name.split("_");
s[0] + " " + s[1]

and this for your second line:

s = thisComp.name.split("_");
s[2]

[Dan Ebberts]

Generally, it should look like this:

comp("Pre-comp").layer("Layer 1").position.valueAtTime(time - thisComp.layer("Pre-comp").startTime)

[Dan Ebberts]

It’s easy with linear keyframes, but it can get tricky if you have custom easing that has to be preserved. Depends on what you’re doing, exactly.

[Dan Ebberts]

Something like this should work:

L = thisComp.layer(index-1);
t1 = L.inPoint;
t2 = L.outPoint;
t = linear(time,t1,t2,key(1).time,key(2).time);
valueAtTime(t)

[Dan Ebberts]

This is probably not exactly what you’re looking for, but it might be close:

letters = ["T","R","A","I","N","D","O","D","G","E"];
holdTime = 1; // hold for 1 second
seed = Math.floor(time/holdTime);
seedRandom(seed,true);
for (i = 0; i < letters.length; i++){
  idx = Math.floor(random(letters.length));
  temp = letters[i];
  letters[i] = letters[idx];
  letters[idx] = temp;
}
s = "";
for (i = 0; i < letters.length; i++) s += letters[i];
s

[Dan Ebberts]

Expressions don’t have memory, so variables don’t survive from one frame to the next, but you can calulate your x value based on the current time, like this:

var x = 0;
var y = 2;
var z = 10;
x += Math.floor(time/y);
x = Math.min(x,z);

or elapsed time since the layer’s in point, like this:

var x = 0;
var y = 2;
var z = 10;
x += Math.floor((time-inPoint)/y);
x = Math.min(x,z);

[Dan Ebberts]

Assuming that upgrading to the latest version is not an option, I think you’re left with work-arounds, which could include scaling, or possibly a lot of different layers, each with its own font size, where they each get their source text from some input layer and each layer has an opacity expression to determine if it’s the visible one, based on a slider somewhere. Feasibility depends on your exact requirements…

[Dan Ebberts]

It works for me. It must be something in the way you have things set up.

[Dan Ebberts]

Are you saying that you have expressions in your project that require the Legacy ExtendScript expression engine? If so, are there too many to just fix the expressions?