[Danny Jenkins]

I’ve narrowed it down to it being a problem rendering directly to our XSERVE, it exports fine to my desktop and I can then copy the file across to the server. Will update once I find a solution.

So not an after effects problem as far as I can see.

[Danny Jenkins]

Thanks Dan! Didn’t know how much luck I’d have digging this up from’08 haha.

I found your expression site as well, hope to see you still working on it, it looks great!

Danny

[Danny Jenkins]

Hi Dan, first of all thanks for all the time you put into helping us out on here!

Now this one from above isn’t working for me in AE CS4:

startFadeNear = 300;
endFadeNear = 500;
startFadeFar = 800;
endFadeFar = 1500;
try{ // Check whether there’s a camera.
C = thisComp.activeCamera.toWorld([0,0,0]);
}catch(err){ // No camera, so assume 50mm.
w = thisComp.width * thisComp.pixelAspect;
z = (w/2)/Math.tan(degreesToRadians(19.799));
C = [thisComp.width/2,thisComp.height/2,-z];
}
P = toWorld(anchorPoint);
d = length(C,P);
if (d
linear(d,startFadeNear,endFadeNear,0,100)
}else{
linear(d,startFadeFar,endFadeFar,100,0)
}

After Effects warning: Expected: )
Expression disabled.
Error occurred at line 15.

Just need this expression to fade in AND out in relation to distance from camera! Thanks again for any help!

Danny

[Danny Jenkins]

Yeh I just looked at that enclosure, was a bit outdated I think haha. Was a Medea with scsi connectors on back but was full of IDE drives.

I’m not going to try and do anything ‘crazy’ however I’m also not an expert on this which is why some of my questions may obviously not be feasible!

Another few more of these wild questions though… if I have a raid card & separate system drive, they are kept separate on the main board right? I could just disconnect the raid card if it was playing up & still boot up?

Or rebuild the system drive from Time Machine if it has problems?

Also I was thinking there would be some sort of software monitoring the raid performance/status?

Sorry for ruining your day Bob, thanks for any help again!

[Danny Jenkins]

Hi Bob, thanks for the reply. What’s the reason for avoiding an internal RAID?
This is not really going to be for intense commercial use – more of a lightweight extension of my work at the office, I just wanted the security as I’ve lost data due to head crash before… plus the 700GB drives are already there.

Having said this I have found some enclosures at work, one 4 bay and another ex Avid tower. I think they have scsi connections in the back so will have to find out if this is an option.

Thanks again.

[Danny Jenkins]

Hi Brendan, thanks for your quick reply. I’ve pretty much been doing it in AE the way you have mentioned, but certain things just seem like they should be easier. For example using the light sweep or generate ramp fx… is it me or can you not just put a simple stroke on top of these fx? Also, the values of these fx are pinned to the x,y coordinates of the frame, and aren’t actually attached in relation to the text if you change it’s position.

The stroke effect only works with paths,and you can cheat by using the glow effect but it doesn’t react well to motion blur.

To me nesting text layers in comps to build up basic FX seems a bit overkill, and I want to be able to have my hands on any parameter of the text at any time. Sometimes I’ve created more complex styles in illustrator, but it’s a real pain if something needs to be changed.

I hope there are easier ways to do these things but I’ve just never been shown how!

[Danny Jenkins]

Nope, it’s an all graphics ad! There are some photos & logos in there of course, but just .psd & .ai files. I might have used a pdf in there for a logo too if that makes a difference?

[Danny Jenkins]

Hi Dave, thanks for your reply, but this is a problem that I want to go away, not an effect I’m trying to create!!!

[Danny Jenkins]

Thanks for the replies! I have been trying out the demo and still have a long way to go, but it’s definately interesting! The quick start guide in the documentation part on the Maxon site has some tutorials there if anyone else in my situation needs to get started.

[Danny Jenkins]

One more thing to add…

The original clips I have imported were made at a quality setting of 360kb/frame, and my new project I’m putting them in is at 180kb/frame.

Would this be causing a problem?