[Darby Edelen]

You’ll either need to lower the speed at the two ‘peak’ keyframes or move those two keyframes closer together.

It looks like 500 px/sec might be about the right speed if you keep the keyframes where they are, but I’m just eyeballing it. You could calculate the distance between the two keyframes and divide that by the number of seconds between them to find a more precise speed.

The thing to keep in mind when modifying the speed graph is that you cannot change the value of the keyframes. You can change the spacing of the keyframes or the speed at the keyframes.

In the first case (changing the spacing) moving keyframes closer together means there is less time for the layer to move from position A to position B so it must move faster to get there in less time (same distance / less time = faster speed). Moving them farther apart means there’s more time and so the layer moves slower.

In the second case (changing the speed at the keyframes) the distance to travel and the time to do it in remain constant. If you increase the speed on both sides of the travel then the speed must decrease in the center of the travel in order for the layer to go the same distance in the same time. Imagine 2 cars leaving San Francisco for LA at the same time and both taking exactly 6 hours to arrive. Car A could travel at a constant speed the entire trip and Car B could start off traveling at twice the speed. For Car B to arrive at the same time as Car A then it must have slowed down at some point.

If you change the speed or spacing of the keyframes in the speed graph the ‘area under the curve’ must remain constant as the same distance still needs to be covered in the same amount of time. To boil that down: if you raise the speed somewhere then it will have to go down somewhere else.

I personally really like the speed graph. I never use the value graph for positions as I find it much more convenient to adjust them by using the pen tool to modify the bezier handles of the motion path. In this way ‘where’ the layer goes and ‘how fast’ can be kept entirely separate. Modifying the value graph directly affects both of these (where & how fast) at the same time.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

The expressions you’re using as examples are functionally different. Method 1 is most likely the fastest as I would assume it hooks into some lower level function.

Method 2 is using an arbitrary time offset to determine the change in position and is probably less accurate than method 1.

Method 3 is the only one that will return velocity in world space, so even if the layer position is not animated but instead moved by a parent you’ll get a meaningful result. Method 3 is also probably less accurate than method 1 in terms of the result.

I think it’s also important to note that all of these methods return a velocity and not a speed. Velocity is a vector value while speed is the magnitude of the velocity vector.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

Or you could pre-render with no fade and apply the fade in your final composition.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

There are also expressions to convert a value in seconds to frames and vice versa:

timeToFrames(seconds);
framesToTime(frames);

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

I wouldn’t avoid Math expressions. I can’t think of a more efficient way of using trig functions.

Any loop is going to add a significant amount of calculation, so try to avoid them if possible.

Try to use conditionals to skip expensive (e.g. loops) code when unnecessary. If your expression should only evaluate within 1 second of a layer marker then find out if you’re within 1 second of a layer marker first and skip the expensive code if you’re not.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

I agree this would be a fantastic addition to the MOGRT toolset.

I have created ‘selector’ controls that allow you to change between pre-selected footage by controlling layer opacity, but it’d be much better for me (and the editors!) to allow for arbitrary footage replacement.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

Sure, for your example you’d apply this to the horizontal displacement:

amp = 100;
angle = 45 //replace with angle control value here
amp * Math.cos(degreesToRadians(angle)- Math.PI/2);
And vertical displacement:

amp = 100;
angle = 45 //replace with angle control value here
amp * Math.sin(degreesToRadians(angle)- Math.PI/2);
I’ve written these from memory and haven’t tested them, so let me know if something doesn’t work.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

[Bob Zelin] “But there is only one “next big thing” – the pipeline, that needs to be run by the cable companies. I cannot ever conceive that the current owners (Spectrum, Comcast, Cox, RCN, AT&T, etc.) will ever do this. You need someone with a vested long term interest (like Amazon, Google, Apple) that is willing to buy these companies out, or pay off whoever needs to get paid off, so they can run fiber lines – not into people’s homes, but into businesses that are willing to pay for it (which is probably everyone). “

Things happened like this here but upside-down ☺

We have a great little local ISP that partnered with our city to work on building out fiber across town. They started downtown and are looking to expand neighborhood by neighborhood.

In a twist from what you’ve described I believe AT&T felt threatened by this and saw an opportunity to grab the market by firing the money cannon. I’m not sure when the decision was made to do it but AT&T rolled fiber down our street over a matter of weeks. I felt a bit guilty going with AT&T but the local ISP likely won’t be ready to provide fiber to my house anytime in the next 3 years.

So in the end it was Comcast that lost out. I pay less now for service that is 5x faster down and 80x faster up than what I had from Comcast. When fiber is available from my local ISP I hope to make the switch but in the meantime I’m a bit flabbergasted by the value AT&T is offering in this case. That’s not something I’m used to from Ma Bell.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

I’m not an editor. I primarily use After Effects and Cinema 4D for motion graphics and compositing. Some Nuke as well.

Generally what I’m doing is mounting the media shares on my home PC and working with local project files that reference the remote footage. After Effects and Nuke will cache used footage locally in the background.

I’m also using Splashtop to remote into my PC in the office but that has its own challenges due to mismatched monitor resolutions and sub-optimal multi-monitor support.

Which of the approaches I use depends on what a given project requires.

My connection isn’t generally providing 1Gbps, especially as my home PC is connected via WiFi. I usually see transfer rates in the range of 15-50 MB/s which isn’t anywhere near the theoretical limit of around 120 MB/s. It is much better than my previous service though which operated in the 0-8 MB/s range and was less reliable. I have seen transfer rates as high as 90 MB/s on a wired connection but unfortunately my router is not in an accessible location for work.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

I’m incredibly thankful that I had the opportunity to upgrade to gigabit fiber a few months before this all went down.

It’s probably too late to try and upgrade but I highly recommend looking closely into your options when you can. My neighbor is suffering with a cable provider at the moment and it was news to him that we even had access to fiber.

Darby Edelen