[Dennis Dillert]

Thanks Stuart, tried it and it works. So now I’m able to copy text from one textfied into another one.

I have even taken it a step further and am now assigning the text through Expressions, which is great. Now second question:

Is there a central place where I can store my expressions, so I don’t have to create additional text layers?

I have posted the expression that works below, but I am still dependent on using another text layer’s source property to insert the expression.

comp(“Target Comp”).layer(“Text1”).text.sourceText = “This could be some text in here”

comp(“Target Comp”).layer(“Text2”).text.sourceText = “.. and this would be the second text.”

[Dennis Dillert]

Oh cool, I haven’t seen you’ve got a seperate forum for this. Thanks, it’s now here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/227/13083

[Dennis Dillert]

Hi Andrew,

you might want to check out this link:

https://www.graymachine.com/2009/05/after-effects-and-ram-101/

[Dennis Dillert]

Here’s what went wrong:

I had two animated pre-comps. I thought because they are both animated, they would be somewhat identical. However, a closer look revealed that one of them had the animation nested into another pre-comp that it just loaded. This one would show no arrows in the main comp and you could extend it forever. The second pre-comp had the animation inserted directly, so there would obviously be a limit to how far you could extend it unless you where using Time-Remapping.

Well I guess, I’ve been a bit tired yesterday.. ;o)

Anyway, thanks again Simon!!

[Dennis Dillert]

.. ahh ok. So far I’m doing the same. But it gets quite tricky the more files you have. I thought the guys from Adobe already thought of that. Well, maybe it’s not the actual idea of a “quick” composite.

It would definitely enhance the productivity.. and I’m still waiting for Adobe to introduce folders in the layers part like you have in Photoshop. Let’s wait for CS5.. ;o)

Thanks for the feedback Simon.

[Dennis Dillert]

Thanks! Exactly what I needed, it works really well.

The expressions raise another question though. If you wanted to use expressions only, would that be possible?

loopIn and loopOut let you specify the length through the numKeyframes value, but the base is either from the beginning (loopIn) or the end (loopOut) of the animation.

loopOut(type=”cycle”, numKeyframes=0)
loopIn(type=”cycle”, numKeyframes=0)

Is there an expression that lets you cut out something from the middle without having to manually adjust the keyframes?

[Dennis Dillert]

Thanks Dave, I tried that and it worked magic. Any chance to get the precomped layer to the original size of the object itself? Tried masks, but then the mask handles seem to be in the way in the original comp!

Thanks Todd. I’m using a camera movement in y, so the only option seems to be precomp layers.

Many thanks to both of you!

Dennis