[Greg Neumayer]

Just to document:
I also ran into two instances of aeselflink as well as the adobeDynamicLinking processes still running. It looks like they’ve been eating CPU for weeks. I discovered it when trying to uninstall AE CS5. Wish I had seen that sooner! Lots of red bars in the CPU history!

I’m installing the CS5.5 Prod. Premium—and I’ve learned not to mix stand-alone versions with the Premium packages.

(running 3 yr old mac pro 8 core with about 14GB ram)

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezedesign.com

[Greg Neumayer]

Thanks Dan. That works perfectly.

Am I correct in understanding that it works because the Checkbox control is submitting a (non-strict) Boolean as 0 or 1, and the Particular Render Mode pulldown is looking for a value of either 1 or 2? (It seems odd that AE pulldown menus wouldn’t also be zero-based arrays.)

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezedesign.com

[Greg Neumayer]

We may be misunderstanding each other.
0db has always been “unaffected” volume in AE.

CS5 help doc:
https://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7e4aa.html

And, according to this little tut video from Chris & Trish Meyer, I want -96db for pure silence, not -48 (in 16 bit mode). Although, Chris also had some good input for working with fades using the Stereo Mixer effect:

https://provideocoalition.com/index.php/cmg_keyframes/story/after_effects_apprentice_free_video_managing_audio_levels/

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezedesign.com

[Greg Neumayer]

You may just be looking for the import setting:
After Effects > Preferences > Import

I had to change this when I imported a heavily nested (folders) photoshop document. All folders get converted to comps that are the same length as your main comp, but individual layers only show up per the preference set above. So, in my case, the comps were long enough, but the individual layers were too short.

Dave’s note below is a great keyboard shortcut to know, but if you’ve got a very nested psd, you might be better off just fixing that pref and re-importing.

If you’ve already made changes to your top level comp before you realize you’d like to re-import, you can option-drag your new imported comp over the first one to replace it, but you’ll lose any changes you’ve made to the nested comps.

-Greg Neumayer

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezedesign.com

[Greg Neumayer]

LOL. Yeah. I mean CS5. (I wish marketing departments would get over their fear of versions that go beyond 10!)

It looks like I’m using 10.0.0.458 and the update would take me to 10.0.2

I’d just start using CS5.5, but I had to grab it quick for a job. Last time I tried to upgrade only certain apps from the Production Bundle I had a world of headaches until I uninstalled everything and just loaded my Production Bundle from scratch. But… there goes a day’s worth of work getting that up and running with plug-ins…

Anyway, thanks for the update note, Dave. I also converted my audio to wav and replaced the footage file, which seems to be working so far.

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezedesign.com

[Greg Neumayer]

Ah-ha! I hadn’t thought of using reduce like that.
As always, glad to see your avatar around.
Thanks.

(How do you get any work done with some much time on the COW? 🙂

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezedesign.com

[Greg Neumayer]

yes, yes. You missed it in my first post:
“I love my Ease and Wiz script that I use…”

but unless I’m missing something, it’s only useful in the context that you’ve described: grabbing a couple keyframes and then applying the script. And for that, it’s great. But Ian is stuck (I think) with the limitation that the script is applying to the entire layer’s keyframes. So, while the script does provide some relief by having some “only first keyframe” type of options, it’s working around the greater issue of a lack of control to be able to apply the math to keyframes as individuals. This is an inherent limitation of the broader topic of how expressions work and are applied to layers, which is why I think the only perfect fix would be for it to be a feature request that gets this math applied down on the core level of keyframes–and then shows up in the keyframe contextual menu (right-click menu).
(disclaimer: I haven’t installed EaseNWizz for CS5, only CS4)

An example from my own work flow would be:
My microwave whips in from the left, eases to an awesome looking expo stop. But then, I want it to slowly creep up while I add a few lines of text below it. When I’m done, I want it to do a gentle fall and fade-out. The problem here is that I can apply the expo whip-in at the beginning, but then it’s difficult to have complete control over the other keyframes to do other manipulations. I find myself having to split the layer. A solution, but not elegant or very flexible if I need to make changes to the motion later.

Thanks for the discussion, though. I’m not a mathematician, and would gladly eat crow if someone highlights my ignorance to the elegant solution.

-Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezedesign.com

[Greg Neumayer]

Thanks Todd,
While these examples provide increased control, I think I may have to fill out a feature request and wait for this functionality to hopefully be wrapped in a nice “right-click on the keyframe” package. It seems like something everyday AE users would find quite useful.

These solutions (in your link) seem to work best on an entire layer, lacking control over individual keyframes. True, there’s a “time” element on the expression solution, but we’re definitely drifting away from everyday usage into over-complicated when we start to use code to even create the “keyframe”.

One last question, though. Can we use an expression to refer to a keyframe? I’d be halfway satisfied if I could use the expression to at least refer to a “named” keyframe. Then I could keep the visual continuity of the keyframes on the timeline and wouldn’t have to manually code the “when” portion that “time” refers to.

Thanks for the link.
-Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezedesign.com

[Greg Neumayer]

Update:
I’m closer to my goal with the discovery of pressing CMD-SHIFT-K (CNTRL on Windows) on a selected keyframe.

This takes me to a dialog box where I manually adjust the keyframe velocity curve influence. While not really a different mathematical equation, it allows me to change the default ease of 33.3% influence to something like 100%, which creates a more smoothed keyframe.

I’d still appreciate any input on applying true sine,quad,quint,expo,circ-type equasions to a keyframe quickly and easily.

Thanks,
Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezedesign.com

[Greg Neumayer]

Perfect. Thank you.
This lets me change one script to audition a different expression on my 100 or so text layers.
-Greg

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezedesign.com