[Jared Flynn]

Hi there Dave,

I think the culprit is that my project makes heavy use of both CS5’s Roto Brush and Foundry’s CameraTracker plugin, both of which I’ve found to be massive performance killers (I presume because of all the keyframes they generate). My other projects that use those tools less or not at all tend to perform SIGNIFICANTLY better.

My specs shouldn’t be the problem– I run AE CS5 (10.0.1.19) on a Lenovo Thinkpad W701 with a 1.6Ghz hyperthreaded Core i7 proc (8 logical cores) and 16GB of very quick RAM, as well as a 1GB, 96-CUDA core nVidia Quadro FX 2800M. Windows 7 Professional 64bit.

That said, my multiprocessing settings might be less than optimal. I grabbed them from some advice I read on AE Portal News. A little more modest than my original settings (which essentially handed my entire system over to AE if it so chose):

Installed RAM: 15.9GB
RAM reserved for other applications: 6GB
Installed processor cores: 8
CPUs reserved for other applications: 4
RAM allocation per background CPU: 3GB
Actual CPUs that will be used: 2

It’s too bad there doesn’t seem to be a way to designate what gets the multiprocessing treatment… I can look into scripts, and boy howdy in the meantime I’ll be filing a feature request!

Definitely let me know if my specs or settings raise any flags for you though; I’m always game to try some new configs in the interest of squeezing a bit more excellence out of my kit!

Thanks in advance,

Jared Flynn
Motion Graphics Designer / Lead AE
Lone Wolf Documentary Group

[Jared Flynn]

Thanks for the links Chris! Very interesting stuff.

Unfortunately I’m not sure this is going to do what I need; the MotionScript link could possibly get me a workaround, but I can’t use random motion on the sphere– it must be strictly controlled. I don’t really know how to adapt the code to allow that.

For example, given a CC Sphere using a globe of the Earth as a source, I need a way to move, say, an arrow down the east coast of North America and up around the west coast of Africa and Europe. I would prefer to use a precomp as a source for a second CC Sphere layer here so I can have long strokes with curvature.

Really what I need is a way to distort a precomp so that it will map properly over a CC Sphere layer. If that’s using the Mappit plugin then that’s great, or if there’s some other way, I’m open to any and all suggestions.

Thanks again!

[Jared Flynn]

Hi there Hans,

Thanks for the tip! We hadn’t tried out AMA yet; I’ll recommend that on Monday and run some tests.

Thanks again!

Jared Flynn
Motion Graphics Designer / Lead AE
Lone Wolf Documentary Group

[Jared Flynn]

Hi there Ed,

During the import, we specifically chose DNxHD220, but the metadata for the clips in their bins all continue to list the original XDCAM 50mbps format. We’ve confirmed that Avid is still creating its own copies of the media, and it’s definitely re-wrapping the files into its own MXF file type, but for all we can tell, it’s not actually transcoding on the way in.

We’ve also had fine luck applying effects to footage in DNxHD, but for whatever reason we’re not able to create that media from our XDCAM sources.

We’re also using Mac OS 10.5.8 and Avid MC 4.0.2, on an 8-core Mac Pro, 16GB RAM and the Avid Adrenaline breakout box.

Thanks!

[Jared Flynn]

Hi there Dan,

That did the trick! I definitely need to brush up on my Javascript– there’s an awful lot of functionality out there beyond AE’s own expressions. Thanks a million!

-Jared

Jared Flynn
Motion Graphics Designer / Lead AE
Lone Wolf Documentary Group

[Jared Flynn]

Hi there Ed,

No, the footage isn’t HDV, it’s full-raster XDCAM at 1920×1080. We’ve been importing the clips through File > Import rather than AMA so far because we had endless problems with AMA in previous Avid builds. Our project mode is 1080i/59.94fps, which matches our footage.

This reminds me of another problem we’ve been having– for some reason Avid refuses to transcode this footage to DNxHD, which normally wouldn’t be a problem but our client’s deliverables specifically dictate DNxHD220. Could that be related to the fact that we don’t use AMA?

Thanks!

Jared Flynn
Motion Graphics Designer / Lead AE
Lone Wolf Documentary Group

[Jared Flynn]

Quick update: some deeper Googling solved the significant digits issue. See code below!

Still no luck on adding that degree symbol in though, so any help there would still be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Jared Flynn
Motion Graphics Designer / Lead AE
Lone Wolf Documentary Group

bearingVal = comp("Compass").layer("Modern_nautical_compass_rose_2000px.png").transform.rotation;

bearingRounded = Math.round(bearingVal*1000)/1000; //Rounds result to nearest thousandth

bearingRounded;

Jared Flynn
Motion Graphics Designer / Lead AE
Lone Wolf Documentary Group

[Jared Flynn]

Hi there Walter and Chris,

Great ideas. The puppet technique has a lot of potential– the real challenge being some clever maths on the puppet pins to allow the object to move/warp without mangling the layer (which ALWAYS happens to me when I use the Puppet tool).

Using this in conjunction with Chris’ CC Bender idea may just do the trick for me. Thanks so much guys!

[Jared Flynn]

Hi Anders,

Thanks for the comment– I’ve actually been using the null/Beam effect combo for other elements in my scene (I managed to build some really cool wireframe geometry that way). Right now the only trick is the curve… if only path points were parametric!

[Jared Flynn]

Hi there Art,

Thanks for the quick reply. I read through that thread and tried installing the Output Module update (which seemed to do the trick for that user) but it looks like I was already up to date.

HOWEVER, following the other advice in that thread– checking the dang settings over– I realized that under the Layout rollout in the Output Module, I was somehow working with 0.17″ margins on all sides of my document. So I set those to 0, and Bridge is no longer scaling my images!

Thanks again. 🙂