[Jason Mika]

Greetings Trent,

Thanks for you’re reply and suggestion.
I might not have been very clear in what I was trying to accomplish.
I am making individual loops for a media server with pretty much the same method that you are describing.IE splitting and fading.
I’m just moving the transition to the end of the clips
and leaving some wiggle room to shift layer 2 in the transition period to match better if possible.
So if I start with a 30 second source clip I end up with a 29sec loop.

I have the keyboard shortcut sequence down and when I am doing a batch run of these I can move pretty fast and get in a good rhythm.
But since its such a repetitive task I would like to automate it in a preset action like recording actions in Photoshop.
The only way to do this in AE as far as I know is scripting.

Im gonna have a go at it and I will post the results if I
have any success.
In the meantime if somebody else can offer any suggestion
or advice on scripting this action I’m all eyes.

-Jason

[Jason Mika]

Thank you both. That is exactly what I was looking for.
The prices may be prohibitive though but good to know
they exist should I need to go down this road in the near future.

[Jason Mika]

I know this is an old post but just in case you are here
looking for the answer to the last post.
The reason for the error “no property or method named delay”
is the fact that the delay needs to be defined in able to use it in an array.

delay = 5; //number of frames to delay

d = delay*thisComp.frameDuration*(index – 1);
p = thisComp.layer(1).position.valueAtTime(time – d);
[p[0],value[1]]

[Jason Mika]

Thanks again Filip for sticking with me on this.

[Filip Vandueren] “Well, if they outsource the creation of content, and they play it back on this system, it seems to me they will not have solved the problem…”

I agree this will only pass the problem on to someone else who will cost more than I do. If I cant figure a solution I at least need to
be able to definitively explain why we cant display scrolling text,
and if they do out source it to some one who can figure it out . Well, thats it for me.

[Filip Vandueren] “It’s probably a bit harder to test, since the array is only 80 pixels high, but does the problem also exist with vertical motion?”

Actually its more apparent on the LED display as the pixel pitch is 1 inch. So the display is just over 6 1/2 feet tall. This size magnifies
any jerky movement. I have done less experimenting with vertical repetitive motion as it has never been an apparent problem.
Tho now that you bring it up I will have to make sure that it is only on the horizontal and not the vertical. My guess is that this is where the brain comes in,as the horizontal is much more perceptually apparent but it probably does still exist on the vertical as well.
I will test this tomorrow.

[Filip Vandueren] “Though it should not pose a problem on a highend system like yours, have you tried quicktimes with a compressed codec ? The bandwidth of a non-compressed 60FSP movie streaming from harddisk could be the bottleneck.
Does the skipping occur on your monitor when you ram-preview in after effects or only playing back the Quicktimes ? If so: that could be the culprit.”

I have indeed tried many compression formats. Unfortunately these make
the display somewhat dithered looking even at the highest setting. I have chosen uncompressed for the most saturated and crisp look.
I have set the QT files to pre load to RAM in QT pro.
30fps shows the same jerkyness.
The skipping is also displayed when ram previewed in AE.

[Filip Vandueren] “How is the movie sent to your LED-system: is it hooked up as a secondary display, what software is playing the quicktime ?”

Yes, typically it is sent as a secondary mirrored output from a mac book pro. Sometimes we use mac minis and just loop out of our gear to show the display on a DVI monitor. But the problem still exist on the monitor of my render machine as well as the G5s, macbooks, minis and various PC’c that we use.
The software that we use to display the small size videos is usually QTpro or custom MAX/MSP/Jitter open GL media servers that we create.
The inspectors on these media servers show that we are getting the proper throughput and FPS I just cant figure out where the frames are getting dropped.
I don’t think its a psychological issue because two people will see the skip at the same time and it does not skip in the same place on the time line in a loop.

[Filip Vandueren] “is DVI the only input to the LED-system ? Could you hook up, say, a DVDplayer to it and check that for skippyness.”

DVI-D is the only input but I can take say SDI or RGBHV and convert it.
The only issue is that I would have to render all of my comps at full screen resolution with a “480×80” window.
This might dramatically increase my render time when I am doing a comp that is say 64×80 or even 50×50. Its worth a shot though as I do have a DVD player with DVI out. I am also thinking about trying a Doremi or fast forward hard disk player/recorder. But if it shows in AE ram preview why would this help?
What about flash movies? They seem to have a very small file size even
with the best settings.I also seem to remember seeing this in some older flash comps that I made as well as Vegas comps too.

I have also seen this problem in quartz composer ticker tape apps.
and these are very low band width apps generating text directly on the graphics card using open GL but the skip could come from the app polling an RSS feed to generate the text.
Some other people we saying that they did not see this on there AVID systems but they might have been talking about Judder which I now have control over using the expression found on this forum.

All I need to do is a scroll text.
Of all the exciting and challenging programming gigs I’ve had.
This is by far the dullest problem but the most important one in my
career to date.
Why something so simple as moving text from here to there
would be so difficult it baffling.

Again thanks for your support.
-jason

[Jason Mika]

Thanks Filip for your response and concern.

[Filip Vandueren] “Does it only look bad on your special output device, or also on the computer screen ?
Is the jump very regular (like once every 1.2 seconds) or just erratically now and then.”

It does show on the monitor. as well as the LED display.
It is random. Meaning an 8 second test render loop
open in 2 windows playing at the same time will skip
at different points every time they loop and not the
same on both loops.
My refresh rate is exactly 60Hz and my FPS is the same as well as my pixels per second key frame movement set to loop out”continue”
It must be a hardware issue as a coworker of mine generated a MAX/MSP_Jitter patch that generated and scrolled text with open GL directly on the graphics card and still saw the same skip or pause in the horizontal scroll.

[Filip Vandueren] “Hound the company that manufactures or sold you the device, make them demonstrate how they can have smooth scrolling text without your issue.
Don’t loose your job over crappy material.”

Funny you say that as I have been with the company for almost 3 years now from the old start-up days as a tech and am now working on content 90% of my time and if I cant figure this problem out I will not have the opportunity to do content for theme anymore.
This has always been an issue but its not just our gear as we see it on different platform CPU’s from laptops to maxed out towers.
This is just the first time I have approached this cow_munity with this problem. I really want to keep creating content but I’m afraid that if I don’t find a solution they will outsource it all.
This is probably not the place to discuss this any more .
Guess I’m screwed.ugh.

Any hardware that I might want to try to solve this problem?

[Jason Mika]

Thank you Dan for your prompt response.
Unfortunately this did not solve my problem.
Any other expression ideas that might help?
or is this now in the wrong forum?