[John Cuevas]

Do you have a large image, solid or some effect that would extend a layer to 1972×6302?

Is that 12GB RAM?

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Here’s an excellent expression from Dan Ebberts. Create a text layer and add a slider control to it, then for the layer source add this expression. Lastly you just need to keyframe the slider.

slider = effect("Slider Control")("Slider");

numDecimals = 0;
commas = true;
dollarSign = true;

s = slider.value.toFixed(numDecimals);

prefix = "";
if (s[0] == "-"){
prefix = "-";
s = s.substr(1);
}
if(dollarSign) prefix += "$";

if (commas){
decimals = "";
if (numDecimals > 0){
decimals = s.substr(-(numDecimals + 1));
s = s.substr(0,s.length - (numDecimals + 1));
}
outStr = s.substr(-s.length, (s.length-1)%3 +1);
for (i = Math.floor((s.length-1)/3); i > 0; i--){
outStr += "," + s.substr(-i*3,3);
}
prefix + outStr + decimals;
}else{
prefix + s;
}

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

There are some effects that don’t support multi-processor rendering, that might be something to investigate.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Sounds like you want an interpolation expression. I made a solid and added a slider control that went from -10 to 10 to create this expression, but you could delete effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”) as the controller and pick whip to whatever you want to use as an input.

input = effect("Slider Control")("Slider");
ease(input, -10,10,0,100)

Here’s a link that explains this expression and the other interpolation expressions. Interpolation Methods: linear(), ease()

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

My first thought was to raise the ramp too, but the ramp works as a break on velocity. So if we raise the ramp, it just tells the particles to slow down sooner.

What you want to do is increase the Kinetic friction and decrease the gravity force. That seems to create the most natural bounce. Increasing the friction you will produce less bounce, try increasing in increments of 0.2, it doesn’t take much. This method works best for a continuous particle stream. Lastly, using the same map, I mapped blue to “Lifespan” and set the min to 20 and the max to 30. If you turn off life span the particles accumulate, but they keep sinking below the floor. They only way to stop the sinking was to turn off gravity, but we can’t do that as we need it to pull down the particles. This is the approach I took in Final Version A.

In Version B, I turned off the particles after a couple of seconds and keyframed the friction from 1.5 to 3. This way works pretty good with a limited number of particles and if you want the particle to quit bouncing a lot faster. Finally I keyframed gravity at 15 seconds so you could see the sinking issue.

4384_particleplaygroundv3.aep.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

You have just created a file that is ready to be put into another program, like Encore that builds DVD’s . DVD’s for DVD players have very specific formats requirements that’s not as simple as just burning a file on to the disc.

If you have Encore, you would just need to open it up, start a PAL project, press “Shift+Cntl+T” to import your file and place it into a timeline, set an end action for the timeline(stop or loop back to the beginning of the timeline) and link the Title Button to your timeline.

Then you could build your project and create your DVD.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

LOL, I’m actually wearing my Batman watch today. Thanks for the assist.
Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

I played with PP some more and discovered a method for controlling the bounce. I created a precomp(“Layer Map”)placed a gradient on a solid to act as layer map and brought that into the final comp.

Under the Persistent Property Mapper -> Use Layer as Map “Layer Map”.
Map Red to “Kinetic Friction”
Max .5

Doing this slows down the velocity of the particles each time they get into the layer map area. If you lower the “Max” value the particles bounce more, raise it and they bounce less.

I updated the last project. 4380_4368particleplayground2.aep.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

So for now, in AE:
1. What tool name do I grab to do the same as the photoshop distort tool which allows me to rotate the QT to match the place in 3D space I need to place it?

Assuming you have created a precomp for your what needs to go into the monitors. I would use the “Corner Pin” effect to place your videos into the monitors. Alternatively, you could turn these precomps into 3d layers and manually place them over the monitors, but that’s probably overkill here.

2. With this new information, which tool (by name) will most efficiently allow me to create a radius (or mask) for the QT Movie?

You could use the pen tool with the RotoBezier check box enabled. Or use the pen tool and as you create each point, drag it the point a little to make them bezier points. If you do that technique you will probably need to adjust the bezier handles afterwards(I never get them perfect on my first shot).

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

I think the script Tracker2Mask will accomplish what you want to do.

Take a look at the tutorial, it looks like the author does what you are trying to accomplish in his first example with the license plate.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.