[Katherine Landgrebe]

Perfect!!!
Thank you so much. You saved my day 🙂 *curtsy*

[Katherine Landgrebe]

>>My compliments on your excellent English, by the way.<<

Haha, thanks. I studied in the US for a (way too short) while.

Yep, I guess I’ll go for the 25 frames then. Oh dear.

>>If you had realistic hopes for both North America and Europe, I would have recommended a frame rate of 23.976<<

Hm, that happened before, but I’m not sure if this would happen again. I think, in case they want the film, I’ll have some fun converting it. 🙂

What I like even more than frame rates is the pixel ratio 😉 Yay, squash and stretch.

Dave, I appreciate your help. Thank you very much!
I’ll get back to work and let you know how this frame shift issue reacts to 25 frames.

Best,
Katherine

[Katherine Landgrebe]

Well, for I’m more a designer than a technician, I’m not too familiar with each and every detail of all these things. Sorry about that. I try do do my very best to get it right. Thanks for your suggestions.

I set this project up for myself, first of all (free study project). I’m gonna burn it on BluRay later and show it as a QTmov from my computer. If I’m lucky, it’s shown on festivals in movie theaters in Germany or somewhere else in Europe. Then there will be a PAL DVD in 25 frames as a preview version. Then there will be a NTSC DVD for non European film festivals. Then there might be a BetaSP PAL tape for broadcasting. You see, I have to set something up and change it later anyways. I can’t build 3 different versions, I have to re-render it.

The 24 frames may be wrong, and I promise, my next project will be in 23.976. 🙂
If I did it wrong, I have to live with it for now or change my project carefully step by step, but actually, I did not use different frame rates in one project. I double-checked it all, it’s all set to 24.00. Anyways, which frame rate ever I use, inside the project it should be synchrone when two comps have the same frame rate, shouldn’t it?

I might just switch to 25fps, then at least Europe is happy 🙂

[Katherine Landgrebe]

Ah, ok, thanks. Yeah, that’s a good way to do it. I sometimes have many layers and find a mistake or do an adjustment , so I have to re-paste it sooo often. GoLive had this cool possibility to find/replace html-code-text, even for certain “comps” (web-pages in this case). Might appear in AE CS20 or so… 😉

Best,

Katherine

[Katherine Landgrebe]

Thanks, Dave, for your response.
I forgot to mention, that there is no original video footage in my project. It’s an AE animation, the only thing I imported are Illustrator files. So, it’s a FullHD 1920×1080 composition in HDTV, 24 frames. I set them all up like this, but I always get confused with all these standards. I used that one that AE has as a preset in the comp-preferences.

[Katherine Landgrebe]

Hi Keith, sorry I saw your post only now. Thanks for your response. I’m not exactly sure what it means. But I figured out that there is an invert channel effect. This could work with an adjustment layer in each comp, I guess. Maybe not, because it influences the white parts as well. Anyway, it seems that I won’t get around some detail work. I’ll keep on trying 🙂

[Katherine Landgrebe]

Eugene, you just saved my life! This is amazing. The site is now available in English, I downloaded the script for CS3+CS4, it works perfectly. Even on a Mac. Thanks for the hint, I hope your work went fine despite the problems. I was stuck with hte IK programming for my thesis animation as well, but now I see light 🙂
Don’t forget to check the “allow scripts to work… (something)” box in the Preferences (general).

Best,
Katherine

[Katherine Landgrebe]

Whoo, I got it, so far 🙂 Not perfect yet, but OK. The CC Bender with a bending style “Marilyn” does the trick on the “Beam” rope. This one keeps the anchor points in position.
And for the expression, see below. I applied it to the bender’s amount. It’s for a 1920×1080 Comp, where the balloon uses a random motion (by Dan Ebberts) within a minimum of 25% and a maximum of 75% of the whole Comp. The expression reads ot the current balloon’s position. If it is on the left half of the Comp, the rope will be bent to the left, and the other way round. The second part reads out the Y position, so if the balon goes up, the rope straightens, if it’s low, it bends with a maximum amount of 35. I have to clean it up with variables.
If anybody has an idea how to make it better/correct, please tell me, I appreciate your help.

Thanks, and best wishes.

(((thisComp.layer("balloon").position[0])-0.75*thisComp.width/2)/(720/35))*((thisComp.layer("balloon").position[1]-(0.75*thisComp.height-0.25*thisComp.height))/486);

[Katherine Landgrebe]

Hm, I somehow don’t get it back in place. The rope just cuts off wherever I position the anchor point. Behaves strange. But I keep on trying. Thanks for your ideas though, I think it gets us pretty near what I’d like.

I was just thinking about another possibly possible way 🙂 When I draw a Bézier path, is there a way to address a single anchor point of the path for clinging it to one fix position? Maybe over Vector Maths (dot bla or something)? I only get the whole path attached to the balloon. ‘Cause if this was possible, I could bend the middle section of the path by hand or expressions, reagarding the current position of the balloon.

Man, this seems such an easy thing to do, but…

[Katherine Landgrebe]

Thanks, Eric. The Beam effects works perfectly on this. You’re right, the bending seems a bit tricky, but my first attempts are not too far away from what I’m looking for. The bending disconnects the anchor, though. Well, I keep on figuring out an appropriate solution and post it in case of success. Thanks again for your help.