[Ken Latman]

Thanks for the imput. I usually do the same (uncompress fine, run through compressor, etc) but the file sizes are becoming very large and I’m running out of hard drive space.
If there were just a way to speed up the process (famous words)
It seems like the conversion/encoding process is the most time consuming, even with Nucleo assisting in the process.

[Ken Latman]

Since some people on this board have reported using AE CS3 on a iMac, I don’t see why not. I have it running on my MacBook and I have the same machine you do. I would upgrade your RAM to the full extent. You should be able to make it a 4GB machine. I picked up mine pretty cheap at Other World Computing.
Just watch out for particle system type effects. These could be taxing on your system.

[Ken Latman]

You know with all the time you put into writting these long posts you could be expermentig with illustrator and Invigorator and see what does work.
I come from a studio art background (real paint and pencils) and it took me a while to get to understand illustrator and photoshop, and then AE. I’m still learning.
I have found tutorials are not (insert caveman accent) “here project, you make same” You have to do a little expermentation and always and ask a lot of questions. That what makes the cow so great because you are not alone. Having the Zax team available is an added bonus.
Just my 2 cents.

[Ken Latman]

What type of HP printer? My personal deskjet appears to be working ok. I’ve been able to continue to print on CD/DVDs.

[Ken Latman]

I have seen Apple Memory go bad. Must have been a bad harvest season for that box.

I seriously don’t think they (Apple) pic up memory from some exotic importer. Most of the time I have found Crucial stickers on the RAM.

If your looking for when the best time to buy RAM, it would be in the spring, right after the spaghetti harvests. Thats when I understand the best computer RAM becomes available.

[Ken Latman]

Ah but aren’t expressions so much cooler? 🙂
I think I have something exceptable.
Thanks for your input.

[Ken Latman]

All six images are on the screen at once. They rotate around the same images but never two showing up at the same time. The images/symbols are changing randomly, but again I want to see the same six images just in different arrangements.

1 2 3 4 5 6
then maybe (this is all random)
6 4 2 1 3 5
and so on
3 1 2 5 6 4

NOT

2 2 4 5 6 3

I have adapted something from Dan Ebberts page on random stills. The problem is I’m still getting some duplication.
I first made a comp with all my images in a row. Duplicated that comp six times but changed the order of the images.
I then took those six comps and applied the expression to them as if they were layers.

The next step goes a little beyond because, though I do want these items in a row, I would like to control the spacing of my elements from each other. The gutters I don’t want to keep always constant. So I then made six copies of this random generated compostion. I set it to loop in an very basic command found here on the cow. I put masks on each of the compsitions, framing only the one image I want to control for each. I asumed this would keep my layer times in sync, but I’m still getting duplicate symbols showing.

I think I am over complicating this whole process, but I’m not an expert in expressions.

[Ken Latman]

I just finished watching all the videos on the training DVD. Fantastic! When will volume 2 be ready? I was really hoping there would be more on bump maps and how Serge was able to make all the elements Soda can example and other objects.
I have been using Pro Animator for about a year or more now and there were things in this training that I thought were not possible, but Serge proved me wrong.
I look foward to volume 2!

[Ken Latman]

You might want to check out some of Aharon Rabinowitz tutorials. He has one recent one where in CS3 he combines the puppet tool with a CC particle effect that could lead the results your looking for. I know I saw one tutorial where, though it would require much longer render time, the effect could be achieved with one of the CC plug-ins (comes standard with your install) and some sort of time displace or repeat aspect.
Maltaannon’s extrude tutorial could also lead to a solution.

[Ken Latman]

Could you just duplicate the object track in the timeline and replace your text in the new second object track with new text? You will have to offset the entire track, but it beats trying to eyeball all your position keyframes.