[Kevin Camp]

apply the preset “separate xyz position”, this will give you x, y, z controls in the effect controls.

then select the slider that you have and duplicate it 2 more times. (this will be for controlling the amount of wiggle for x, y and z).

copy/paste the original expression into the X Position property of Separate XYZ Position. this will use the first slider for the amount.

paste the same expression into the y position, but change the first line of the slider to this (note the ‘2’ after the Slider Control name):
amount = effect("Slider Control 2")("Slider");
that property’s wiggle amount is now controlled by Slider Control 2, just change the.

for the z position, copy/paste this expression:
amount = effect("Slider Control 3")("Slider");
freq = 10; // value in number of times per second
Math.abs( wiggle(freq, amount) )
z should now be controlled by the 3rd slider, and will be limited to only positive values.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i would try the wiggle() expression and key frame the amount of wiggle…

first add a slider expression control (from the effects menu choose expression controls>slider).

then select the position property of the pre comp that you just added the slider to and choose animation>add expression and copy/past this expression:
amount = effect("Slider Control")("Slider");
freq = 10; // value in number of times per second
wiggle(freq, amount)
now you can key frame the slider amount to go from 0 to some larger value and back to 0. the value measured in pixels, so a value of 500 should allow the layer to ‘wiggle’ as much as 500 pixels in any direction.

you can modify the freq value as needed, it’s measured in wiggle-per-second, the higher that value, the more often it will change directions.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i’m not sure what you are using for your vector blur map, but i think if you use a simple radial gradient on a solid (or shape layer) as the vector map you should start to get a ‘zoom blur’ effect. tweaking angle and other settings may get the effect you are looking for.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

fractal noise has a loop option, it only works for evolutions but it’s very useful.

i hin you are animating the offset… there’s isn’t a way to loop that seamlessly that i know of…. however, i’ve had more success using gradient wipe other than a simple crossfade.

you might also be able to use linear wipe if you can time the wipe completion rate with the movement of the noise offset, and feather it bit.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

is the media on the mac itself (or direct attached external hard drive) or on a network drive, or other remote storage device?

if it’s directly on the mac, have you tried running the activity monitor to see if there are other processes running that might be affecting performance? you can sort the activity monitor list by CPU usage to more easily see what process are sucking up the most CPU cycles.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

text animators are what the text animation presets use to animate text, but you don’t need to use a preset to access the text animator properties.

twirl down the attributes for a text layer. to the right of the ‘text’ property is an ‘animate’ menu. click the arrow next to it and select ‘tracking’. you’ve now added a tracking animator.

as dave points out, you don’t need to animate it, but now you can add an expression to the tracking amount and pick whip that to the tracking amount of an animator on a ‘master’ text layer. then when you adjust the master’s tracking amount animator, the other will follow.

you can’t get control of all text properties, and size would need to be controlled with a scale animator….

you can also simply select all your text layers and set a new font, size, line spacing, tracking, etc, and it will effect all selected text layer. of course, all text layers would need to be in one comp….

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

if you want to make the line look ‘rougher’ try roughen edges.

since the line is pretty thin, you’ll need to reduce the default ‘border’ setting, but playing around with the edge type, fractal influence, scale and complexity should start to get you close.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you need to use a codec that supports transparency (an alpha channel).

if webm doesn’t support an alpha channel, then you’ll need to find another codec.

There aren’t many codecs that support alpha channels. Quicktime supports several codecs that can have alpha channels: Lossless Animation, PNG, Pro Res 4444 (OS X only) and several of Avid’s codecs (Meridian compressed/uncompressed, DNxHD) are a few common ones.

Quicktime PNG is typically the smallest file size, but it depends on how much RGB data is in each frame. When you get into lossier codecs (mpeg-2, h.264, etc.) you get smaller file sizes, but usually lose the ability to have an alpha channel.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you can also try using an external monitor for the camera that the talent can watch as they are making the gestures.

adding tape dots on the monitor for the points you want them to hit will help them hit those spots. numbering or color coding the tape can help if there are several gestures needed.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

try this:

maxW = 80; // in percentage of comp width
rect = sourceRectAtTime();
if ( 100 * rect.width / thisComp.width > maxW ) s = maxW * thisComp.width / rect.width;
else s = 100;
[ s, s ]

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW