[Kevin Camp]

try simply making the values negative with an expression like this:

-value;

if that doesn’t do what you need, let us know.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

the answer to the question of how to tell darby’s expression to reference a specific layer, would be to use the same method of referencing the layer in your first expression. if you typed in a layer name for each beam effect end point to reference an specific layer, then you’ll need to do the same for darby’s expression.

you can specify a layer by index rather than name, so you could use the index of the layer with the expression to specify a layer that is relative to it’s index… ex: you could specify to use the layer bellow the expression layer with an expression like this:

layerBellow = thisComp.layer(index+1);

or

layerAbove = thisComp.layer(index-1);

but that may mean that you need to restructure your current comp, so i don’t know if that helps you out much.

or you could use a layer control (in the expression controls effects)on the beam layers to pick a specific layer, and link both expression the end point expression and the thickness expression to that control. the expression would look something like this:

selectedLayer = effect(“Layer Control”)(“Layer”);

but again, this requires some reworking of what you have.

regardless of how you choose the layer, there is a change that you need to make in darby’s expression so that it will reference the thickness value of your slider.

you need to add a variable to point at the value of the slider and then replace ‘value’ in the last line to the name of the variable. it could look something like this:

endThickness = thisComp.layer(‘Control’).efect(‘Slider Control’)(‘Slider’);

// last line
endThickness * cam.zoom / d;

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

it depends a little on the drives you are reading/writing to… uncompressed (or less compressed) files require less cpu time to encode/decode, but the larger files take more time to read/write.

however, assuming you are not using a usb1 or 2 external drive for hd or larger frames sizes, you’re not likely to see too much bottle-necking.

you might consider quicktime photo-jpeg with quality set to 95 or higher. it’s virtually lossless, but the files will likely around a third the size (and thus a third the data rate) of lossless animation and it encodes and decodes quickly. however, it does not support alpha if that is something you need.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

it should work that way. double check that you have the latest update.

if so, you might try a reboot and see if that has any effect.

if that doesn’t help, file a bug report by either choosing help>send feed back, or use this link:

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

also, the numbers effect has an option to disable proportional spacing…

i’ve always thought there should be an option in the characters panel to toggle between mono-space and proportional spacing.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

your screen grab doesn’t show bold condensed in the list. double check that you have bold condensed installed.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you could use a very similar expression using the linear() function to interpolate time between the mask path keyframes,

try something like this (the expression assumes you have just two keyframes)

ctrl = thisComp.layer(“Control Null”);
sad = key(1).time;
happy = key(2).time;
amt = ctrl.effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”);
t = linear(amt,0,100,sad,happy);
valueAtTime(t)

if the happy face is the first keyframe simply change the value in the parentheses to the correct key index — ie, happy = key(2).time would change to happy = key(1),time.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you’d want to use the linear() function to interpolate between the 0-100 scale of the slider and any other scale required for the other properties.

you could use the same expression for each, but change the range of the scales to suit each property:

ctrl = thisComp.layer(“Control Null”);
start = 0;
end = 240;
amt = ctrl.effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”);
linear(amt,0,100,start,end)

for the rotation of the dial, set the start and end values to the rotation values of the dial where ‘start’ would be the angle needed to point at the lowest volume level and end would be the angle needed to point at the highest volume level.

for radial wipe, the start value would be the completion point for the lowest volume level (probably 100) and end would be the completion value at max volume (from the look of your meter, about 33).

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

assuming all your clips are in the same directory, i’d simply use a compression utility to transcode all the clips to a new directory, then rename the first directory so ae can’t find it and then use the replace footage function to point ae to the new directory with the transcoded clips.

once it finds one missing clip, it should then find the rest of them if they were all in the same directory (or the same relative to the parent directory)

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you might look at this one too:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/james_colin/glass.php

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW