[Lou Borella]

Charge them $1 for the job and $10,000 for the changes!!!

Seriously
I work in the NY/NJ area and my rate for graphics is between $50-$60 an hour. If I knew the job was going to take about 3 days then I would easily quote them a $2000 estimate. That would pretty much cover 3 days of my time. Remember that your time is worth what other clients will pay you. Typical day rates in are about $500-$600 per day. If I am working at home and using my equipment then my rate would be higher. I would then work until it was done and bill extra for changes. There is always the “pain-in-the-ass” line item. Take it easy on them in the beginning and keep the apprised of the progress with screen caps and communication. If they make changes after the initial deliverable then make sure you charge them a full-day rate. If you don’t work changes into your quote they will take advantage of you every time.

Lou …

[Lou Borella]

Figured it out!!
There were 2 folders with waveform cache files.
After I deleted the cache files FCP did the redraw.

Sorry for wasting postage space!!!

Lou …

[Lou Borella]

Winston
Check out Wiebetech.com.
They have desktop solutions that range from single-bay to eight-bay chassis.
I have their single bay RTX100. I use it for my final backup device. The drive is hot-swappable.
The chassis has eSATA, FW800 and USB2. This might be great for what you do if you are always using one drive per project. Plus its portable. I’ve started DV50 projects at home and finished them on the road using my laptop and this drive via FW800. It might be a little expensive for a single bay solution but the build quality is great and the 3 connection options come in handy. I needs a power light in the front though!!
Wiebetech also make cases for bare harddrives.
You should give them a call. I spoke to one of their techs for about 40 minutes one day asking the same questions you are asking now.

Lou …

[Lou Borella]

Thanks Mike!!
I think they used to be spelled with a lisp!!!

[Lou Borella]

were the pucks all in one layer with one instance of invigorator or where they one their own separate layers with 3 instances of invigorator? This can make a huge difference!!!

If you had 3 seperate layers you should try putting them all in the same instance of Invigorator on one layer and use the group feature to animate them!!!

Lou …

[Lou Borella]

Topher,
I cant tell what is upsetting you more – the goat or the crash?
If you want to get around the crash I think you have to enable the SCHERET preference.
Invigorator does so much resource hogging of the graphic engine that you have to purge the caches during the render. The SCHERET preference will do this for you during a render. It will slow down the render depending on how often you tell it to purge however but If you are using invigorator then odds are that your renders were overnight anyway!!!

Hold down the shift key and access the general preference settings. Dont release the shift key until you pull down the list of pages from the preference pane. You should see a new item in the list called SCHERET (or something like that. I’m typing this from memory!!) The scheret page will allow you to tell AE how many frames to render before purging the cache files. Depending on how often you tell it to purge it can add some time to your render.

I can’t guarantee this will fix the crash because Invigorator can be a little freaky sometimes.
I would also recommend doing your renders to a non-compressed format like QT Animation
or an uncompressed AVI and then converting them to WMVs in a different program.

Hope this helps …
Lou …

[Lou Borella]

Dan
you are right that the Math.round needs to be there.
I’m having a problem when the countdown gets to 10 though. It jumps to 0 instead of counting down from 10 to 1. I know that I can split the layer and remove the expression but since I’m trying to get a handle on expressions is there an “if/than” or some other command that I can add to my expression?

Thanks,
Lou …

[Lou Borella]

Tim
I wouldn’t precompose the TV layers.
Leave them in the same comp as the null and parent them to the null. If your sequences get too hairy then you can make them shy and hide them.
I’m not sure what type of camera move you want to accomplish. If you want a camera that will fly around the TV then duplicate the null in the center of the TV. place the camera in its starting location and make it a child of the new null. Animate the position and the rotation of the null and the camera will follow.

If you want the camera to always look at the front of the TV then place the camera at the correct location then make it a child of the original null. as you animate the null then the TV and camera should move together.

I don’t think you need the expression in either case unless there is something else you want the camera to do.

Hope this helps
Lou …

[Lou Borella]

I think I figured out the math and now I realize that it is basically the PEMDAS theory of the order of calculations. Parentheses – Exponents – Multiplication – Division – Addition – Subtraction!!! I also removed the Math.round command and the expression still worked.
Is that an actual part of the expression or is it just text that is there to help the user identify what is happening within the expression? I imagine that some of the larger expression can get a bit hairy and that text can be helpful.

Lou …

[Lou Borella]

Dan
this works great thanks.
A lot of times when people ask for help with expressions I believe that they just copy and paste the expression that is given to them. I would like to get an idea of what is going on here.
I understand the Math.round part (and now I see where that command is in the arrow pulldown) but I don’t get the math that is happening within the parentheses and after.

Can you explain so I don’t have to ask this question on the forums next time I need help

Thanks

Lou …