[Mylenium]

Your’colors are out of range i.e. not broadcast save? MPEG-2 (DVD) expects certain levels, otherwise the algorithm will go boom and screw your colors.

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[Mylenium]

Automatic Duck will of course do the trick plus it will keep some effects, transitions and nested timelines from Avid, but you should be able to get a pure video/audio OMF file into AE Professional. The import option is there, but I don’t know how successfully it can be used ‘cos I never tried. Anyway, if he has only AE Standard, he’s out of luck in this case.

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[Mylenium]

OMF is only available in the Professional version, methinks. Why don’t you just create a reference Quicktime movie (assuming you use AE and Avid on the same system).

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[Mylenium]

[rodrigo] “and one more thing , the expression really will help me a lot in my works or is just a knowledge useful??
will really change my work for much better…
are them magic???”

Expressions are not magic and will not solve any problems that you cannot work you way around with other AE tools. To be blunt – if you cannot handle AE’s basic tools and don’t understand its basic principles, expressions won’t do any good ‘cos you won’t understand the meither and wonder all the time what they do. They are mainly a way of automating tedious repetitive tasks and link parameters dynamically.

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[Mylenium]

[rodrigo] “and one more thing , the expression really will help me a lot in my works or is just a knowledge useful??
will really change my work for much better…
are them magic???”

Expressions are not magic and will not solve any problems that you cannot work you way around with other AE tools. To be blunt – if you cannot handle AE’s basic tools and don’t understand its basic principles, expressions won’t do any good ‘cos you won’t understand the meither and wonder all the time what they do. They are mainly a way of automating tedious repetitive tasks and link parameters dynamically.

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Animation is a standard component of every Quicktime installation. You need to just select it under the Options on the Output module in AE.

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[Mylenium]

Particle systems are dynamic, you cannot really control when a particle is born. In your case just that might happen while your layers are jumping across the frame. You need to have your path outside the frame all the time and that’s done most easily using keyframes. Try the following:

a) create a Null object and name it “Cannon Helper”.
b) Animate its position so it forms a closed path around your window.
c) Add some code to your cannon position like that

variation=random(0,10);
helper=thisComp.layer(“Cannon Helper”);

new_X=helper.position.valueAtTime(variation)[0];
new_Y=helper.position.valueAtTime(variation)[1];

[new_X,new_Y]

d) Add som code to the direction of the cannon

helper=thisComp.layer(“Cannon Helper”);
helper_X=helper.position[0];
helper_Y=helper.position[1];
center_X=thisComp.width/2;
center_Y=thisComp.height/2;
diff_X=helper_X-center_X;
diff_Y=helper_Y-center_Y;

angle=readiansToDegrees(Math.atan2(diff_Y,diff_X));

[angle]

Should work perfectly for what you are trtying to do. Just adjust the values as needed.

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[Mylenium]

Particle systems are dynamic, you cannot really control when a particle is born. In your case just that might happen while your layers are jumping across the frame. You need to have your path outside the frame all the time and that’s done most easily using keyframes. Try the following:

a) create a Null object and name it “Cannon Helper”.
b) Animate its position so it forms a closed path around your window.
c) Add some code to your cannon position like that

variation=random(0,10);
helper=thisComp.layer(“Cannon Helper”);

new_X=helper.position.valueAtTime(variation)[0];
new_Y=helper.position.valueAtTime(variation)[1];

[new_X,new_Y]

d) Add som code to the direction of the cannon

helper=thisComp.layer(“Cannon Helper”);
helper_X=helper.position[0];
helper_Y=helper.position[1];
center_X=thisComp.width/2;
center_Y=thisComp.height/2;
diff_X=helper_X-center_X;
diff_Y=helper_Y-center_Y;

angle=readiansToDegrees(Math.atan2(diff_Y,diff_X));

[angle]

Should work perfectly for what you are trtying to do. Just adjust the values as needed.

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[Mylenium]

Hmm, that would be difficult. Unlike with certain effects there is not much of a linear workflow or learning curve – Trapcode filters can be used in so many ways (as of course also can be some AE native effects which are rarely explored), it’s impossible to cover all possibilities. This is more so true for tools as Particular. By the very nature of it there is a trillion ways to tweak particle shapes, dynamics, layer emitters and whatnot. To say it short: You never can have all possible particle simulations already made up. Some experimentation and tweaking will always occur as you go along with your project. If you could be more specific about what you are interested in, I’m sure Peder, myself and other nice people would be glad to help you out with tips and tricks or even write a tutorial.

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[Mylenium]

If that wouldn’t have worked for you, you could have tried a different approach on my website (under text/ layer styles)

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