[Ocean Byrne]

Thanks, but no.

I have my animation, on all sorts of layers, and at 14 seconds I want to insert 2 more seconds.
So what used to happen at 15 seconds will now happen at 17 seconds…

Except what I really want is to be more flexible than that and easily play with the timing until it is just right.

[Ocean Byrne]

Ha. Whatever, go back in your cave and use your ancient voodoo arts of lore where none of us have to see it… What do you suggest next, that I get out my abacus to figure out how to edit this animation. Get with the times Oldman! It’s 2016, which is, well I don’t know how many years after arithmetic, since my cell phone calculator isn’t currently getting wifi, but wither up and die already…

Also, I guess I haven’t made too careful a study of it yet, but I’m pretty sure what with my varied time re-maps, it’s not as simple as current frame – 100 equals my frame, seems like it is always changing.

Maybe I’ll put a frame counter in my sub sub comp while I’m working, to make it easier. How you like them ancient ways apples grandpa!

[Ocean Byrne]

I think your mask feather is too big? I’m guessing that square is the size of the layer, and you probably have a feather set to like 200, meaning it goes in 100 pixels towards the center of the mask to be fully opaque, and 100px out from the mask line to fully transparent. But once your mask gets 50 px out from the mask line the image ends, so there is nothing there to mask.

You could set the feather lower so it doesnt extend beyond the edges of your layer. You could try doing a repeatile effect on your layer to extend the edges, or you could find a way to pre comp or change your layer to make sure there is imagery occupying the entire composition, or at least all of the area you want it to be seen…

[Ocean Byrne]

Thanks guys. PNG seems like a good option, it’s bigger than my old motion JPG was, but it looks like I expect it to, so that counts for a lot. Oddly, it doesn’t seem like the Quality Slider under PNG has any effect on file size (or Quality) but that is okay.

[Ocean Byrne]

Thanks guys, I think you are all right.

I am just using an AE black bg, and while I only have 1 adjustment layer for a portion of the clip, I have a lot of layers set to Screen or Add and I think they might prefer a Solid black layer, to the comp BG. (I’ve also been up against that when I solo some of my subtle layers I can’t see them at all, but they do show up in the whole comp.)

I tried Photo JPEG and it seems to work better, though I was trying a bunch of different things and got confused. I think I also set Straight as opposed to Premultiply, thought seeing as how I’m not outputing an alpha should that even matter?

As to my final deliverable, it’s kind of up in the air? H264 or .wmv’s seem to be good in terms of being small to email this pretty long video, and still have it look good. In the end though they might do some editing and add audio, in which case maybe they want a less compressed format? Any tips on your preferred output codecs? Like your favorite that is small and looks good, and you favorite to send to a fellow professional who may have to work with it more? (assuming I can call myself that)

Thanks guys

[Ocean Byrne]

It is brighter r looking in the quicktime player, yes.

But it is also brighter if I drag the .mov into AE, and then bring it in on top of the very comp that rendered it.

?

[Ocean Byrne]

Well, I would still love to hear from someone if there is a way to specify and lock the kerning on your text to hold the digits in place?

But, I bastardized a few other folks expressions, and came up with a rig where I have 3 separate text layers positioned where I want them, and then they use this expression to pull just the digit they want from the same slider.

This expression absolutes away any decimals in your input value, and converts 23 to 023, or 00023 depending on your amtOfZeroes. Then on each text layer change the digit value to be the one you want to display.

nums = thisComp.layer("Datas").effect("Altitude ft")("Slider");
amtOfZeroes = 3; //how many digits do you want to see
digit = 2; //digit to display, 0 is left most

//--Do not modify below this line
isNeg = false;
if(nums < 0)
{
nums = Math.abs( nums );
isNeg = true;
}
sVal = Math.round( nums ) + "";
while(sVal.length < amtOfZeroes)
{
sVal = "0" + sVal;
}
if(isNeg)
sVal = "-" + sVal;

sVal.substr( digit , 1 )

[Ocean Byrne]

That is a cool technique Sir Soyka.

I have a similar issue, but in my case my data in Excel is not in regular intervals, my data points come at sporadic frames.

After much searching on the webz, I wasn’t finding much on bringing data from Excel to AE, except for things you can pay for. Then I had a random thought, I selected some keyframes in AE, ctrl-c, went to Excel, ctrl-v. Badda Bam!

This gives you the format (which depends on what sort of keyframes you are copying), then you can populate as you need, select and copy in Excel, go to AE, and paste.

BAM!!

The only hitch (or maybe it’s a benefit) is AE will paste your first keyframe where ever your time marker is. So if you want Frame 137 in Excel to be Frame 137 in AE, make sure your first Frame in Excel is 0, and you are on Frame 0 in AE when you paste.

In my case, I created a Null layer, added a bunch of Slider Controls under Effects/Expression Controls, and pasted all my data onto them. Then I used various expressions to convert the data to work with each gauge.

Up yours expensive data importing products!!!
Oh fine, they’re not even that pricey, but up yours!

[Ocean Byrne]

I did try typing in a lower value, but CC Radial Blur clamps it at -250.

I am sort of able to get what I want by duplicating the entire layer with the Radial Blur on it, and then scaling down around my center point. (I created a null, and expression pickwhipped the Radial Blurs Center Point to the Null, then duplicated the layer, parented it to the Null, and scaled down.) Unfortunately though, this approach has several drawbacks. Mainly speed, the non-Fast CC Radial Blur is pretty slow, and once you have 3 scaled layers going to get to the center, it is very slow to update. The second issue is if you want to move your center point this approach breaks down, unless you set up some sort of complex expression to distribute the layers between scaled up and version and the Center Null.

Given that there are various Effects like CC Radial Fast Blur, and CC Light Wipe that very quickly render what I want but outwards, it seems like there should be an easier way to get the blurred to the center effect I am going for.

Anyone know of a plugin for this?

Here is a pic of what I am doing/going for:

[Ocean Byrne]

I can kind of get what I want using CC Radial Blur (not CC Radial Fast Blur) and setting it to “Straight Blur” with a negative “aAmount”, except it stops me at -250, and I want it to pull in all the way to the center point.