[Somethingrandom]

If I’m not mistaken, which I could easily be, you have the ‘left align’ option selected in the ‘Paragraph’ panel. If you change it to ‘centre text’ you should get what you’re looking for.

Hope this helps.

[Somethingrandom]

[Dave LaRonde] “You also have a limited capability to scrub audio in AE. Hold down the command key (ctl key win) and move the timeline cursor; the speed of the scrub depends on the complexity of your comp. Or just hold down the key and hold down the cursor, and you’ll get something like the next 10 frames of audio”

That’s spot on, pretty much all I need. It just wasn’t an obvious thing to do, before I got AE I pretty much used vegas/prem pro to do any editing and because the audio in those two programs is pretty straight forward I thought there was something wrong with my install of AE or my codecs when I couldn’t seem to get any audio from it. To comment on your point in your other post, I understand that AE is a very powerful program with it’s specific uses, that’s why I still use vegas to do the standard editing of footage. It’s just the piece I was making couldn’t be made in anything other than AE and I needed to sync the audio perfectly, now I’m confident I can do that. Thanks for every ones input.

On a side note, which is better to use in conjunction with AE, so not which is best but what is best when teamed with AE; vegas or prem pro? The obvious choice is prem pro but I’ve heard that rather than have problems between ae and vegas it’s more just like you have more options with prem pro, which is to be expected I guess. I am currently using vegas, that’s why I ask. Should I consider going back to prem pro or if I’m comfortable with vegas should I just keep doing what I know?

[Somethingrandom]

Isn’t that a little awkward? Do you know why adobe chose not to have the option for real time audio in AE? It just seems like something they could do quite simply that would have a tremendous effect for users. It even seems like something someone could have done in a plug-in. What’s the reason for it being the way it is?

But thanks for the tip, I’ll give it a go and make the best of it that I can, cheers.

[Somethingrandom]

I understand what you mean Graham because it’s not just AE I’ve done that in, it’s not a hard mistake to make lol. But what I meant was copying from project to project. Copying composition to composition works fine for me. First I tried to open two projects in AE at the same time but I soon found out you can only have one project open at a time and this is why I was struggling to copy over what I needed. But I’ve kind of answered my own question after tinkering around in AE for a while I found I could import the project into my main one and from there it was simple to copy over the effect from composition to composition.

Thanks once again to you all, appreciate it.

[Somethingrandom]

Great tips guys. I followed the creating a signature video tutorial by Aharon Rabinowitz and applied what you both said. To see if I was capable of achieving it I used a font to trace but I could even use my own handwriting to add that little something extra to the project. I used the glow effect and after playing with the settings I was able to make the text look like it was a light source generating light with it’s own luminance. I’m quite please with it but I think I’ll try adding some other effects to get it just the way I imagined it.

Thank you both.

Also, instead of starting a new post, there was something I wanted to know which is directly linked to this post now. When I made my first two words I made them as their own project, I then tried to ‘get/put’ them into my main project, I had difficulties. I think this is like an AE 101 thing but how do I create things in one project and then bring them into another and it still be completely editable as if I’d actually made it in the new project. Because when I tried the best I could come up with was to copy and paste and when I did that the whole thing merged into one file/layer that was called [Original Source Deleted] so I kind of know I’m doing something wrong…

[Somethingrandom]

Ok I’m glad you’ve made me think about this some more because I needed to sort out what was in my head lol.

I’ve found this picture which is pretty close to what I want.

It isn’t perfect but it’s a decent example. Ok, so basically forget about flying orbs and light trails, after hard consideration and making a quick sketch of the scene it wouldn’t work anyway. Unfortunately I can’t find the advert online or even a picture of it but I still want the effect the flying orbs/light trail leaves. It’s glowing text, but unlike the picture I’ve linked you to it’s not light coming from the back ground past normal text, the lettering itself is made of light and also has a glow emitting from it.

So if you look at the picture, the font isn’t one I would use, however it is joined up. So if you can picture this; the audio track has a kind of monologue and I want to have the words appear letter by letter as they are spoken, ideally joined up for the style of the piece and they would be made of this light I’m trying to describe.

I really hope this hasn’t confussed you more as I kind of have changed my request a bit, sorry, lol. Hope you can see the bigger picture I’m aiming at. Thanks for your input.

[Somethingrandom]

Yeah I had just watched that tutorial when I made the post, however I’ve had this idea before I’d seen the ipod advert or the tutorial so I guess that’s why the post was influenced by it the way it is.

But the idea I had isn’t the same, it’s similar and I probably could get the effect I’m looking for by doing what you suggested but I can’t help think that there must be a simpler way. I’ll try and describe the effect I want when my mind isn’t so influenced by the ipod advert. Basically I want to have the text appear letter by letter as if someone was writing it. I want the style of the text to appear to be handwritten and for it to be appear to be some sort of light, similar to that of the ipod advert.

I think the first option is easy to achieve, but atm I just know how to do that with single none joined text like a sort of type writer effect. I think I could solve the handwritten issue by the choice of font. But I’m not sure how I could link all three aspects together to get the effect I want.

[Somethingrandom]

I’m probably more of a beginner with AE than you are so I can’t offer any direct help concerning AE and this effect you’re talking about but I can offer some information.

Once you’ve hit print screen the image is saved to your system clip board, just like when you copy and paste something. If you open up a simple image program such as MS paint and hit paste, the image you took will be pasted onto the ‘canvas’ and you can then save it as various forms of image files.

For recording what you see on your monitor I’m almost certain some of the video editing programs have the feature built in to them but I’m not sure on that. However there are numerous ways to record what happens on your screen. There are programs such as fraps which although are designed for games, will record your desktop or another program because that’s what they do. But the way that I record what’s on my screen is a bit long winded and probably seems excessive but it’s what I have to do considering all the particulars.

The method I use is using the ‘clone’ feature on nvida graphics cards (ATI is possible too), this means your pc literally clones what goes down the monitor cable and sends it via the TV-out function found on a variety of graphics cards. This is then sent to a TV-in port using an s-video/composite cable, then you need a program such as iuVCR to receive the signal and record the digital quality footage either compressed or uncompressed depending on your particular situation (my situation was that I wanted to record high quality game footage without CPU lag [uncompressed]).

Now this method isn’t for everyone, and like I said I’m sure some of the video editing programs have this function built in, or there is an easy way, but like I said my situation warranted the method I used.

Hope some of this helped and or someone else can come along and make it a lot more easier for you ;p