[Steve Bentley]

Because the video is black and white you can simply invert it (effects/channels/invert). This will make the lines white on a darkish background. Put that layer over an orange solid. use a screen blend function on the media file layer. You may have to add a color correct (levels effect perhaps?) to clean up the “fog” in the media files background.
Also try double up the media file layers – basically hitting the element twice over top of the orange. It will help reinforce the thin lines.

[Steve Bentley]

If you are on a PC, fire up LITE and the go find the exe for the demo and right click on it and choose Open. If that doesn’t bring both apps to a run state, pin the one that isn’t running to the task bar and then do the right click thing above. That should get both running at the same time.

[Steve Bentley]

15.11 is where the legacy QT codecs met their maker. I wonder if, with the remaining but still long-in-the-tooth QT codecs, AE is forced to emulate ProRes in 10 or 12 bits, but from a 32 bit universe. And as such, can’t quite get the conversion LUT just right.
I don’t remember if ProRes was 10 and 12 bit linear or Log. The latter would complexify that conversion exponentially.

[Steve Bentley]

Can you save from the demo? If so that file should open in Lite or the full version as long as the Rev number is the same or greater in LITE. If it won’t open, it might Merge.

If you are on a PC you can have the demo AND the lite version running simultaneously. You can then copy and paste all the objects from one to the other (at least in theory, as the copy feature may be turned off in the demo.)

Depending on what is in your project you could also export to another format (FBX or C4D xml) and then bring that back into the LITE version. But the export features may be turned off in the demo.

[Steve Bentley]

IMHO you have to go a little nuts to get AE to run out of memory. That’s the whole point of the Disk Cache. I’ve seen it chug, I’ve seen massive disk caches, but even when I’m working remotely on a small laptop (8GB), it’s slow but it still does the work. Even my decade old Macbook Pro with only 4Gb handles stuff we’re doing now (albeit at a snail’s pace).

It may be a single effect that needs a large memory buffer or an adjustment layer, or a continuously rasterize setting that’s keeping a file huge before sending it into either of the previous two listed items.

[Steve Bentley]

Thanks for the input Andrew.
I can think of a few situations (but just a few) where the precomp won’t even work (based on masked and multi density footage). More issues erupt if the layers you are trying to cross dissolve have blend functions on them like Screen.

I was just looking for a simpler solution than Blend (I mean its just a cross dissolve for pity’s sake). Blend does the trick but you end up hacking your sources into snippets to keep the effect on one of the snippets and not the other. And it becomes a spot where missing frames (gaps) can creep in, especially if the footage has been reversed. “Inelegant” sums it up.

I know AE is a not a NLE but still, next to a cut, a proper film dissolve is the next most basic of techniques. (but come to think of it, Nuke’s got one, Fusion’s got one, Flame’s got one, not too sure about Shake; but its been a while. And none of those are NLE’s either)
I guess I should stop my complaining – I used to be a printer op back in the day and a dissolve on the stand was harder than the blend function these days (and no scratches!).

[Steve Bentley]

My concern (and why I wasn’t more helpful) is that without memory in expressions I worried that the circles would calculate at each frame based on the current parameters, and, with round off errors, the entire array of circles would jitter – you can see that happening in 3d software when you start “packing”. In a big dynamics sim you don’t notice it as dominoes are falling but watch when the movement (supposedly) stops – everything looks like its on just a bit too much cocaine.

But of all the shapes, circles should be the easiest because when it comes to size and how close they are to one another it’s just the radius and probably a vector thats needed in the math. There are a few youtube videos (i’m looking for them now) on packing and voids, that describe how the beginning “row” of circles (or spheres) matter as that determines the packing order from that point forward.

One approach might be to do this in something like Processing, or (gulp) Flash and then export the results if a movie is what you are after. HTML 5 could also do it but I don’t know about export on that platform. And then of course there’s C4D with it’s built in gap algorithm and cloning and particle engines. (you could do flat shaded spheres on a plane – they would look like circles and it would be fairly automated)
Wolfram (Alpha or Mathematica) could also help as Stephen Wolfram’s original cell work included a lot of “packing” code.

[Steve Bentley]

I wonder if the project just so processor intense that either the mouse isn’t updating on screen properly (but the values for a farther distance are being recorded from the mouse) or that the mouse release is getting lost in the shuffle of higher priority routines.

If you have a bunch of paint strokes on a layer and try and move them all in time they will keep moving long after you have let go of the mouse. It might be the same problem but because you get to see the view through the camera in yours, it looks like camera drift.

Try it in wire cage mode and in lower resolutions and see if that makes a difference. Try also moving the camera with the position values (drag the value)

[Steve Bentley]

Its the continually rasterize button that’s causing the “issue”.
What about just putting the colorama effect on each layer in the precomp and linking the effect’s values to a master effect via expressions? That way when you change one you change them all.

[Steve Bentley]

Here’s a little background for you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_packing