[Tim Bentley]

Thank you for your reply, I should have updated this post. In fact I finally went for exactly that target bit rate (more or less, it was around 12). I think I was just surprised by the amount it was necessary to increase the bit rate by before I was able to get rid of artefacts which appeared for such a short time. Anyway I’m glad you couldn’t detect any choppiness as I guess that means the problem’s solved. Thanks again!

[Tim Bentley]

Yes I certainly played the video before uploading it, and it’s nothing to do with the Vimeo player.
The frame rate is 25 fps and I’m using the default 2-pass Vimeo settings, for which the target and maximum bit rates are 5 Mpbs. I’ve tried at 7 and 10 but the problem persists, though less noticeably.

Maybe I’m just being too conservative with the bit rate, but it seems odd to practically double the file size for the sake of a few seconds of choppiness. That’s what I’ll do if necessary but I’ve never had this problem (or never so pronounced) at 5 Mbps before (VBR obviously).

Happily, upgrading to Yosemite has bricked my backup drive which has given me something to keep my mind off it 🙂

[Tim Bentley]

This tutorial uses pretty much the same techniques though it’ll only get you some of the way there.

https://lesterbanks.com/2013/03/animating-morphing-pictograms-in-after-effects-using-shape-layers/

New film just added: https://timbentley.info/

[Tim Bentley]

Oh I see what the OP meant now (I missed the word jetstream!). Yeah do what Rowan says ↑

[Tim Bentley]

It’s not really clear what you want to do – if it’s only a single arrow, why would you need to change the path over time? The arrow can only be at one point at any given time, so changing the path over time is pointless. If you have several arrows, it’s probably much easier to duplicate the path and make changes as needed for each arrow. Or is the path visible, and you want to move it around? In this case you need to set a keyframe for the ‘Path’ value, which will then let you animate the shape over time. It can be fiddly to select / edit individual points (quickest way is to select one of the path properties), and it’s not a method which gives you much control but might be what you’re after.

[Tim Bentley]

Ted – yes, ‘creating big problems’ was a bit vague – I was tired and being lazy 😉

Roland – unfortunately there are numerous background elements as well, otherwise this would have worked. One other possibility which I considered was pre-comping the two layers together and rotating the pre-comp – again not possible in this case because of the render order, but would definitely work for a simpler composition. I’ve run into a few problems recently which are caused more by the complexity of the composition (700+ elements, lots of expressions and tens of thousands of keyframes) than by any particular AE issue. Often the solution which requires the fewest global changes to implement is the best!

The idea of an expression (or effect) which creates an autonomous “rotation + anchor point” parameter was what haunted my dreams last night, but in the cold light of day I know that a parented null does just that, and I’ve never run into the need for an alternative before – and, as I say, it would technically have been possible, but given the stage of the project it was difficult to add without creating unwanted after-effects (no pun intended).

Thanks for all your help!

[Tim Bentley]

Thank you for your advice – in the end I did almost exactly that, except I duplicated the character layers rather than split them (they themselves are parents to 20+ other layers, so couldn’t be split) then did a single frame opacity change, with the two duplicated layers parented to the null as you describe. I linked the motion of the null to the originals, adjusted the anchor point and rotated it. It wasn’t quite so simple, as this screwed up a couple of expressions I had, but it was just a question of finding what expressions to remove / change from the duplicates, and most expression-based values I re-linked to the original layers.

Ted – there were several reasons for not wanting to parent the characters to a null – they already have a parenting structure which is quite complicated, and by adding a further parent I got unwanted rotation in the intermediary children / parents. It also interfered with some expressions, as I describe, and the fact that both characters are in (uneven) 3D motion didn’t help. Basically I could have just linked them to a null, but it would have created more problems than it solved – hence the question 🙂

[Tim Bentley]

I think you mean changing where on the layer the pin is placed without distorting it. As far as I know this isn’t possible, and I don’t see how AE could do it without two different sets of position values – one for the pin in relation to the mesh, and one for the pin’s actual movement (kind of like an anchor point).

You could try copying all the pin’s position keyframes, deleting the pin, then placing a new pin and pasting the position keyframes. Then you’d just need to move all the keyframes the same amount as you moved the pin.

I can’t check if that’d work as AE is doing something at the mo, but it works seamlessly in my head.

[Tim Bentley]

That’s always what I’d assumed, but it’s good to have it confirmed – I tend to have the illustrator artboard set to the comp size just to make the whole interplay a bit more manageable, but as you say there isn’t really any need. In the end I chopped the layer into several smaller layers as you suggested – I think I heard after effects whisper a quiet ‘thank you’…

[Tim Bentley]

Thanks for your thoughts, in the end I put it down to dark forces as well – the project is saved on a drive which was once used by the ancient Indians as a burial ground for old OS 9 applications…

It definitely needs continuously rasterising – the vector (in spite of being twice the size of my apartment) is effectively scaled up to around 500% by the camera position. Out of interest, I’ve often wondered wether there’s any reason not to make continuously rasterised vectors quite small (natively – ie in illustrator) and then scaling them up in AE? Instinctively I always try to make them the same size as their actual scale in the comp, but does AE prefer the smaller, scaled-up vector, or one closer to the actual size (or doesn’t it matter)?

After two more attempts it all seems to be OK – I agree that the enormous layer isn’t helping, and in fact a one or two pixel difference in the rasterising might have produced the unwanted scaling / stretching effect. There’s a few expressions I’ll have to rewrite but I’m going to see wether it’s feasible to break it down into segments or, failing that, to break my laptop down into segments.

Thanks agan for your help.