[Walter Soyka]

If you open Task Manager (shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+Esc), click More Details, then click the Performance tab, you can monitor your CPU, RAM and disk usage during render. I suspect something is maxing out when you reach the slow point of your render.

It’s possible that some of the hard parts of your render are cached; if Ae can grab the frames it has already rendered from a memory or disk cache, it can zoom through sections of the render that would take a lot longer if it had to render them from scratch.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

This works exactly as expected:

s = "";
for (i= 1;i <= 5;i++) s += thisComp.layer("EXAMPLE").text.sourceText;
s

If you’re still having trouble, please copy and paste the code you have that isn’t working.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

Displacement Map is a compound effect that can use one layer to warp (displace) another. First, it maps the pixels from the Displacement Map Layer onto the pixels of the layer it’s applied to. Then, for each pixel in the layer it’s applied to, and separately for X and Y, it looks at the grayscale value of the corresponding map layer. If that map value is between middle gray and black, it causes an increasingly negative displacement. If that map value is between middle gray and white, it causes an increasingly positive displacement.

The “Use for Horizontal/Vertical Displacement” channel selector lets you control how that grayscale value is calculated.

Luminance uses a weighted average of the red, green, and blue values of each pixel to approximate the perceived visual brightness of a color. It especially emphasizes green and de-emphasizes blue. To try this for yourself, make a few solids — red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta — and put them all on-screen at the same time, and note how some appear brighter than others.

Lightness takes the average of whichever channel is brightest, and whichever channel is dimmest. This does not relate to the way you see color.

A picture is worth a thousand words:

Off, half, and full are great for testing, as they override the source image completely. Off returns black for every map pixel (maximum negative displacement), half returns middle gray (no displacement), and full returns white (maximum positive displacement).

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

I guess I don’t understand what you mean by “look like one piece of footage.” Are you trying to show a projection effect where it looks like the screen doesn’t bend at that corner?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

Make two precomps: one for the square piece, one for the corner piece, both fed by the full-width source image. Use CC Power Pin to put each precomp in its respective place over the render, and use track mattes to handle any places where the image should be obscured (like the bend of the column on the left).

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

I don’t think this is possible directly in Ae.

But you could use a keyboard macro application to get the click the mouse on a specific spot on-screen. I’m on Windows, so I’d use AutoHotkey [link]. (On a Mac, you could use a program like Keyboard Maestro [link].)

Here’s a .ahk script that would help:

#NoEnv ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
; #Warn ; Enable warnings to assist with detecting common errors.
SendMode Input ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir% ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.

^#z::
MouseGetPos, xpos, ypos
MsgBox, The cursor is at X%xpos% Y%ypos%.
Return

#z::
MouseGetPos, xpos, ypos
Click, 2523, 635
MouseMove, xpos, ypos, 0
Return

After running the AHK script, open Ae and hover the mouse over the Analyze 1 frame forward button, then press Ctrl+Win+Z. This will pop up a window that shows the on-screen X/Y coordinates for the button. Note those numbers and modify the “Click” line above so it reflects the location of the button on your monitor and in your layout.

Save and re-run the AHK script. Now, when you press Win+Z, AutoHotkey will get the current position of the mouse and store it, move the mouse to the coordinates you wrote into the script, click, and instantly move the mouse back to its original location.

Note that if you move or resize your Ae layout in a way that affects the tracker panel, or if the tracker panel is closed, this won’t work. You’ll have to keep the tracker panel open, and you’ll have to adjust the X/Y location of that mouse click if you change your layout. (A program like Sikuli might be a little more flexible here, but I haven’t tried it myself.)

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

If we build the track matte so that it’s sized for a single line, but use an expression to make it move with the type and jump back to its starting position after it reaches its own height, we’ll get that single line/cut reveal:

Check out a sample AEP:
12480_scrollingtextlinerevealer.aep.zip

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Rodrigo Trovao] “Thanks Walter for your answer, the problem im doing this through scripting… :)”

An important detail!

No way I can think of to do this directly… but if you really want to do this, you could locate the After Effects preferences file on disk, parse it for the “Most Recently Used (MRU) Search v2” section and “MRU Footage Path ID #” keys, then re-import then remove the files referenced there.

(You can’t use the app.settings object because it’s sandboxed to a specific section of the preferences file, and you won’t be able to re-import referenced MRU files that are no longer on disk.)

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Lisa Adess] “if im looking to render out 700 one-minute video with effects PER DAY, do you think there is anyway to do that without a render farm?”

Sorry, I assumed that you already had a network of computers set up, since you were talking about the watch folder network render system.

I understand what you’re trying to do… but what is it exactly that you’ve already got to work with?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

There’s BAO Mask Avenger, but the compatibility matrix says it only goes back to CS6:
https://aescripts.com/bao-mask-avenger/

Maybe you can outline what it is exactly that you’re trying to accomplish? We might be able to suggest some other way you haven’t considered yet.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]