[Walter Soyka]

[Dave LaRonde] “Thanks for the warning that Win 10 does weird things.”

Windows 10 isn’t doing anything weird. Ae always remembers the last absolute path to all footage files — not just the relative path from the AEP. This way, it can stay connected to footage files whether the project file only moves, or whether all the footage and the project file move together and keep the same relative paths.

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 there’s any way, even via scripting, to force a file in Ae offline. (You can replace it with a placeholder, but I think that will completely break the link to the original footage, making it unable to automatically relink later.)

The easiest path I could suggest for you is to save your project as an After Effects XML file; then you can search and replace a common string, like the drive letter(s), to make all the footage offline.

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

[Walter Soyka]

[Vinnie Spano] “When selecting all layers, and then shift+clicking on a layer, After Effects seems to arbitrarily select either all layers above or below the layer that was clicked. I recently worked on a project with 200+ layers, and this made adjusting layers on the timeline very frustrating. Does anyone know how to intentionally select all layers below or above?”

Selection in this case seems work inside-out, based on the mouse cursor position. If you select all, then move the mouse UP and shift+click, it will de-select above your clicked layer. If you select all, the move the mouse DOWN and shift+click, it will de-select below your clicked layer.

If you end up with the opposite of the selection you want, you can right-click any of the selected layers and choose “Invert selection” from the context menu.

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

[Walter Soyka]

Are you familiar with expressions? Perhaps you could adapt the expressions in this thread for x/width instead of y/height:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1135735

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 expression will do what you describe. Twirl open your text layer in the timeline panel, then twirl open the Text group, then Alt+click the stopwatch for the Source Text property and paste the following:

Math.floor(linear(time, inPoint, inPoint + 3, 1, 75)) + "000"

English translation:

As we progress in time from the layer’s in point to 3 seconds after the in point, go from 1 to 75 (linear), drop any decimal points (Math.floor), and tack on three zeroes to the end.

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 you want a new value each frame, try something like this:

footage("Dinjector out0001 DATA001.csv").dataValue([1, timeToFrames(time)+1])

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

[Walter Soyka]

Maybe you can post a screenshot once you’re back so that we can see what you are seeing?

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’d suggest using the “CINEMA 4D” renderer instead of the deprecated “Ray-traced 3D” renderer.

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

[Walter Soyka]

You Alt+click the property’s vary-over-time stopwatch, not a keyframe, to enable an expression for that property.

There is a new feature in After Effects CC 2018, though, that makes this faster: you don’t need to Alt+click the stopwatch to create a property link. The Parent column has become the Parent & Link column, and each property gets its own pickwhip icon. You can drag this from any of the Corner Pin properties to any similar property and save a couple steps, like in this picture:

Just drag the pickwhip icon onto the property you want to drive it and Ae will create the expression for you.

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

[Walter Soyka]

Unless you want to go deep on Ae color management, you might consider a change to your workflow.

Doing a basic grade in Resolve first, export in your project’s final color space to Ae for work, then bring the results back into Resolve for final grading. Use lossless or nearly-lossless intermediates to preserve quality throughout.

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