Roland Kahlenberg
Valorous Hero
Roland Kahlenberg
Valorous Hero
Activity
‎Mar 03, 2025
07:39 PM
Color Swatches are flat but the love for gradients is not going to stop. So, I'm looking at a way to display a Gradient within a Color Swatch. Should be useful for Gradient Fill and Gradient Stroke in Shape Layers. And as an aside, who decided to name Timeline Markers, Composition Markers??? 😄 Having Composition Markers is actually a good way for leaving/exchanging notes directly in a Composition; where a Marker Comment may have more contextual relevance than a Timeline Marker.
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‎Mar 03, 2025
05:29 PM
Hi Simon, I've been keeping an eye on the Properties Panel and since the poor performance issue I reported, it's been good. I'm almost certain it's due to me working with bad code on a script I'm developing - I was implementing an Undo+Redo feature and there was a loop that kept going back ... and ... back. Now, all is good for performance and the Properties Panel but I'm still 'meh?!' with the Properties Panel appearing on its own. Thanks for checking in - very much appreciated. Cheers!
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‎Feb 23, 2025
01:49 PM
Thanks for the reply and suggestion. The issue with the unchecking Auto-Open is that this affects other Tools. I've also been thinking what's the reason for the Properties Panel being so in-your-face. :-DFrom a UX POV - I've got a shortcut key to toggle it on/off. Setting this shortcut should be a sufficient indicator that tells the Properties Panel to stop getting into the UI on its own - the user has made a decision to use this feature on an on-demand basis. So ... this is the user's preferred UX. Hence, the UI should respect this decision and appear only when toggled, to be on. I'll also keep an eye and a mind on system performance - it could be stuff I'm working on that's the cause BUTT it's also corelated with the Properties Panel's appearance.
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‎Feb 20, 2025
10:07 PM
In v25, whenever the Properties Panel appears, usually when I least want it to, it bogs down my system. It's like a ton of bricks just got loaded onto the back of geriatric AE.
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‎Feb 20, 2025
10:03 PM
When receiving AEPs, it's not uncommon to have to perform lots of clicks to find the right Comp. So, I'm looking at a new Column in the Project Panel to lock Project Items - this will make it easier to safeguard assets/comps while also serving to let others know which are do-not-touch areas in an AEP.
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‎Feb 20, 2025
09:57 PM
Rive's tech is unique and designed for runtime performance due to their market space requirements. For AE, just the design aspects will be great - performance should of couse be reasonable but it's important for uses to get to the tools to create wonderful designs in a reasonable amount of time.
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‎Feb 20, 2025
09:55 PM
Thanks Nishu. And sorry for the mess. I did the same thing in my previous OP and this time I thought I was in the right place. I'm not sure what's happening on my end but I'll be more careful; being mindful alone isn't sufficient some days. 😄
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‎Feb 19, 2025
10:27 PM
1 Upvote
That Vector Feathering in Rive - oh my!!! Can we get one, or two of those? 🙂 AE's design features could do with oneToAFew new/updated features/tools. And another thing that's NOT been around for ages is a Design Topic at the bottom of this text field. Users can pick from quite a few topics but Design or Motion Design isn't one of them - I've always found this a lot sad because AE is a Motion+Design tool. So, let's Make Feathers Great Again - in AE! 🙂
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‎Feb 14, 2025
02:39 AM
After some tests, it looks like a clamp method I've applied to my Text Layer's position property is causing the issue. When I disable the Position Expression, I get expected results. Still not a good thing that something happening in Layer>Transform>Position can affect the result.
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‎Feb 13, 2025
09:07 AM
Usually, increasing fontSize from a left-edged Anchor Point pushes characters to the right of the layer's Anchor Point. With my set up, I'm seeing the opposite behavior. This makes it impossible to have controlled layouts - very bad thing.
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‎Feb 12, 2025
07:46 AM
Thanks Kevin.
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‎Feb 11, 2025
09:31 AM
When leaving AE idle; going to another App or for a break, the AutoSave timer continues. Then, you get back to AE, you have to wait for an Auto-Save to happen. This is irritating, especially on large projects. Perhaps a quick fix might include - Perform AutoSave Even When Idle option in Prefs Stop hogging AE when I return from my break!
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‎Feb 11, 2025
07:06 AM
1 Upvote
This has been an issue for as long as the Drop Menu has been aroung - updating Menu Items is prone to lock up AE, amongst other strange happenings. On previous occasions, I could use Task Manager to Force Quite AE but this time, even this doesn't work and rebooting is the only option!!! I've been using AE for over 25 years and have had to reboot due to a bug. This Drop Menu has been a constant horror show. Errors/Issues can easily occur if you copy/paste within the Input Field in the menu. And doing this while updating the items list is more likely to cause issues than when first adding actual item names. This is quite horrific. UPDATE - restarted Task Manager and managed to Froce Quit AE.
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‎Feb 10, 2025
11:58 PM
So, deploying character ranges for the new text styling feature is a PITA. So, I'm thinking we have the wrong tool(s) for character ranges. So, howzabout we have a new type of slider that has TWO controls instead of the regular single control. The Left Control defines the start range and the Right Control, the length of the range. And via scripting/Expression control, we simply add arguments to get at each of these controls. And we'll call this 2-Control Slider, S2lider. 😄 My thoughts are with S2lider, it'll be much easier for average and even experienced users to start enjoying using the very cool text styling feature and hopeful/wishful that it'll be more performant than the verbose lines of code that's currently required to achieve identical results. So, we'll have a specific S2lider for Characters, another for Words and another for Lines and one more for Paragraph. and it's essentually the same slider but with functionality Based On a DropMenu to select the Selection Mode which also gets applied when the user applies this option via the Expression Controls Menu.
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‎Feb 06, 2025
02:41 AM
Another option which may be a lot easier - Have a Trim Path that works within the Stroke Shape operator; much like Dashes, Taper and Wave are part of the Stroke Operator.
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‎Feb 05, 2025
06:25 AM
A Trim Paths mode that only affects Stroke while leaving Fill untouched will be a good addition. I'm looking at the Trim Paths, Trim Multiple Shapes Drop Menu as a guide for the UI-UX. So, right at the top of its UI, above Start, we have a Drop Menu, Trim Path Affects ... with the following Drop Menu Items - Stroke Only Fill Only Stroke and Fill and Stroke Only wil be the default.
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‎Jan 31, 2025
10:49 PM
Could the issue be related to Content>Transform>AnchorPoint/Position being non-zero? This is a known issue with Points follow Nulls and perhaps it's also an issue with the new features?
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‎Jan 31, 2025
10:46 PM
Interesting! I posted this on SocMed a couple of days ago - Looking forward to dig into the Expressions 🙂
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‎Jan 26, 2025
10:59 PM
1 Upvote
The Media Intelligence search looks great and I believe it'll be better if there was an option to use the feature within existing bins. So, I could search AND list based on further search criteria such as Shot Size or do a Boolean - Shot Size of Coleen. So, I'm looking at Listing Criteria to display based closest match to furthest match AND the ability to 'train' the engine if it displays less than expected results. So, if I searched CU Coleen AND Indoors, the Bin will display, at the top, all CU shots of Coleen indoors. Then the engine displays other clips in order of search-result relevance with relevance based on the first criteria stated. So, if I searched the following, Coleen CU AND indoors, the relevance will be weighted more for Coleen followed by CU and then indoors and then other clips that are unrelated but perhaps relevant based on the engine's algorithm. And when searching from the Main Search panel, there should be a way to place the search results into a new bin.
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‎Jan 26, 2025
10:49 PM
I've had success with CSV. Here's a sample - DS,component,semanticName,fontName,fontSize,leading,leadingScalar,tracking,startDate CreativeCOW,ParaText_A,Headline,MyriadPro-Bold,120,80,1.2,30,June11-2023 CreativeCOW,ParaText_A,subHeadline - 0,MyriadPro-Bold,32,NA,NA,42,June11-2023 CreativeCOW,ParaText_A,subHeadline - 1,MyriadPro-Regular,32,NA,NA,42,June11-2023 CreativeCOW,ParaText_A,subHeadline - 2,MyriadPro-Regular,32,NA,NA,42,June11-2023 CreativeCOW,ParaText_A,Para Text -1,MyriadPro-Regular,34,34,1.2,34,June11-2023 CreativeCOW,ParaText_A,Para Text -2,MyriadPro-Regular,34,34,1.2,34,June11-2023 CreativeCOW,ParaText_A,ParaText Highlight -1,MyriadPro-Regular,30,30,1.2,30,June11-2023 CreativeCOW,ParaText_A,ParaText Highlight -2,MyriadPro-Bold,30,30,1.2,30,June11-2023 CreativeCOW,ParaText_A,Footer- CREATIVE,MyriadPro-Regular,36,20,1.2,36,June11-2023 CreativeCOW,ParaText_A,Footer- COW,MyriadPro-Bold,36,20,1.2,36,June11-2023 CreativeCOW,ParaText_A,Footer- .NET,MyriadPro-Regular,36,20,1.2,36,June11-2023 CreativeCOW,ParaText_A,Footer- Quote,MyriadPro-Semibold,32,15,1.2,32,June11-2023 CreativeCOW,ParaText_A,Quote_subText1,MyriadPro-Semibold,32,28,1.2,32,June11-2023 And if you drop the CSV into the AE Timeline and your Expressions reference the timeline instance of the CSV/data, in PPro, you can load up an alternative CSV from the MoGRT (Properties Panel in v25 - Essential Graphics Panel v24 and earlier), from a Timeline instance of the MoGRT. HTH
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‎Jan 22, 2025
01:21 PM
This thread has a few examples and a link to a video tutorial - https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/tutorial-bold-part-of-a-text-layer-using-expressions/td-p/14973554 What you should take note are the following - - this feature that allows multiple font styles per Text Layer is only available in the latest version of AE - to implement this feature, you can write multiple setFont, setFontSize etc in the style definition statement. In previous versions of AE, you were only allowed to write a single instance of each Text Style in the style definition statement. - you use a range to define which parts of the Text String gets styled differently from the Base Style. The Base Style is the style that affects the entire Text String. You do not have to define a range for the Base Style. - the defined range requires a start index and a length. HTH
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‎Jan 22, 2025
01:38 AM
It's very frequent to have disabled and locked layers not updating when an Expression involving such layers has a referenced object that has its name changed and this usually only becomes known to the user at a much later time than when the incident that creates the error is initiated. So, I'm thinking of having this as a Pref setting in the Scripting & Expressions Section. AE already does changes automatically but it skips disabled and locked layers. So ... this sucks big time. I'm almost done with a script to perform this task but it's gotten really huge with other features it has and I've not been able to complete yet and I'm not too keen to re-visit it anytime soon. AND I'm sure there are users who will welcome this QoL addition.
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‎Jan 22, 2025
01:19 AM
Current constructs to not allow for control of word spaces - they all get nuked or ignored, by default. As an example - We start with - Today has been a busy day. If I then set my range to select words 2 and 3 with the intention of animating its fontSize via a Slider Control and starting from 0 to 50 with 50 also being the size of the base style; when fontSize is at 0, this is the result - Todaya busy day. This of course sucks like a drenched cigar. So, I'm thinking of a way to control word spaces and thought we could have an "extends" a bit like how sourceRectAtTime() uses extends. The possible arguments for "extends" to work with affected properties in the text.sourceText prop is as follows - fontSize(mySlider,startValue,length,true,1) Where "true" means, word spaces will be retained and the number (1 in this case) specifies the number of word spaces to use/retain. So, when animating fontSize, I will be able to hook up the "1", the number of wordspaces value to a Slider Control and also animate it but going from 1 to 0. With this construct, with my specified set up, when fontSize is at 0, this will be the result - Today a busy day.
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‎Jan 20, 2025
08:40 AM
Current construct is such that Reduce Project ignores assets/properties/Expressions if these are not present in Comps selected priorly. So, to overcome this quite prevalent issue, I'm looking at a Pick Whip feature in the Project Panel to connect assets/comps. So, assets/comps connected in this way will be part of the selection for Reduce Project. TIA
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‎Jan 20, 2025
08:33 AM
1) The UI that appears is not sticky to the last selection. I'm too lazy to check but it seems to be sticky to the selection made in the Character Panel instead of being sticky to its use within the sourceText property. 2) When a Font has multiple weights, a user has to select each weight, one at a time - there is no straightforward way to write out the weight variations because some foundaries are not strict to using "-" for a typeface, for its different font weights. So, I'm having to select each weight, one at a time to obtain the correct name for all the weights. So, the UI will be greatly improved if it can recognize the number of weights and allow for multiple weights to be selected within the UI and then applied into the Expression Text Box. And of course contextual stickiness for last font used will be good if request #2 above is trickier to apply. TIA ps - apologies for the cross post. I only just realized I posted in the wrong forum with the earlier post.
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‎Jan 20, 2025
07:04 AM
2 Upvotes
1) The UI that appears is not sticky to the last selection. I'm too lazy to check but it seems to be sticky to the selection made in the Character Panel instead of being sticky to its use within the sourceText property. 2) When a Font has multiple weights, a user has to select each weight, one at a time - there is no straightforward way to write out the weight variations because some foundaries are not strict to using "-" for a typeface, for its different font weights. So, I'm having to select each weight, one at a time to obtain the correct name for all the weights. So, the UI will be greatly improved if it can recognize the number of weights and allow for multiple weights to be selected within the UI and then applied into the Expression Text Box. And of course contextual stickiness for last font used will be good if request #2 above is trickier to apply. TIA
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‎Jan 15, 2025
04:15 AM
By definition, kerning is the spacing between 2 characters. So, after defining the start, there is no need to define the end.
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‎Jan 12, 2025
06:52 AM
1 Upvote
Firecut.ai seems to be the best for captioning - stable, well-supported and it's been around the longest too - https://firecut.ai/ On Text Styling of AeMoGRTs, this is a decent tutorial - https://youtu.be/SpuYYGSbM7E And this thread has some good examples - https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/tutorial-bold-part-of-a-text-layer-using-expressions/m-p/14974435#M258224 I've used the new paragraphing feature in a recently released set of AeMoGRTs - https://broadcastgems.gumroad.com/l/ocejrf For standard design/typography/layout requirements, you should be able to do a lot of what's usually required. It does get unusually busy in the Source Text property but the Styling Expressions are usually unrelated and shouldn't disaffect other code - just remember to be neat and tidy. 😄
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‎Dec 19, 2024
11:13 PM
1 Upvote
Hmmm ... strange IDEA for sure. But a well-designed AeMoGRT with less compute-intensive components at play can be played back in realtime in PPro. This feature will be useful for previewing AeMoGRTs in the Source Monitor; allowing the user to better engage with the AeMoGRT prior to committing them to the Timeline. I appreciate not all AeMoGRTs will be suitable but the idea to first preview an asset before commiting it to the Timeline is Editing 101. So ... nothing strange here. - just allowing a user the ability to audition/engage with an AeMoGRT will allow them to make better decisions.
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‎Dec 19, 2024
11:04 PM
1 Upvote
MoGRT is a File Format. What you do with it depends on specific use-cases/solution at play. It can be a way of bringing an AE Composition with tons of layer and nested compositions or a Composition with a Single Layer. From a general POV, MoGRTs allow for improved interoperability between AE and PPro. From an end-user's POV, it allows a PPro Editor access to edit AE Assets/Properties. This alone speeds up workflows. All File Formats have limitations and it goes with the MoGRT File Format. File Formats are designed as a conduit to meet the needs of a large set of solutions. MoGRTs actually work exceptionally well in most areas except for the really horrid bugs that have lingered for ages - most if not all have been fixed quite recently. However, that not-made-for-human Text Input Box still bothers me. If you're a seasoned AE user and working mostly alone then using Dynamic Link between AE and PPro is actually a better option under most circumstances except when you're using a MoGRT for access to a template in its file format. For large setups, with lots of editors-only at work, MoGRTs provide exceptional productivity gains and with a very high probability of improvement in output quality if implemented well. I can playback AeMoGRTs in real time in PPro but not so in AE. Of course, this depends on a lot of factors and unique cases but this opens up a lot of possibilities to using AeMoGRTs in PPro. I am in the midst of developing a set of AeMoGRTs that take advantage of this realtime playback capability in PPro. Lots of opportunities/possibilities.
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