Desperately seeking knowledge - Custom Speed

Hello,

I'm trying to get a project done quickly and I'm having a really hard time finding proper instructions for something.

I have a series of text sequences, each one has the Scale In behaviour applied--currently with Constant Speed, and the Unit Size is set to word. It's giving me close to the desired effect, however as the text scales in, I would like some parts to scale in faster than others. My assumption is that I want to apply the custom speed setting instead of the constant speed settings, and then apply keyframes where I want the speed changes to occur.

The catch is that I can't for the life of me figure out how the custom speed settings work, either from the manual, or from playing with it. First, am I correct in using the custom speed setting for achieving this effect? Second, does anyone know where I can find a could tutorial on how to use the custom speed settings, or can anyone explain to me how it works?

Thanks,
Will

You have the basic idea right. Custom speed allows you to keyframe how fast or slow the animation goes. However, you need to also pay attention to the spread parameter. Spread will expand the animation past the word that's currently being animated. For example, with the Scale In behavior, the 2nd word starts it's animation before the 1st word has finished because the default spread for that behavior is 2. If you want to ensure that each word has it's own animation speed, you need to set the spread to 1.

From there the custom speed slider is pretty easy to understand. It goes from 0 to 100, an indication of the percentage of animation in the effect. Place keyframes at places in the timeline where you want each word to animate on. Then adjust the slider until that word is animated. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Andy

http://www.timesavertutorials.com