[Bartek Skorupa]

In fact it didn’t jump to 0%. It is set to 0.1%. Click the value and you’ll see it’s set to 0.1%.
The problem is that opacity means alpha. Alpha is one of the four channels that are R, G, B and Alpha.
You can’t display colors (or alpha) with this accuracy. You are limited to 8 bits per channels.
Possible values are zero and multiples of 1/255 = 0.39%.
When using percentage you have minimum possible value of 0%. Next possible value is 0.39% and so on.
When you set the value to something between 0% and 0.39% the closer possible value will be chosen.
It means that if you set opacity to 0.1% – it’ll be “rounded” to 0%. If you set it to 0.2% – it’ll be rounded to 0.39%.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

You should ignore the way QuickTime displays it. What matters is how many pixels you have. When you import the footage you get from someone else – you have to make sure how it was supposed to be interpreted. You shouldn’t always trust automatic AE’s interpretation.
Most likely this footage was meant to be 0.91 PAR. That’s how you should interpret this in AE.
Ignore QuickTime display because it doesn’t correct PAR. It’ll always display square pixels, no matter what the correct aspect should be.
Anyway – It seems you did everything correct.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

This is Finder that slows things down. Finder indexes stuff, so that Spotlight has easier access and does many other things under the hood.
After Effects ignores Finder when copying files. It goes “inside” the system and does it similarly to shell (Terminal).
This is not that Adobe does something better. It’s Finder who does things slower.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

Maybe your font is black as well?

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

Thank you.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

Sorry, this is not an answer to your problem, but I’m just curious:

You said:
“my CompSettings are 1280×720, D1/Dv NTSC (0.91)”

What do you use such format for?

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

Can’t you simply double click the mask in the viewer?

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

As I didn’t find any “perfect” solution to import sequence with gaps as separate sequences – I have created the small application that may be helpful. Unfortunately – only for Mac.
Run the app, select all of the files you want to process and follow the instructions.
The current version of the app can manage files whose names contain ONLY numbers.
If you have files with prefixes, like: “seq_02314.dpx” you first have to batch rename them all, so that you have “02314.dpx”.
The app will create subfolders and move subsequences to those subfolders.
This is destructive and cannot be undone, so it’s better to have the files backed up.

Then you can simply select all those subfolders in Finder and drag them into AE holding Cmd.

The link to the app:
https://www.creativecrash.com/downloads/applications/misc/c/sequences-to-folders-mac-app

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

Go to the first frame of the stabilized piece, read the value, let’s say it is 365 for x and 290 for y.
Add an expression to the property and depending on which axis you want to keep, you should type in something like:

x=value[0];
y=290;
[x,y]

or:

x=365;
y=value[1];
[x,y]

That’s, what I would do.
The expression will read the value, and leave one axis and set the other axis to the value you specify.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

The script you showed is fantastic, but it will not do one thing, that I suppose is important for Ian:
It will not scale the layers inside the comps.
Let me propose something:
How about you make single comp from all the pictures, then set the size of this comp to whatever you want, then select all of the layers, fit then to comp’s size (Cmd-Alt-F, or Cmd-Alt-Shift-H, or Cmd-Alt-Shift-G, depending on your preferred way of fitting) and then pre-compose them all using the script that you can find here:

https://www.digitaldistortion.net/resources/scripts/AE/Precomp_to_duration_MultiLayer.jsx

This script has one disadvantage: it names all the comps like: “Shot_001”, “Shot_002 and so on.
If you want your comps to be named as the layers, you can change one line in the script.

line 65 reads:
var newComp = myComp.layers.precompose(layerIndice, newCompName + shotNumberPadded, true );

change it to:
var newComp = myComp.layers.precompose(layerIndice, newCompName + myLayers[myLayersCounter].name, true );

Hope it helps.

—edit—

Oops… Hi Ian. It’s great that what Walter showed us is exactly what you need. My solution may then be helpful in some other scenarios.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland