[Joey Foreman]

Pretty sure you just copy the path (the Mask Path on the layer you pasted the path) and paste it into the position property of the emitter. Then spread out the keyframes along the timeline to taste.

Joey Foreman
Editor/Compositor/VFX Artist

[Joey Foreman]

Sounds like you’re low on RAM. What are you running with?

Joey Foreman
Editor/Compositor/VFX Artist

[Joey Foreman]

A good bet, though, would be a .tiff sequence. The editor can then convert that to ProRes.

Joey Foreman
Editor/Compositor/VFX Artist

[Joey Foreman]

That’s for your editor to decide. Ask her/him.

Joey Foreman
Editor/Compositor/VFX Artist

[Joey Foreman]

Framerate mismatch?

Also FCP doesn’t support realtime playback of the Animation codec without a fast RAID, so it might be your system struggling to keep up.

How does it play in Quicktime 7?

Try rendering to ProRes HQ instead.

Joey Foreman
Editor/Compositor/VFX Artist

p.s. If you’re working at 23.976 fps, pans can/will be perceived as less smooth than at a higher frame rate.

[Joey Foreman]

Why not start by just animating the text layer’s position property and adding an Easy Ease Keyframe Assistant to the position keyframes?

Joey Foreman
Editor/Compositor/VFX Artist

[Joey Foreman]

Well, you can’t loop a composition but you can loop a footage file as many times as you want.
Render the composition, import it, then right click on the clip in the Project Panel and open the Interpret Footage dialog. That’s where you set the loop.
Keep in mind, though, you want the loop to be seamless. One way to accomplish this is, rather than render the entire length of the comp, set the work area back one frame from the last.

You can also loop individual animation parameters of a layer such as rotation with an expression, and possibly parent several layers to a null which has a looped rotation.

Different ways to skin a cat.

I don’t render SWF’s at all so I’ll let someone else take that up for you.

Joey Foreman
Editor/Compositor/VFX Artist

[Joey Foreman]

Just to clear up some terminology. That button actually has two names. When it’s used on a vector layer it’s called Continuously Rasterize.

https://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7f49a.html

Joey Foreman
Editor/Compositor/VFX Artist

[Joey Foreman]

The AE manual sums it up better than I could.

A matte is a layer (or any of its channels) that defines the transparent areas of that layer or another layer. White defines opaque areas, and black defines transparent areas. An alpha channel is often used as a matte, but you can use a matte other than the alpha channel if you have a channel or layer that defines the desired area of transparency better than the alpha channel does, or in cases where the source image doesn’t include an alpha channel.

A mask in After Effects is a path that is used as a parameter to modify layer attributes, effects, and properties. The most common use of a mask is the modification of an alpha channel of a layer, which determines the transparency of the layer at each pixel. Another common use of a mask is as a path along which to animate text.

So when you use Keylight, you are creating an alpha channel (not a mask) on that layer. You can also use it to create a Luma Matte (my preferred method)
which defines transparency for the original unkeyed layer below.

Footage that doesn’t have enough color or luminance information to isolate discreet areas of the image requires a user-created animated mask to generate transparency (its Alpha Channel). That’s what rotoscoping is.

Masks are created with the Marquee, Pen, and Autotrace tools.

Hope that helps.

Joey Foreman
Editor/Compositor/VFX Artist

[Joey Foreman]

For your duplicated comp, all of the nested comps have to be duplicated and renamed as well, before changing the attributes of their layer(s).
Simple enough, but if you have to do this several times it gets tedious and time consuming.

It was this situation I found myself in with a client.
The True Comp duplicator takes the hassle out of it, hence my recommendation.

Maybe this demo video will sell you –

https://aeportal.blogspot.com/2010/04/true-comp-duplicator-after-effects.html

Best of luck.

Joey Foreman
Editor/Compositor/VFX Artist