[Joey Foreman]

The shite screen indicates an excess of fecal matter in your footage.
Try the Trainspotting codec.

[Joey Foreman]

cmd + option + R on a Mac
Ctrl + alt + R on a p.c.

[Joey Foreman]

Select the new footage item in the project pane.
Select the layer which needs its footage replaced.
Option-drag the footage to the layer which needs to be replaced.

[Joey Foreman]

Oops, my bad.

But it might be worth exploring how much you can accomplish in AE before investing in a plug-in.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

[Joey Foreman]

1. Select the effect and go to Animation > Save Animation Preset
Give it a name and be sure the destination is User Presets
It’s now available in Animation Presets – User Presets.

2. Shift select contiguous layers, or CMD select discontiguous layers    and move them.
   Or you could precompose them and move them as a unit, but that’s a    different kettle of fish.

[Joey Foreman]

I believe the problem is that you created your text as point text rather than paragraph text.

Those options will be grayed out unless you use the paragraph text technique.

Here’s further clarification:

https://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7ceea.html

You must start by drawing out a bounding box, then entering your text.
You will then gain access to those tools.

[Joey Foreman]

Make sure the text layer is selected. Switch from the Selection tool to the Text Tool (Cmd + T).
Select the text with the Text Tool (highlight it.)
Then press the justify button in the Character palatte.

[Joey Foreman]

Have you tried just googling political and physical map Vietnam, SE Asia, etc.? More than likely someone will have those for free or for sale.

Get one, slap the effect on and go to town!

But you will need to have more than a rudimentary understanding of AE’s animation controls before you can begin to relate the generalities of any tutorial with the specifics of your particular project.

If you are comfortable with panning around layers that are larger than your composition, and know how to play around with and get a feel for the controls of an untried (but easy) plug-in, and you still can’t think of an imaginative way to use those two skills with a big ole beautiful hi-res image of the earth, then maybe a tutorial could be of use.

If you just need inspiration, you could google some motion graphics sites, ones with an emphasis on geography or space themes. Or watch a lot of the History channel and Discover.

[Joey Foreman]

Why do you need to purchase the plug-in? It’s been bundled with AE since version 6.5.

You could just google the question for tuts and resources, but what i’m telling you about the plug-in specifically is that it’s really fantastically simple to use, and that as soon as you apply it and play with its (not many) controls you’ll instantly get a feel for how it works and how easy it is to use.

But if you’re talking about creating the sort of motion graphic where you zoom into the earth and then move across the surface in anything other than a straight path, then you’ll need to learn to use AE’s 3d camera controls, and that’s another can of worms.

But you could start here:

https://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7e28a.html

What I mean is that for that effect you would have to combine 3d layers, camera animation, and CC Sphere.

Or you could keyframe the radius parameter in CC Sphere until the globe fills the screen, then introduce some clouds either via image maps or generating them with particles. Let the clouds obscure the view then transition to non-sphere-ized map layer. Then use the pan behind tool to pan (fly) across the surface.

[Joey Foreman]

Which isn’t, as i’m sure you probably know, really the same as linking, e.g., you can only transform all the layers together by transforming the topmost parent layer.