[John Cuevas]

If I recall correctly, Ae does not support compressed alpha with DNxHD. Using uncompressed alpha should work.

Couldn’t tell you when, but that’s no longer the case, you can export compressed or uncompressed DNxHD alpha from AE and import into Avid.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

I use DNxHD all the time, default codec around here. Exactly what system isn’t recognizing the alpha? And have your re-imported it back into AE to see that it was created correctly.

If I decide not to use DNxHD, I’ll use animation, as it’s lossless and storage space isn’t an issue for us.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

As far as where to get started, besides Dave’s suggestions(which will is also included in this link), check out: Getting started with After Effects (CS4, CS5, CS5.5, CS6, & CC)

Also, without seeing the template, it’s hard to tell you where to start, if you want to post the .aep project here, I’ll take a look at it and see if I can give you some suggestions on how/where to make changes, but we’ve basically told you how to do that. Mostly, it’s just a matter of digging all the way into each comp/precomp structure make the change, make adjustments, move to the next one. Depending on the template though it can get real complicated, really quickly.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

When you create a layer in 3D, you need a 3D camera to look at it. When you do this though, unless the camera is looking straight at the object, you will see portions of the object. Couple of things you can do, you could put your text in a precomp, dead center and rotate from there. Another trick, is to create a camera and put it at -1,000,000 and then zoom in 1,000,000. At that far of a distance, it’s nearly straight on, you will lose some of the 3Dishness of text though.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Yes, you can generally change the settings(unless there is some pre-rendered animation) by just pressing “cntl+k” to open the composition dialogue. Then just change the duration to what you need.

The general problem that arises, these templates generally have comps with precomps and more precomps, so you need to adjust the duration length of every instance. Then you need to adjust keyframes, you will probably have to move layers around to accommodate the new durations and so-on and so-on.

Another method, is to take the final comp, drop it on the “make new comp” button, and use time-remapping to shorten and lengthen the compositions duration. This might work, but it can also cause different problems. Like certain animations are going too fast/too slow.

Again it’s possible, just takes a decent understanding of AE and Comp hierarchy.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

This is one of those effects, you can probably achieve in multiple ways. One method would be to create each line of text and add two linear transition effects. The benefit of this is that you can move your text, all over the screen, but the linear transition, stays in the same place. If you use masks, the masks will move with the text. So with a couple of linear transitions, you can basically create a track matte, without having to need a different matte for each layer.

In the example video, there was some overshoot on the text, so in my example project I created the same overshoot. But when the text exited up, it was masked at a lower point than it did with the overshoot, so to do that, I keyframed the top linear transition effect.

Check out my example project, and if you have any questions ask, or perhaps someone else might have a better method for this. 7385_lineartransitionfolder.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Found some more tutorials that might help:

Tracking A Futuristic High Tech Floating Interface – Day 1

Tracking A Futuristic High Tech Floating Interface – Day 2

How to track text to a scene with Mocha

If you need more help perhaps you can upload the shot you are tracking?

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Sorry about that, I fixed the link. Motion tracking is available in CS 5.5, but you are correct – to achieve the rotation you see in that video, you would want to use a planar tracker. Make sure you have perspective and rotation selected when you are do the planar tracking.

If you go to the mocha website, they have tons of tutorials for using Mocha, like these one, that is sort of what you want to do.

Tracking titles with mocha AE and Plexus

Planar Tracking HUDs and 3D Camera Solving – mocha v3
(this one uses the camera solver, which isn’t available in the basic version of Mocha—but there is still some good information in there)

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Start by purging the cache (Edit > Purge).

If that does’t help, post a screen grab of your timeline and comp window.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Here’s another thread where we were discussing falling objects, in the last post I uploaded a project that uses some expression to add some random, fluttering, falling to an object, you might want to check that out.

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/202/899616#899627

I made some adjustments to the original project, that more mimic what you were trying to do.
7380_fallingfinal.aep.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.