[John Cuevas]

If you are going deliver in 1080p, work in 1080p. You can always scale down/work at half resolution, render to smaller files. But scaling up can be a real hassle if it’s the last thing you do, particularly when you start working with a lot of layers and precomps nested inside precomps. There are scripts that do a good job with this, but it’s so easy for things to get missed, or unaligned.

Your method is going to cost you more time than it will save in the long run.

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]

Oooh, I like Walter’s method better, do that one.

***I always forget about the adjustment layer trick for lights, thanks for the reminder.

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]

Go to Edit > Preferences > Media & Disk Cache and uncheck “Enable Disk Cache”

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]

If you have only one object in your scene you could the light sweep to an adjustment layer. Like so: 6811_lightsweep.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.

[John Cuevas]

Use the import dialogue(cntl+i), select the folder you want to import and use the “Import Folder” button at the of import box.

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]

The page/links Todd has put together will get you started on the right path. After you check that out(the videoCopilot one is a pretty quick start-up) if you have specific questions regarding that open, come back and ask.

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]

Check out this thread, some good responses. https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1036527#1036529

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]

If you create a 3D camera and move it, the text won’t be in front of the camera when you enable 3D, it’s position will be at 0,0,0. Try holding down shift and parenting the text to the camera, that will jump the layer to where the camera is, then you should be able to quickly adjust it into position.

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 downloaded that and watched it frame by frame, and it’s some really great high level work. The text looks like it was all broken down into it’s component parts and turned into shape layers. Then each shape/letter was individually animated to build on the screen. Perhaps using some additional features like bloat, pucker….

I did a google search for “Morph Text After Effects” and came across this tutorial that you might find helpful in getting a real basic idea behind some of the techniques from the video you posted. Morph Text From Regular to Bold – Adobe After Effects tutorial

Try googling others, Morph Text or Shape.

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]

Pretty sure the only way to separate position is to right click position and choose “separate”.

Here is a thread about changing Shortcuts in AE, so that might be a route you may want to explore. Changing Keyboard Shortcuts in CS6

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.