[John Cuevas]

For your wave animation, why don’t you precomp the wave and apply time remapping to one cycle of the wave. Then you apply a loopOut(“pingpong”) expression to the time remap keyframes.

I did it here: 5422_5421gradienttimeremap.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]

Sorry, you need those vertex’s to create the shape. You will need to figure out how to have the same amount for both the letter and the logo.

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]

Instead of using a luma matte, change your vacation video Track Matte to none. Turn on the Hawaiian Map layer eyeball and change it’s mode to “Silhouette Luma” and then apply your opacity keyframes to bring your video to full opacity.

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 are studying it, I would strongly suggest you start here: Getting started with After Effects (CS4, CS5, CS5.5, & CS6)

Also, FAQ: Why is my output file huge, and why doesn’t it play back smoothly in a media player?

FAQ: What is the best format for rendering and exporting from After Effects?

And Vishesh is correct, without you telling us the intended destination of your file, it’s hard to really suggest an output.

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]

Parenting allows one parent to control the children. For instance in rotation, if you parent one layer to another, the child can be made to rotate around the parent instead of rotating around it’s own axis.

Adjustment layers are take all the layers below them and look at them as one layer. So if you have 15 different pictures and you want all of them to be sepia tone, you can create an adjustment layer and put on the CC Toner and make them sepia. And if you decide to change the color, you only have to change the effect on the adjustment layer. If you’d applied that effect to all 15 layers, you would have to make 15 changes, so it’s a big time saver.

I would strongly suggest you start here to get a grasp of the basic fundamentals of AE: Getting started with After Effects (CS4, CS5, CS5.5, & 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.

[John Cuevas]

Actually just came across this tip:

Have you ever been annoyed by not being able to apply a blend mode to a collapsed layer? Don’t know what I’m talking about? Then try this: Precompose a layer (LAYER > PRECOMPOSE); in the switches column (F4) activate the Collapse Transformations switch (it looks like a little sun) for the new precomp; in the modes column (F4) you’ll notice that the blend mode popup menu has a little dash on it ““ letting you know blend modes are unavailable for the layer. Here’s the trick: Apply an effect to the collapsed precomp (this can be something like EFFECTS > EXPRESSION CONTROLS > ANGLE CONTROL that does nothing) and the blend mode popup will become active again. Thanks to Adobe’s Dave S. for this cool tip.

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]

Because you are using rasterized graphics, you turned on the continuously rasterize/collapse transformations button. When you do that, AE uses the blending modes from your precomp and disables them in the final comp.

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]

You are correct, I did not know that functionality was there. I would suggest you bring this post and questions to the expressions forum and see if they have a way of using that MM data/or displaying it for you.

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’ve been editing 15 years, if you want flash frames like that, most of the time you pretty much do it as you described. You lay the outgoing track over the incoming for 20 frames or so(depends on the music) and yes, you cut every other frame of the track out.

If you are going to do this in AE you could use a simple expression. Set up your layers with the outgoing layer on top, extending the length of the transition. Set an opacity keyframe for 100%, go to the next beat of music and set a keyframe at 0%. Select both keyframes make them hold keyframes(Cntl+Alt+H). Now Alt+click your opacity stopwatch to create an expression and use the loopout expression:

loopOut("cycle")

The nice thing about this, is if you get a different beat structure you just need to adjust 2nd keyframe and the loopout will automatically update. Here’s a simple project demonstrating the technique: 5400_flashframe.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]

Exactly how are you getting MM to start? As far as I know AE works in pixels.

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.