[John Cuevas]

The reason the shatter effect occurs when you apply the effect is that “Force 1″(the object that explodes your layer) is directly in the layer. If you turn on wireframe+forces it’s the big blue ball. If you apply a camera to your comp and change the shatter effects “camera position” to “Comp Camera” you will be able to rotate around and see the force even more clearly.

To have more control over your shatter, twirl down Force 1(there are 2 forces, in the effect for even more fun) and animate the depth property(they should just change this to the Z position), keyframe moving forward to back and you can explode your layer whenever you want. You can also change how strength of the explosion here and the size of the force exploding the layer.

For more about shatter see this TUTORIAL

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]

Could be related to using the disc cache. Try disabling it and see if the problem persists.

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]

From my reading newer editions of Adobe can read the .mts format, but notCS3. Since you are using CS3, I’m going to guess you don’t have a 64 bit system, if you do though, you could download a free copy of CS6 and just work with that though(trial basis)—though I can’t say with 100% surety that AVCHD will play in the trial mode.

Knowing that the format is .mts(not one I use, so I’m not very familiar) I did a google search for AVCHD.MTS convert and found some free shareware programs that you could try. You could do your own search or here is one you might TRY.

If you are just stringing together 5 clips, sure AE’s fine, but once you start to actually have to edit, you want to use an editing program and it’s a pain to edit in AE… it’s just not designed for editing.

Hope this helps out and good luck on your project…guess I was lucky, when I was a student we just had tape and it was always in one format—tape.

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]

It seems those are the raw files from the camera. I ran across a converter online for 35 bucks, but if you have access to the camera you should be able to hook it up and get it to export a format you can use easier.

BTW, After Effects is generally used for motion graphics, editing isn’t it’s strong point. If you can you will be much better off editing in Premiere.

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]

We don’t know what codecs you are using, that might change the answer.

That being said even with good footage I will get grainy footage when apply keys in AE. What I do get the best key I can without worrying about grain(garbage mattes, multiple keys-if necessary). Then I place that keyed footage over the original footage and just change it’s track matte to alpha matte.

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]

Press “Y” that activates the pan behind/anchor point tool. Now you will be able to move the anchor point back to the center or the text. I think(don’t have AE available right now) that if you hold down cntl it will snap into position, it does on the CS6 version.

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 a simple expression I made to apply to the X rotation of a 3D layer(layers anchor point has to be at the top of the layer)

amp =110
decay = .9;
t = time - inPoint;
amp *Math.cos(t * 2 *Math.PI)/[Math.exp (t *decay)]

Here’s a quick example of it in action. It’s set up to start at the inpoint of your layer, amp is how much swing the layer will have and the decay controls how fast it slows down.

4631_swingexpression.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]

The smoother needs something to smooth before anything can become active. Open your layer that you stabilized by pressing “U”. This will reveal the keyframes. Click on the word anchor point, this should highlight all your anchor point keyframes, now you should be able press apply.

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 can turn the clone on and off. Just open up the layer and use the clone tool over the scratch. Now in your timeline twirl open Effect ->Paint. You will see your clone, just grab it’s end and slide it a few frames past what you need to cover up. Move to the next scratch and repeat. Tedious, but it should get the job done.

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]

One way to get the shot less smooth would be to use the Window -> Smoother. I would duplicate the original layer first, then select your anchor points and press apply. If the results aren’t enough, increase the tolerance a little.

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.