[John Cuevas]

Your keyframe interpolation is set to bezier or continous bezier and you want linear keyframes. Highlight all your keyframes and right click on them and select keyframe interpretation and change spatial and temporal to linear.
Keyframe interpolation

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 answer depends on what system you are going to be using for playback, HD-Upper. Standard Def-Lower. Computer-progressive.

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]

Are you working on the same system, cause if you are you could just Dynamically Link between the two projects.

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]

Couldn’t you create whatever star shape you need in illustrator. Bring it into AE and set that as a custom particle in your form layer. You could actually precomp multiple stars and use the random still frame feature.

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]

Couple of ways changing the shape star_points. When you create the star just use the up and down arror to change the number of points. You can also change the number of points by twirling down into the Star Shape Layer -> Polystar -> Polystar Path and change the points there.

You can’t change the number of points of the trapcode star, you would have to make your own star and use it as a custom particle for particular.

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 answer is sort of both. I may edit an entire sequence in Avid then take it into AE to apply a film look to everything.

Or I might edit a sequence in Avid and decide that one shot needs to be stabalized, so I’ll just export that one shot into AE and fix it. No point in rendering a ton of extra stuff, if I’m just fixing one shot.

Also, just to be clear, AE isn’t an editing app. It can be done, but it’s not made for editing and it can be pretty frustrating to use it as one.

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]

Ross,

As to the first question, Sorry, but there is no way to do what you want to accomplish. Once you render a file out, it’s a flat video file. That’s it. Working at a lower resolution, chaning your screen size to 50%, turn off motion blur will speed up your work flow.

For your precomped text. Open your precomp and apply the ramp effect to the text(or track matte with a solid) in your precomp. Now the two should move together.

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’ve discovered the controls for changing the interface color.

If necessary you could make a new compostion a little larger than your final file, create a black solid and mask out the middle. Drop your final project under the black mask and preview from there. Least then you could see what the final is supposed to look like.

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]

Are you talking about the screen around your movie, not the background of the movie itself, but the container around it?

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 believe your computer is fast enough that rendering fractal noise by itself takes the same as rendering a frame of black.

If you were to use more complex effects that tax the system a lot more, say Optical Lens Flares, Mettle Shape Shifter, Free Form or some complicated particle systems, you would find that turning the layer off greatly increases speed.

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.