[Michael Szalapski]

One of the older tutorials on the COW actually involves a bunch of smaller screens showing different video which transition (in a really good-looking way) into one big video. Check it out.

If you want a less-cool, but much easier, method I do have a suggestion.

I’m assuming that your 64 screens are in a precomposition. If not, why not?

Bring in another copy of your 64 screen precomp and use it as a track matte for your logo video layer. Then just keyframe the opacity of the logo video layer. (Or perhaps use some sort of greyscale map-based transition such as gradient wipe based on a precomposed fractal noise or turbulent noise layer).

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

It’s also quite useful for Illustrator files in AE. Clicking that button on an Illustrator file causes it to continuously rasterize. Meaning that, when you scale it up, it doesn’t matter how far, it will always look crisp and beautiful, the way vector was intended.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

No. If you want a professional look, you will pay for it.

If you want free, do my suggestion of duplicating your layer, like, 20 times and putting them each 1 pixel forward (or backward) in the z axis.

Blender is a free 3d modeling program, but it requires some learning. (As does AE)

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Off the top of my head you would start with a combination of write-on effects.
You’d be writing in both the positive and negative values.
You could use particles or practical footage (smoke, ink in water, etc.) to drive some of the reveals as well.
The images that you’re writing on would probably need to be created in Photoshop or Painter (or something similar) or created practically and then scanned.

It would require a good bit of planning, that’s for sure.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Select the 3D Layer switch for the layer in the Timeline panel, or select the layer and choose Layer > 3D Layer.
More 3d layer info available here.

If you want the layer to have depth you there are several plugins you can use. One of my favs is Zaxwerks 3d Invigorator.
Or, if you don’t want plugins, you could duplicate your 3d layer a ton of times and offset each copy a pixel back or forward in z space in AE.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Well, for a start, don’t export your project. Use the render queue; you’ll have a lot more options. How are you doing your RAM preview? Is it by pressing 0 on your number pad? If so, what does the RAM preview panel say while it’s playing? What are your frame rate settings in the composition and in your output? How are you playing it back after it’s been exported?

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

In the example you show, the images don’t really morph. In video, morphing often refers to shapes changing, but, in the example, no shapes change. It just pulls back and the pictures form another picture by virtue of their coloring.

You’re wanting to do this with video and not still pictures? If the video changes much then you won’t be able do duplicate this at all because if the video changes, its colors change and it would need to be in a different place. If the video files look the same, you can make still out of them and follow the tutorial.

In either case, you won’t be able to do it very well with only 25 images (that’d be a 5×5 block). You’ll have to duplicate your images and use multiple copies of them.

If I’m misunderstanding your question, I apologize.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

For how to get that 3d notion do a search on The Kid Stays In The Picture.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

If you’re doing a RAM preview and you can’t hear sound, it’s probably because you’re doing a preview by pressing spacebar which is nit a good way to preview in AE. Press the 0 key on your number pad (not the normal part of the keyboard).

The reason that AE can’t be like Premiere is because they’re different programs intended for entirely different functions. Premiere is an editing application intended for real-time playback. AE is a compositing and motion graphics program. It is not intended for playback. They handle video very differently because they do different things.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

As Dave pointed out, you have given us very little information on which to guess what your problem might be.

I’m guessing that you’re looking at your computer screen and seeing delightful video (that you may have color-corrected until it looked great) and when you view it on a regular old TV it looks like crap. That’s because computer screens and TVs are very different when it comes to how they represent light and color. A white that’s RGB values are 255 255 255 (pure white in AE) is beyond the acceptable color limit for broadcast television. (Also a black that’s 0 0 0 is too black for broadcast TV.)

My suggestion; color correct on a broadcast monitor.

Or, if you don’t have the thousands of dollars that it takes to get such equipment, at the very least put an adjustment layer on top of everything that brings it back into legal broadcast color range. (A levels effect with the output black set to 16 and the output white set to 235 will help.)

There is a ton you could (and should) learn about color space and broadcast legal color issues. Google for them.

Of course, this is just a guess and might have nothing to do with your particular issue.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.