[Michael Szalapski]

Most any particle effect would be able to do that for you. You just have to set it up right. Essentially, you need a smoke particle and a sparkle particle.

Trapcode’s Particular is a great one because it works with AE’s 3d camera. Here’s is a video demonstrating some pyro effects done with it. You can even download the project files for these effects from their website.

– 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]

This would probably be easier to do with a particle effect. If the particles are set to a very low opacity and no velocity, when you move the emitter around you would get an effect such as what you describe. You’d need to make sure the particle was a very soft shape too.

– 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]

You grow arrows the same way your grow lines. Except that you put a shape of an arrow head on the end of the line as it grows.

If your line is simply a stroke effect on a mask. Use the same mask to be the motion path for the arrowhead shape. Set it to auto orient to its motion path and then offset the rotation to make it point the right way.

This previous thread might help too. It’s the first thing found on a Google search for grow arrows AE. Asking a question on the COW is nice, but a Google search gets you a result much faster.

– 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]

This tutorial here on the COW may help you.

– 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]

Please try a simple search. Searching on Google will pull up several.
Here on the COW there are sure to be some, including this classic from way back in 2001 and this one mimicking CSI:Miami.

– 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]

Make two copies of your text layer. One with the preset and one without. Animate the opacity on and off for the two layers. (Make the opacity keyframes hold keyframes to save yourself some time.)

– 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]

I don’t see a lot of flickering in this video. It kinda stuttered for a second when I first played it, but once my computer had fully opened it I didn’t really notice it doing anything worth worrying about.

– 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]

You shouldn’t have to export anything out of Premiere to open it in After Effects to do what you’re talking about. You can import your Premiere project into AE and each cut comes in as its own layer; it’s wonderful. If you only want the one clip in AE, just import the clip that you’re using in Premiere they work with the same files. I’m assuming they’re avi files since you’re using DV.

How were you exporting out of AE that was losing quality?

– 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]

Trapcode’s not going to do this very well. The particles definitely do not stick to each other. You could make a small comp and animate a kind of blobby shape that loops, then use that as a particle (making sure it’s set to loop the particles from a random part in time). That might get you a liquidy look.

If you want particles that are liquidy, but are okay faking 3d a little more you should check out the Mr. Mercury or Foam effects. They both are for liquidy or sticking particles.

– 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]

Whoever created this graphic made a big whoopsie. The lens flares are all cut off along the top.

There are several ways you could create this. I think the starting point would be to use Vegas to make a bunch of bright dots march around your image. Then there are three different things you could do after that.
1. Use Trapcode’s Starglow effect. I think this would look better than the example.
2. Use two copies of the layer with directional blur applied in different directions. (If the result isn’t bright enough, you could use multiple copies or color correction tools)
3. Use Knoll Light Factory’s Spectacular option. (From Red Giant Software) Again, I think this would look better than the example.

Another way to create this would be to create one flare image in Photoshop or AE. Animate it to follow a path around the logo. Then create a bunch of copies and use a follow expression to make them go around. (Do a search for the expression.)

– 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.