[Michael Szalapski]

To make sure we’re all talking the same language. “Editing” is cutting video clips and putting them next to each other in a sequence. Making it very stylized with color is called “color grading”. Adding animations is called either “motion graphics” or “animation”.
You would edit in Premiere Pro, probably do Color Grading there too (unless you want to get really complex), and then you would bring your edit into AE to add the animations to it.

– 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]

Are you definitely sending it again and not duplicating the project in AME? I’ve accidentally done that before.

Check what project file AME is rendering. Every time you send an AE comp to AME, it makes a “temp” version of the project file. (This enables you to render in the background with AME while you continue to work.) It might be that AME is just pulling the old project file twice.

– 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]

Not necessarily. Turn the fill off, but turn the stroke on and make sure you have a white stroke. I’m guessing that the shape isn’t a simple stroke in Illustrator but two circles that are kinda filled, but it’s just a guess.

– 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 was about to suggest that!

Alternatively, you could do it with Particular. You just need to give the particles a tiny bit of initial movement from the emitter’s velocity and then slow them to a stop immediately with air resistance. If they have the option to get their orientation from movement, it should do it.

– 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 second the suggestion to use the value graph instead of the speed graph. It’s much easier to do what you’re talking about there. (You’ll need to separate dimensions to use this with position, by the way.)

Alternatively, you can parent your things to something that is constantly moving slowly and then animate the objects themselves to get the quick movement which eases into no movement. However, since it’s parented to something that’s constantly moving, it’ll just ease into slow movement.

– 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 could even use motion tracking to aid you in your masking. It all depends on how the shot looks. The pro tip about making a different mask for each body part is essential. Also, don’t rotoscope everything. Just roto the parts that need it! (Unless you’re completely replacing the background, you’ll likely not need to do her whole body.)

– 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 will say, the new fluid stuff in the latest version of Particular is a ton of fun to play with!

– 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 usually recommended to put your cache on your fastest drive. Now, it’s pretty cheap to grab a 256 or 512 SSD these days. I’d recommend just tossing one of those in your machine and using it for your AE cache drive. That’s what I’ve done in my freelance studio at home and what I’ve gotten for all our machines at my full time job 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]

What effect are you using? Try CC Power Pin instead of AE’s native corner pinning.

– 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]

Also, for simply replacing audio, I’d highly suggest using Premiere Pro instead of AE. It’s much better-suited for basic tasks like that. Or, if you want to get crazy, use ffmpeg to just swap out the audio track in your video file.

– 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.