[Michael Szalapski]

I’m not sure I understand exactly what you’re wanting.
There are many different distortion filters that can move the smoke around. Mesh warp and bezier warp are probably great places to start looking.
When you say you’ve shot some footage of smoke I assume you mean you just set something on fire (or otherwise created smoke) and then shot it with your camera. Is it well lit smoke on a black background? Is it on a green screen? Or is it just in a room?
When you say you want to get it all moving one direction, do you mean you just want the smoke to be traveling in a straight manner? If so, surely it would be easier to get the smoke to do that in real life while you’re filming it. Unless you’re talking a really straight line, like in a wind tunnel, in that case it’d be easier to create it digitally.
When you say you want it to swirl around an object, what do you mean? If you want smoke to be blowing past something, going to the left and right around it, why not put the thing in the shot while you’re shooting the smoke? If you mean you want it to twist around something, again, it’d probably be easier to create the smoke digitally.

In order for us to help you it might be better if there were some pictures of what you’ve shot. And, ideally, drawings or example videos on what you’re trying to achieve.

– 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]

Absolutely beautiful video.

That could be done a couple of ways. You could keyframe the camera’s motion to match the sound (using Soundkeys, as Roland mentioned, might work for this, but I think it might be done more by hand). But I think they rendered out all of their different shots and then the timing of the final rendered shots was animated in an editing program.

– 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’re probably more likely to find help in the Final Cut Pro forum. https://forums.creativecow.net/applefinalcutpro

– 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 cannot believe they thought that sort of shot was possible. Well, I guess I can believe it. And I suppose it is possible, but do they want to pay the money it would take to make it work?

Anyway, I agree with Fernando. You’re going to need another shot to work with, tracking open ocean with a handheld shot (taken from a boat?) is kinda ridiculous.

Have you thought about Psunami? It can be made to look spectacular. It is very realistic.
https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/categories/motion-graphics/psunami/

– 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]

Your camera clearly was not white balance properly when this shot was taken everything has an orange cast to it. It looks as though your camera was set for outside-type light, and was shot inside without adjusting it. You definitely need to either fix your footage’s color or color your “screen” to be orange-ish.

Also the inner shadow thing you have going on? Bad idea. For one thing, rarely does something get inset to a wall and have a shadow like that. And for another thing, the screen is providing its own light source; it’s extremely unlikely that a shadow would be that pronounced on it.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a bit of a shadow falling on the screen but really noticeable from only one or two sides.

There are a few more things I could suggest, but I would want to see your other changes first before we got too far ahead of ourselves.

– 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 too have noticed a marked decline in recent years in the quality of questions (and responses to our answers) here on the COW. As Dave pointed out, it’s because more and more people are using this and they aren’t all professionals.
Two ideas
1. A “put this in the basics forum” button.
Or, more drastically
2. Perhaps we could have a RTFM button on a post. If a user posts a certain number of questions that receive a certain number of pushes of that button then they get a ban!

I dunno, just throwing out ideas.

– 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 agree completely. We are more than capable of taking care of it ourselves.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have an After Effects Elite forum so that those of us who really know our stuff could be all snobby together, er, I mean, could talk through really seriously interesting 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]

Well, I meant of the screen. But feel free to try both and see which one you like better.
The number 1 thing about putting something into a scene, is that it must be color corrected to match the scene. Make sure that the level of color is similar. If the whites are bluish and the blacks are reddish in the scene, make sure it is on your item too. It will all depend on your footage.
You may want to add a bit of a glow, you may want to make the screen look quite bluish, you may want to do tons of things. It all depends on what it looks like.
Remember, we on the COW are shooting blind without a pic.

– 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]

Yes. As was hinted in his original post, a lot of these questions are probably from people who illegally downloaded the software because they heard you could use it to make things go BOOM or because they’re doing some video thing for their uncle’s used car lot.
However, some of the questions are legitimately someone in the industry with a problem, some are from students who are looking to get into the industry, and others are from folks who are reeaaally into their hobby.
I try not to judge.
If somebody makes it obvious that they’re using cracked software, I ignore them.
If somebody asks a really stupid question, I kindly remind them to RTFM and that there is a basics forum.
I do all of this happily knowing that if I ever have a question, the great minds of the COW are still here for me 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]

Less color. Very rarely does footage shot have as much saturation as a digital screen will. Try lowering the saturation. Also, try making it a little too bright or a little too dark. It’ll look more realistic if it’s not picture perfect.

– 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.