[Michael Szalapski]

Here’s a fun idea. Use text!

Seriously, it’ll work. Use text on a path and use a bunch of circles really close together. Use a text animator to change the fill color from white to black. That way, you get a line that will follow a path that gradually changes from white to black along the length of the line.

Then, you can use that gradient path to drive a time displacement effect. So, you can simply animate the river growing in size, in a precomp and then use time displacement to make it happen along the length of the river.

– 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 can do time-remapping on a precomp without having to render something. However, you can also use that same technique, but instead of applying it to time remapping, apply it to mess with any of a number of effect parameters.

As to your shape switching, I’m not quite sure I’m following what you’re saying. Is this a sound in the same audio file? Making it react to a certain noise amongst a bunch of other sound will be somewhat tricky.

– 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 you may have gathered from what these others have said, After Effects is not a non-linear editor. “Switching” from Vegas to AE is a bit odd since they both do different things. Premiere Pro is much more similar to Vegas. I usually do my editing in Premiere Pro and then use AE for the stuff I need more power for. (That is, complex color correction/grading, visual effects, and motion graphics.)

– 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 with Max. This looks very, very similar to the Video Copilot tutorial.

– 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]

Keylight will often keep things like shadows intact. If nothing else, you can do a different key from the shadow itself. Remember, a good key is often made up of several layers (one for the hair might be different for one for the body, etc.).

– 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’ve not had that happen before. I agree with others that audio should be a rough thing to build from in AE and you should do your real audio work in Premiere or Audition, but what you’re saying is happening shouldn’t be happening.

What, exact, version number of AE are you using? I can try to recreate your issue on my end.

– 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]

[iboukhoulef fouad] “1) I remove morphsuit with keylight.
2) Place clean plate underneath layer with the morphsuit removed.

In a perfect world I would love to be able to accomplish this look with a camera pan or slide but I’m assuming I would need to have the camera run the same exact path on the shot and the clean plate.

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks so much!”

If you have questions that are unrelated to this thread, please make a new thread.

Also, when you do make a new thread, please describe in more detail what it is you’re trying to accomplish.

– 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]

Some screenshots might be useful here for your puppet pin issues. Are you sure you’re looking at the composition panel and not the layer panel?

– 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]

Adobe did not dispose of a PNG codec – it’s still there.

The only format I know with alpha that’s deliverable in smaller files sizes is WebM, and some old school FLV flavors, but I don’t think either of them embed well in PowerPoint.

– 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, what are you using to do the tracking? Mocha does a good job of tracking when things go off the screen.

– 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.