[Michael Szalapski]

There were some Dell monitors that would have an issue playing back in real time until you turned off the MultiStream Transport (MST) option. You might look to see if that works on this screen 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 are using some…very large images. I would highly recommend sizing them down as small as you can in Photoshop. Unless you’re getting very close to the image in AE, you can size it way down. That would help a lot.

As to the issues you’re experiencing, I would not recommend CC 2015 (or CC 2015.3) they were both earlier, buggier versions of the new architecture.
I would suggest either installing CC 2014 or (and this is what I would try first) installing the latest version (remember to uncheck the box that removes old versions under the “Advanced Options” when you go to “update” to the new AE). For me, CC 2018 (or just “CC” as they’re apparently trying to call it) has been the most stable version of AE in a few years.

– 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]

Do you get the message when you double-click the file itself only or do you also get it when you go to the File>Open command?

– 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 would suggest you use some variation on the “follow the leader” expressions from Dan Ebberts on this page: https://motionscript.com/mastering-expressions/follow-the-leader.html

You would add +value to the expression so you could offset it to where you want it in space and then use the delay tricks from that page to make it follow, but just a bit delayed. If you want really springy stuff, there are tons of examples of expressions for overshoot. You’d add that to this delay stuff.

OOOH, or you could offset the layer position using this springy connection expression: https://motionscript.com/design-guide/elastic.html

– 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 going to ask about the specs of your audio file, but then I got to thinking, why are you using AE for a video blog? After Effects is for creating shots or animated graphics; AE is not intended for doing editing.

You should edit in Premiere Pro. It is much easier to learn and much faster to work with as far as editing goes. Then, if you need to add some complicated graphics or visual effects, you can use AE for those few shots.

– 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 probably do something with expressions and linear() to get it to kind of work…

– 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 will need to do some rotoscoping, yes.

Or, you can ask whoever is doing the 3ds Max work to make you some object buffer passes. This would make things much easier.

– 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]

Go for the fastest core clock speed you can afford for sure. There are some things that use multiple cores to render (the Cinema 4D renderer, the Camera Shake Deblur effect, etc.), but in general, as Dave says, AE renders on one core.

– 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 should look into Character Animator. It is a program you can install as part of your CC subscription (assuming you have an all apps subscription) and it is super-fun to use!

– 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]

Does it have to use CC Vector Blur? The examples you’re showing all look like Radial Blur (or similar).

– 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.