[Mike Clasby]

You can trim footage in AE by moving that little red line (the Time Indicator) to where you want to trim, then:

“Alt [” cuts off everything to the left.

and

“Alt ]” cuts off everything to the right.

Or if you just really want to cut the layer in half use, Edit>Split Layer.

[Mike Clasby]

“also when i set keyframes manually (which would be fine) and tried to change their values, it took no affect, unless on the exact triggertime.”

I don’t know why that would be unless they are Hold Keyframes, Right-click the Hold keyframe and change it to something else. Unless I don’t understand what you’re saying.

[Mike Clasby]

Hit “UU” on the keyboard and it will show all changes made to the layer.

If there are keyframes (most likely) that control the length of the animation, you can drag them farther apart, making it take longer.

If there are expressions, the values are now displayed in red, no longer blue, then double click the parameter (like Position, or Rotation) next to the plus sign then you can read the code. In there will lurk info controlling the length of the animation or what triggers/controls it (often a link to a slider value or maybe keyframes from another layer/effect).

Anyway, open up the animation and see what makes it tick.

If a specific preset gives you trouble, ask about it.

[Mike Clasby]

Distort>Corner Pin will let you drag the corners independently.

[Mike Clasby]

Old School AE was to use Effect>Text>Numbers, choose a Format>Type(one choice is Timecode), then animate the Value/Offset with keyframes.

But Dan expression for Countdowns is way cooler:

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/counter.html

Or use his Universal Up/Down Clock, here;

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/up-down-clock.html

Lots of flexibility with Dan’s expression, read pages for details.

These two solution use expression on text that was created with AE’s Text Toll, then twirl down to Source Text, Copy the expression, Alt_Click the Source Text Stopwatch, and Paste… expression installed.

[Mike Clasby]

Precomping like Dave suggested lets me mask that precomp.

Just make sure you precomp (move all attributes) the solid with Audio Spectrum, by selecting both layers, the solid and the Audio Layer that it references, before you, Layer>Precompose. They both need to be in that precomp for audio spectrum to work.

It then masks like any other layer for me.

[Mike Clasby]

What wave form/effect? How do you want it masked? Need a few more details please.

[Mike Clasby]

M reveals the mask

Select the mask. All vertices are now selected.

Then with the selection tool, draw a little square around the points you want to move in unison. Now only those are selected. Drag one, and all move.

[Mike Clasby]

Here’s the ticket for your bobbing bottle:

https://www.motionscript.com/expressions-lab-ae65/undulations.html

If you tie parameters like xFreq, xSpeed, etc to sliders you can change the rates of the wave over time and’or expreiment quickly to get the look you want.

Add the slider, renamed it xSpeed, highlight the 150 in the expression, then pickwhip it the that slider. do it for both the Position and Rotation expressions, then the parameters will be the same like they’re supposed to be for both expression.

Also for a slider, since the expression down’t like the value zero, you might want to right click on the sldier value the make the Min and max values appropriate, like a min of 1 for xSpeed (avoiding the zero value) and say a top end of 300 or more.

This is a way cool setup because if you had two or more bottle, they would all respond in order as the wave passed, like his example on the page.

[Mike Clasby]

I like this one:

https://www.aenhancers.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=163