[Sam Young]

use iTunes.
set your iTunes import prefs to AIFF encoder. then select an mp3 in your iTunes library, click Advanced>Convert Selection to AIFF.

you don’t need qt pro for this.

[Sam Young]

why not just use the Timecode effect instead?

[Sam Young]

why not just use the Timecode effect instead?

[Sam Young]

apply the shatter effect to the layer, but adjust the depth/radius/strength parameters so that the layer doesn’t explode. then adjust the extrude thickness parameter to your liking. shatter can also recognize the movements and perspective of a 3d camera layer in the same comp.

[Sam Young]

there are a few different ways of controlling the explosion — or force, as the set of parameters is called — in shatter.

for demo purposes, add a 3d camera to the comp where you want to create your shatter and then change the shatter’s Camera System setting to Comp Camera. then move the camera so that you can see your shatter layer off to the side. set your shatter’s render setting to Wireframe+Forces, and you should see a blue sphere wireframe in contact with the layer. the blue sphere is the area of influence of the shatter’s explosion force. any part of the layer within the sphere will explode into shapes.

if you look at the parameters in shatter’s Force 1, you will see position, depth, radius, and strength.

position dictates where the explosion force is within the layer’s area. so you could keyframe the position of the explosion sphere off the layer and have it move through the layer, vertically and/or horizontally.

depth dictates whether the explosion force is in front of or behind the layer. think of this as a wrecking ball crashing through a wall. you could keyframe depth so that the explosion force moves through the layer, from front to back or vice versa.

radius dictates the size of the explosion force. a radius of 0 (zero) will cause no explosion. if you place the force within the layer’s x/y space and its depth intersecting the layer, you can keyframe the force radius from 0 to some higher value to cause a shatter at a specified time. same goes for strength.

once a shatter has occurred, the resulting pieces are influenced by shatter’s physics parameters. at this point, the only way to ‘stop’ an explosion is to play with the physics parameters, or precompose the shatter layer and play with time remapping.

hope this helps.

[Sam Young]

try using the radio waves effect. use a 3-sided polygon, then animate the effect point to create a trail of triangles.

[Sam Young]

try using the radio waves effect. use a 3-sided polygon, then animate the effect point to create a trail of triangles.

[Sam Young]

try duplicating the layer with all the stuff on it, then swapping out the duplicate layer’s footage with another file from your project window.

[Sam Young]

if i understand correctly what you want to do, this is pretty easy. you only need one text layer, and one animator.

1) create your text layer with your word(s).
2) draw a mask path on your text layer
3) set your path options so that the text is on the mask path
4) adjust your first/last margin as needed
5) add a position animator to your text layer
6) adjust the animator’s horizontal position. you should see your text move along the path
7) keyframe animate the start or end of your range selector, depending on which horizontal direction you want your text to animate.
8) go into the range selector advanced settings and make sure your range selector shape is square and that the animation is based on characters or characters excluding spaces, so that your text animates one character at a time.