[Steve Bentley]

Hit F4 to toggle the different tool sets

[Steve Bentley]

If you really must move the mask, you can just copy and paste it from one layer to another. But the two layers must have the same dimensions or the mask will distort.

[Steve Bentley]

Don’t need to. You can just duplicate the source and you will have two, each with a mask. Turn off the mask on source1 and use source 2 as the masking layer linked to the track.

[Steve Bentley]

Here’s a really good graphic of what actually happens (but in linear mode – break out the polar effect!)

[Steve Bentley]

I’m not quite sure I understand your description is but here’s a few clues that might get you on he right track.
Audio is FPS independent. So that’s why its playing normally
You can either squeeze or stretch the keyframes in the 60 fps project so they are warped to a 24fps timeline then they will all line up.
Or you can render either the 24 fps at 60 fps or the 60 fps at 24 fps and then correct the time base in AE or similar.
Does that help?

[Steve Bentley]

If you want more reference, check out Prometheus (Alien sequel) or Tom Cruise’s “The Mummy”.

[Steve Bentley]

To say it another way:
Masks are attached to the solids they are drawn on. To move a mask the way you want, you have to move the whole solid – the mask will come along with it. You do this by either parenting the solid to the tracked object or by sending the tracking data to the solid that has the mask, as Richard suggested. Then use the solid/mask layer as a cookie cutter to have your video shine through (this is the track-matte every one is talking about – I know it’s not the best name). The video goes below the solid layer (with the mask) and you choose “Alpha Matte” from the TrkMat column on the video layer.

If you send the tracking data to the solid/mask layer you may need to reposition it. You can adjust the solid’s anchor point to get the mask back where to need it. It will then follow the tracking point around properly. If there is some perspective change you could put the solid with the mask in 3D and tilt it slightly (rotate in the X) to better match your camera angle.

You could move the mask around on its own but you would have to keyframe the maskpath attribute and if you already have track data, there’s no point in doing it the hard way.

[Steve Bentley]

So first, I’m not sure that depiction is actually correct. Smarter people than me can pile on after this but I’m pretty sure the movement of molecules that sound waves produce in a medium is like ocean waves – the molecules of air or water don’t actually translate with the wave, they just move up and down “in” the wave and it’s the wave that does the moving, or rather, the compression structure is passed from molecule to molecule. The molecules in the depiction that wander back and forth between crests is probably right (that’s the compression squeezing and relaxing or you can think of it as the molecules sliding up and down the trough hills) but to have rings of molecules traveling outwards… I’m not so sure that’s right.
There is outward movement of air for sure, but that’s not from the sound, its from the sound-producing object displacing the air: whether that’s the air that’s being pushed out from between the hands or the expanding air from an explosion.
Anyway I just wanted to be sure you were depicting the right thing. And I could be wrong there.

There are sooooo many ways to do this. Let me touch on a few and then you can pick one and if you need more help we can dive down into that method.
The easiest is probably Particular – you can keyframe the particle per sec of the emitter in “disk” mode to turn on and off for a frame with a period (the wavelength) in between those two keyframes- use hold keyframes. Use a very low variability in the velocity and the particles will stick to “rings” while still being not quite all the same. See attached. You can then add wanderers that wiggle around with a wiggle expression.

13214_ringemitter.aep.zip

You could use a wave gradient (either generated by the radiowaves effect or by a cycling and repeating wave gradient) and use that as a displacement map for a bunch of dots (which is probably closer to what actually happens)

If you have Element3D you could use it’s cloning features to have dots stick to the high and low parts of a 3D wave and another set of dots for the wanderers be displaced by the 3D wave object.

Or you could set this up in a linear fashion and animate a few molecules moving down the screen the way you want them. If you use equations you can use sin math to get them to cluster properly then build in a random factor that uses the index number as a seed and as the X position offset. Duplicate a ton of these and that will create a field of dots across the screen moving down with crest and trough concentrations. Then apply a polar coordinates (in distort) effect to the whole comp to wrap it all up in a circle. (see attached. I’ve cheated here by using particular again for the downward flow just so you can see the polar effect in action because I use it again in another example below.)

13215_ringemitterpolar.aep.zip

Another way to get the oscillations is to create a 3D “drum” of molecules (think: oil drum). Rotate that drum axially and view from the curved side of the drum. Place a few of these drums side by side with space between and it will look like what you are after (then do the polar coord trick). And this should be closer to what actually happens in real life. For more accuracy, duplicate each drum in position and have it spin the other way. The drums should have lots of molecules in the middle (along the axis) and very few out near the edge. You can then choose how far apart the pairs of counterrotating drums are from the next pair.
You could use particular for the “drum” shape with a velocity of 0, or you can place them by hand or with expressions. Or you could make a null (but with the 3D box checked) with parented children dots scattered about (concentrated in the center along the y axis) and have all those dots always face camera. Now duplicate that null and it’s children and rotate it about its y axis, taking the children with it. Repeat and rotate to get a “fan” of planes around a central axis. There’s one drum of dots. duplicate comp and move over as needed for wave crests. If using a 3D camera for this us a long lens so you don’t see the arc of the dot’s travel.
I just realized and I’m too lazy to retype all this that the in the drums example the drum’s dot concentration and rotational axis will have to be in the X for the polar coord effect to work. All else is the same.

[Steve Bentley]

Use the emission velocity to get the particles to where they’re going, then use the wind to push the particles downrange (if that’s desired) and use air resistance to slow the particles down. Steam tends to shoot out very fast, then slow down pretty fast creating bunched up clouds as all he energy gets sucked out of it and it turns into water vapour.
Not sure how accurate you need to be but remember, steam is invisible and only becomes visible as the water condenses out as it hits cooler air.
Normally I would attack this with a number of synced particle systems where the particles (or more accurately the voxels) are different sizes.
So you use emitter A to shoot out very small semitransparent “droplets”, Emitter B shoots out larger foggier blobs that move slower than A. And emitter C shoots out much larger, rotating, growing, and slower moving fluffy things that shadow each other. Even though they all emit from the same place, B becomes visible later in its life and C becomes visible even later than that (“later” for a particle can also mean farther along its path of travel). To the viewer this will look like one single stream where the particles change shape as they go.
A also dies earlier than B, and B dies earlier than C, while C has a nice long life.
You can have C (and to a lesser extent B) be more effected by air resistance but sometimes this is actually harder to get right. Instead, give C a lower initial velocity and start emitting it sooner so it can get out ahead of stream A before C becomes visible.

[Steve Bentley]

I second that, but would add in a CC Glass effect for those glossy shimmers (or CC Mr. Mercury). Also, instead of Vegas you could also use Colorama – either would do the trick. These two take the gray scale levels of the animating noise and turn them into colors based on your preferences.