[Todd Kopriva]

The more RAM, the better.

The biggest reason to want a lot of RAM is so that the global performance cache can keep large amounts of data in memory, which speeds up just about everything. See this video for details:
https://www.video2brain.com/en/lessons/global-performance-cache-and-persistent-disk-cache

Also (and in my opinion, less important) more RAM means more processes able to run during Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing. Details:
https://adobe.ly/dC0MdR

> does 64GB+ make any real difference in Open GL

Huh?

I think that you’re confusing two totally unrelated things.

See this for what OpenGL means in the context of After Effects:
https://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2012/05/gpu-cuda-opengl-features-in-after-effects-cs6.html

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

You can set the shutter phase to adjust this behavior. Information is in After Effects Help:
https://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7d5da.html#WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7d5ca

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

David, nothing is gone. H.264 is just turned off in the default state. You can turn it back on.

from “what’s new and changed in After Effects CC (12.0)”:

“removed H.264, MPEG-2, and WMV formats from the default state of the After Effects render queue: In general, you should use Adobe Media Encoder to create output in these formats that have been deprecated from the After Effects render queue. If you need to be able to export these formats directly from After Effects, you can re-enable them by setting the preference Show Deprecated Formats In Output Module Settings in the Output preferences category.”

Why do you refer to AME as “infernal”. It is _much_ better than After Effects at making H.264 files.

If you have bugs to report, please do so here:
https://adobe.ly/ReportBug

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

Roland is right. See this video for details:
https://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-by-video/adobe-after-effects-cs5-colors-channels-and-color-bit-depth/

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

For a very simple version, you could animate a mask on an adjustment layer and have a color correction effect on the adjustment layer to darken the area of the footage defined by the mask.

Start here to learn After Effects: https://adobe.ly/bjBT3P

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

BTW, the name of the column with those items is A/V Features. When choosing what columns to show, enable that one.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

Show a screenshot of your Timeline panel.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

Yes, you need to do the animation in Cinema 4D.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

Did you open the render engine, not the full After Effects application?

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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[Todd Kopriva]

Scripts are also useful for this kind of thing.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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