[Todd Kopriva]

Here’s a page that gives a few more details than Dan’s terse (and, of course, correct) answer:

“Create a motion path from a mask, shape, or paint path”

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

Here’s a link to the feature-request/bug-report form.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

Two ideas:

Set an expression on your Position property that defines it as a constant value.

OR

Don’t work with a mask on the layer. Work with a mask on a solid layer above the locked footage layer.

I describe the latter approach a bit in a blog post about rotoscoping, in which I also recommend the Pete O’Connell Creative COW DVD on rotoscoping. (Pete uses this method, too.)

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

There’s some information about scaling movies up in After Effects Help, including a link to a list of plug-ins that do this.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

Are you using color management?

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

Is this happening when you’re rendering for previews or for final output? If for final output, check your render settings and see what Proxy Use is set to.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

Did you apply the Ramp effect directly, or was it applied as part of an animation preset? The red text makes me think that you applied this as part of an animation preset, and these properties have some expressions on them that are defining their values.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

What, exactly, are you doing to “play”? Are you using RAM preview?

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

You should check out the Clone Stamp tool in After Effects. It should do what you want.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

You might have better success using Smart Mask Interpolation.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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