[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

You can use Free Form or FreeForm Pro to create a true 3d displaced text into the surface of the stone. This will enable you to play with lights to match the footage lighting.
A good tutorial with techniques that can be used:

https://vimeo.com/107100837

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

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[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

I can’t see any bounding box- it’s just a flat layer that is viewed from the side. You can try to add motion blur- that may solve your issue, or build extruded 3d rings based on the ring layers. A trick way to give depth that will also increase render time is to create multiple instances of the same layer parented to one that keeps the initial animation, and then move them one unit above or below. This, together with motion blur will give you “thickness” to your circles.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Don’t change the frame rate of your composition – create a 30 fps comp. Drag your original audio in. Drag your 15 fps comp in. Enable time remap on the 15fps comp layer. Extend to the expected length in 30 fps (should be double). This should create the in-between frames for you.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

In your example I am quite certain that they used practical effects (a bunch of paper planes suspended from the ceiling with fishing line). However, you could use a particle system like Trapcode Particular, Trapcode Form or even ShapeShifter AE with the Generator to create the same illusion. You will need to freeze your particles (set them up to custom and use the object/image of the object), track the Camera movement and create a 3d camera that matches it and then composite the whole thing in the shot matching the lights, color and depth. You may need to do some roto work depending on your particular shot in order to mask out some objects/people that are supposed to be in front or behind the objects created with your Particle Generator.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

You answered yourself, however you need the “hassle”- a 3d camera setup will allow for a background plate to be set up back in 3d space and thus allow you to tweak the parallax. So you need a 3d camera Track. No 2d track+ animation combination will be able to give you a realistic final look as a 3d camera setup.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

For issues like yours it is always helpful to post more details- the specs of your machine (RAM, processor, hard type, OS) and version of AE. The issue could be connected with lack of processing power on your machine, the way AE it’s set-up or other, but there’s no way of knowing for sure or at least narrowing it down, without the above mentioned details.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Not sure if AE6 had this but in the CC versions you have Detail preserving upscale:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/detail-preserving-upscale-effect.html
I found this to work quite well. Obviously it is not magic, so you will never get the same sharpness and detail like in footage originally shot in 4K.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

You can watch the tutorial and build the rig yourself, you do not need to buy it. As a second option you can use 2 Null layers. Link the Camera to the first Null and use that for the first part of the move. Link the first Null to the second Null and use that for the second part. This should eliminate any issues you’re having when you try to animate the travel on the z axis with one Null only.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

You can play with the curves, however you can avoid all of this by using a camera rig (Maltaannon has a great tutorial on that: https://maltaannon.com/articles/after-effects/simple-camera-rig/ ).
When you’re writing “zoom” I think you’re referring to a camera travel in Z space, cause that’s what I see in your setup. If you want to actually animate the zoom use the controls from the camera layer.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Whatever you upload to YouTube will be compressed again by their servers, so I would not worry too much about the size of your final render. I would go for a constant bitrate and thus a larger file since it will be compressed VBR to a 6mps bitrate anyway. I never use the Encoder presets but create my own – do some tests with a short piece and then see what works best for you.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist