[Walter Soyka]

I’d just use the open square bracket key — [ — to move the layer to the current time indicator after you’ve dropped it into the timeline.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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[Walter Soyka]

I’m not sure which controls you’d like exposed, but this project will animate an object up and down on the Y-axis in a sine wave as the object is moved on the X-axis, with controls for offset, amplitude and frequency.

13959_sinewave.aep.zip

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

We currently have a mix of Republic of Gamers and Razer laptops that are working nicely.

I suggest getting an i7 or better with a pretty high clockrate, as much RAM as you can stuff into the machine (some top out at 16 GB, and going higher can give you noticeably better performance), at least a mid-grade GPU, and the biggest NVMe drive you can afford.

One big warning: the more powerful the machine (especially the GPU), the less battery life you should expect.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

Try this:
https://www.redefinery.com/ae/view.php?item=rd_SnapDecisions

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

Your text is already editable. If you want to change it, select the Type tool in Ae (Ctrl+T on Windows, Cmd+T on macOS) and then click into the text layer in the viewer panel, or double-click the text layer object in the viewer panel with the normal selection tool.

The “Convert to editable text” command in the layer context menu is for use with imported Photoshop layers. If you import a PSD as a composition, you can use the “Convert to editable text” command on the footage layers which contain text to create native text objects (that no longer refer to the source layer in the PSD). More here if you’re curious:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/creating-editing-text-layers.html#convert_text_from_photoshop_to_editable_text

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

Ae has been moving more and more processing onto the GPU with each release since the middle of 2016. Development is somewhat slow-going. There’s still a mix of CPU and GPU in the pipeline, so the amount of performance improvement you see totally depends on your workload.

I don’t think you’ll see a massive difference now, but hopefully someday!

Of course, Premiere (to an extent) and Resolve (even more so) can exploit a powerful GPU.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

I think you’re on the right track. After Effects loves RAM, so I’d get as much as you can afford.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

By default, shapes start at a position of [0,0] inside the shape layer. This point in layer space corresponds with the center of your comp ([960, 540] in comp space for an HD composition).

A negative y-value just means that the position point is above its origin in the frame.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Sam Kennedy] “Is it possible to use multiple soundkey outputs on one value; is there an expression for that?”

Sure, you can have one output react to two inputs — it’s just math — but you do need to explain a little bit about how you want them to work together.

If you want a cumulative effect, you can just add the values together (like ‘value1 + value2;’). If you want to react to whichever one is loudest, you can use a maximum function to return the bigger value like (‘Math.max(value1, value2);’). If you want some other interaction, let’s discuss what you’d want to see happen.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

I’m so sorry, Brian, I completely misunderstood your question! Glad you figured it out.

There’s a keyboard shortcut for that toggle to show/hide layer controls, too — it’s Ctrl+Shift+H (Windows) or Cmd+Shift+H (macOS). It only affects the active viewer.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]