[Xinlai Ni]

1. Add a layer called “Line”, add “Beam” effect to it, change its length property to be 100, move its “Starting Point” to the fixed position you wanted.
2. Add this expression to the “Ending Point” property:

thisComp.layer("Text 1").toComp(thisComp.layer("Text 1").anchorPoint)

Xinlai Ni
Software Engineer, Google Inc.

[Xinlai Ni]

Unfortunately no, you have’ to manually update it one by one every time you change your expression.
But a simple script may do what you want.

Xinlai Ni
Software Engineer, Google Inc.

[Xinlai Ni]

See if this helps you:
https://www.trapcode.com/PyroPack/index.html

Xinlai Ni
Software Engineer, Google Inc.

[Xinlai Ni]

Expressions don’t apply pixel by pixel, only on property levels

Xinlai Ni
Software Engineer, Google Inc.

[Xinlai Ni]

Try the following for the position property of your text layer:

xPos = 500; // or your own value
startY = 500; // or your own value
deltaY = 15;
yPos = startY - Math.floor(time) * deltaY;
linear(time % 1, 0, 0.5, [xPos, yPos], [xPos, yPos - deltaY])

Xinlai Ni
Software Engineer, Google Inc.

[Xinlai Ni]

Several places you want to check:
1. The imported footage has sound doesn’t mean it’s enabled in the timeline, to check, see if there’s a small speaker icon to the left of the layer with sound.
2. Make sure you hit numeric pad “0” for ram preview, not space key
3. When adding it to render queue, by default, its Output Module is lossless, and its Audio Output checkbox was unchecked, make sure you check it.

Xinlai Ni
Software Engineer, Google Inc.

[Xinlai Ni]

Just out of curiosity, what you’ve described worked for me perfectly, and I am using the following expression for the globe precomp’s CC-sphere layer’s yRotation property:
comp("Main").layer("Control").effect("Angle Control")(1)

and it works both with my manual dragging the angle control or with key frames.

Xinlai Ni
Software Engineer, Google Inc.

[Xinlai Ni]

How did you refer to the value of the slider in your globe comp?
Did you use valueAtTime?

Xinlai Ni
Software Engineer, Google Inc.

[Xinlai Ni]

I’m guessing one could use distorted/scaled fractal noise for the fog/cloud, and track matt with it.

Xinlai Ni
Software Engineer, Google Inc.

[Xinlai Ni]

By “not working”, did you mean that after you add a key frame of the slider control, sliding it won’t affect the rotation of the earth as it used to when it doesn’t have the key frame?
Then this must have been because the actual value out of this slider control is overridden by the key frame. It makes sense – when you use key frames, you want its value to be controlled by the key frame, not what you manually told it to be. So the earth doesn’t rotate because you only have one key frames — one key frame means constant value throughout the time. Have you tried using two key frames at the beginning and end of the time? You should be able to see the earth rotating between the angles specified by those key frames.

Xinlai Ni
Software Engineer, Google Inc.