The project panel is auto-sorted by character or number if the Name Column shows the little up or down triangle. To keep layers or comps from moving as you rename them, you must do the same thing you would do using a Finder or Explorer window: pick a different property to sort the items. You can use Type, Size, or even Comment and then return to the Name column to get the items arranged by name.    I suggest that you develop a folder and naming convention for your projects. I follow an industry-standard project, shot, bin, and take structure in most of my comps, editing, and photo projects by setting up a folder structure and keeping the assets in the proper folders. It was taught to me about half a century ago when I started editing my first documentary, shot on film by an Emmy award-winning editor with about 20 years of experience. It's almost the same name and file structure used in the half-dozen feature films I worked on in the late 70's and 80's and the two TV series I was a part of. You might consider developing or adapting a standard system for keeping track of assets and edits. It will save a lot of headaches when you have to return to a project a month later and change to shot 6 in scene 2 of your video. ... View more

After Effects is a pixel-based app; you are looking at a Comp Panel preview of around 400%. The vector curve is displayed as pixels. You can only check the look of your final video at 100% scale on a standard display or 200% on an HD display. The text displays the same artifacts, and the grid behind the graphic is not precisely lined up with the pixel grid. That is why the horizontal and vertical lines are slightly wide, and the colors appear to be different.    When working with thin lines (1 pixel or point) and video, it is very important that you precisely line up the artwork with the pixel grid for all horizontal and vertical lines. Curves and angled lines will change color slightly as the vector path to a pixel path is calculated. A better option is to increase the stroke width to a minimum of 2 pixels.  ... View more

I don't want to start a fire, but I use AE almost every day, as well as Davinci/Fusion Studio and Nuke. I also run a bunch of scripts, the Maxon and Boris FX, Video Copilor, and a bunch of AE Scripts tools. My system is a current generation high-end Mac with a bunch of memory and I am careful about running other software. Number of problems that caused me to lose more than about a half hour in the last 2 years - maybe three. In every case, it was 3rd party compatibility because of the lack of an update on the outside developer's side.    I have rolled back AE a build or two a couple of times because of reported problems, but that only takes a few minutes, and I was up and running again. I have had problems with 3rd party products like Mocha Pro that caused me to use other tools for a workaround for a few days, but none of those problems caused me to fail to deliver. The only time I failed to deliver an effects or animation project on time was when I accidentally dropped my computer on a concrete floor, and it took a week and a half to fix it.   Do Adobe products require more or less maintenance than other complex and system-taxing software that I use? I don't notice any significant difference. The worst problem I had in the last two years was with Nuke. It would not run or open for about three months unless I rolled back my OS, and I did not want to do that. They finally issued an update that fixed the problem.   Most of the time, Adobe does a fairly good job tracking down problems, noting them, and fixing them. They are not perfect, but any company building systems that try to take advantage of about 90% of a computer's processing power will run into problems when users try to push systems that are not up to the system or memory requirements published by the developers.    Is After Effects magic? No. Is it the most efficient platform for all visual effects and animation projects? No. Is Nuke (the most expensive) or DaVinci/Resolve/Fusion Studio (the most affordable editing/effects/color grading system) the best all-around tool? Not for me, but each has its strengths. Could I fulfill my client's needs efficiently, deliver on time, and make a good return on my time investment with just one tool? Probably not profitably.   If I were stuck with one system or had to teach one, it would probably be the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite because it supplies almost every tool needed for any project involving illustrations, photos, and videos, and it has the easiest-to-use UI and workflows.   The DaVinci Studio bundle is also very good, but the learning curve is more complex for most people, and several tools are missing that I need in my workflow. DaVinci is slightly more forgiving on system requirements, but it's not perfect. Everything else I have looked at in the video production world is too specialized to be my only tool.    Reporting problems and communicating openly and honestly with any software company's team is the best way to get things fixed and move toward a solution. Whining and getting angry is no way to make progress. That's how third graders end up with black eyes at recess in the playground. It's not how adults solve problems.    There, I'm done with my editorial.     ... View more

If you turn on Pixel Preview in Illustrator, you get the same snapping because you are trying to look at the pixels.    If After Effects adopts smooth zooms, it will be extremely difficult to fine-tune position and really know what the render will look like unless there is some kind of override.  ... View more

I'm not seeing any issues running AE's Camera Tracker on AE 25.01 Build 2 using a MacBook Pro M3 Max and OS X 15.1 (24B83).   ... View more

Search for .aep file types and look at the dates. On Windows or Mac, you should be able to search all available hard drives with a single click.   If you immediately lost a file, you likely just saved the new one over the original one. If you did not save the project file when you started the project (My standard workflow, File/New Project/File/Save As) and then begin adding media, and you do not have auto backup turned on, the original is probably gone forever.  ... View more

It would be a lot easier to accomplish that kind of playback speed change using time remapping and a few keyframes than to try and write code to do it.    You could start with a simple timeToFrames expression and work up from there. Tie that to a slider and you would probably be most of the way there.  ... View more

The magnifier and the mouse wheel (I use a mouse pad) or a two-finger drag snaps to the even multiples of zoom so you can precisely examine the edges of the pixels on the pixel grid. This is the only way to accurately position thin lines or edges in the comp for maximum quality.    Fit gives you random values but is useless for examining things at the pixel level, so dragging or scrolling to the next zoom level is useful for lining things up.   I've seen hundreds of posts wondering why thin lines look bad, or their scrolling or rolling text looks uneven. The answer is that the pixel grid must be respected and understood. The credit roll or scroll problem is called judder and is solved by moving the layer an even number of pixels per frame.   I did misspeak when I said zoom smoothly. I should have said to zoom smoothly in or out of a comp with the mouse. I do not select fit when I'm working on a comp, no matter what size the comp panel is, because, as a designer, composite, and animator, I want to know precisely where my elements are on the pixel grid so I get maximum quality. If I need to add lens blur to a composited element to match the footage or motion blur to make the shot work better, I can see exactly what I'm doing if I can see the actual pixels. Looking at a comp at 43.8% won't tell me anything about the actual quality.   When working in Illustrator, creating graphics for video, I always turn on Pixel Preview and Snap to Pixel in the View menu to ensure that the graphics I make are properly lined up with the pixel grid, which is essential when designing graphics for video.    I cannot think of any situation where a magnified preview of 1.5 or 2.66 pixels would give me an advantage in designing my shot.       ... View more

The zoom presets make sense to me because you can't view 1.5 pixels. They have to be interpreted. If you have comp resolution set to Auto, then RAM previews at 50% will run twice as long as a RAM preview at 100%, and the render time per frame is also cut in half. The math just doesn't work if the resolution is set to 75% because you can't calculate 1.5-pixel data as quickly or as efficiently as just looking at every other pixel.   You can still smoothly zoom into the comp panel at any magnification with a pinch or appropriate mouse move if you need to get in there and look at something specific, but you need even multiples of the pixel grid to make sure that horizontal and vertical rows of pixels line up with the pixel grid. ... View more

Have you tried adding toFixed() to the slider value? Have you considered using an Expression Control Slider instead of a slider?   One standard way of animating mouth shapes is to set keyframes for each Phoneme (there are just ten standard sounds for English), then set keyframes or time remap a 10-frame timeline (one frame for each sound), and then use a menu. The menu is easy to animate because it displays the Phoneme. That makes much more sense than trying to move nulls or keyframe a slider.   I looked at your comp, and it doesn't make much sense to me. You have eight nulls tied to 8 points on the lips shape layer. If you want a smooth transition between the various poses (Phonems), you could create the animations lasting a few frames, but they would all have to pass through a standard at-rest pose, which would make animating the audio track look weird unless you came up with a bunch of make sense transitions. You will need to develop transitions between sounds like A-B-O and A-D-O because The mouth moves differently for the first three sounds when you say something like "About Adobe."   If this is a team project, I would use a simple 10-frame timeline, time remapping, and the Effects Controls/Menu Control to select the sounds.    You should be able to find several fairly good and a bunch of poorly produced tutorials on animating Phonems using After Effects.   ... View more

The gray portion has not been analyzed yet. You need to propagate by advancing the time indicator or pressing the spacebar, fixing any errors along the way, and then Freeze when all frames have been rendered into RAM. ... View more

CC Rain is completely random, but the effect starts at the first frame of a layer.    Here is the workflow to create a seamless loop. Create a new comp with your original Comp's frame rate and size. Add a solid layer. Add the Rain effect and adjust it to get the look you want. You are going to composite this Comp over the original. Start with the number of drops set to zero (0), set a keyframe, then move down the timeline about a second and change the amount to something that gives you the desired intensity. Something like 1500 would be a good start. Then, move down the timeline until it looks like the top drops have moved to the bottom of the frame and set another keyframe for drops that match the first keyframe. Now, move down the timeline to the same number of frames you have between the first and second keyframes (about 1 second) and set the keyframe to zero. Your keyframes will now be 0, 1500, 1500, 0.    Now duplicate the layer and slide the copy down the timeline until the first keyframe of the duplicate lines up with the third keyframe of the original. Set the work area to include the second keyframe of the first layer and the last keyframe. The timeline should look something like this: Trim the Comp to the work area, save your work, and then add it to your original composition. Select Time Remapping for the added Rain comp. This will produce a keyframe at the first frame of the Rain comp and one after the last frame. Move to the last keyframe, then back up one frame so that you see the rain again, and add a new keyframe by clicking on the center diamond (<diamond shape>) in the keyframe navigator in the timeline. Now, delete the last keyframe and add this expression to Time Remapping: loopOut(); You can drag out the outpoint if the Rain layer does not automatically extend to the entire composition.    You will have the closest thing you can get to a seamless loop. This works with all effects that generate a completely random pattern if the random generator starts on the first frame of the layer, and you can remove the effect simply by adding a couple of keyframes.   The other option is to drop your rain comp in a new comp of the same length and render a movie. Then, import the movie and set the number of loops you want in the Interpret Footage panel.    Looping movies won't work very well in social media because there is a slightly different pause when media players loop a video. If that is what you need, you'll need to compensate for the random nature of the delay between the start and end of the video. ... View more

The video you track must be a 2D layer. When you analyze a clip, it is important to set an origin and ground plane, add a camera and solid to the same target, and then check the target solid's position. Use a solid because it is difficult to check the accuracy of a track when using a text layer and impossible with a null.   After you have confirmed a good camera solve, you can add other layers and Shift + Parent them to your tracking targets (I always use solids and make them guide layers). If the track is not solid, track again using the advanced options.    Not all shots will successfully track. You need a good amount of fixed geometry, and camera pans have no depth information, only position. Motion blur or large moving foreground objects cause tracking errors.    When you post screenshots, include the entire UI showing the problem layers' modified properties. Select the layer, press 'uu', then drag the screenshot to the reply field and size it up so it shows in your post. "The Drag and drop here or browse files to attach button" requires us to download the images instead of displaying them in the thread.   The Track Camera tool is AI-powered, but it's not magic. If you expect good results, you have to shoot with tracking in mind, no matter what tools you use.       ... View more

Gravity is just one of the properties in several different effects. It all depends on which effect you were using. It could've been anything from Trapcode to Video Copilot. ... View more

I don't think Dynamic Link is the correct term for the feature request. "Link" may be more accurate.    If you add an AEP file to your project, the entire project panel from that file is opened in a new folder, but it is no longer linked to the original. I would not know how a Premiere Pro/Dynamic Link setup would work because that workflow opens a copy of the AEP file and renders it in the background, which takes longer than rendering in the After Effects Render Queue. If my Dynamic Link created comps are complex I always render and replace in Premiere Pro to save time and increase stability.   Using Dynamic Link for Audition (AE or Premiere Pro) is only a one-way street that opens audio tracks in Audition and lets you edit them there, export the changes, and then use the new files.   If you want to save functions, animations, color settings, and even resize comps for social media, save your own animation presets. I have about 250 animation presets that I have created and saved. If you are into script writing, you can also save scripts. I have about 90 scripts that I use all the time. Most of them I purchased. Some of my Animation Presets and Scripts are client-specific, and I even occasionally license them to the clients for a fee. I also have created dozens of AE Templates and MOGTs for my productions and many of my clients.   The only way I can see dynamically connecting AEP project files would be to keep those AEP files live, the same way footage files stay live. Change the embedded AEP project file and save it. The changes appear the same way you edit footage (video, images, illustrations). It would only be helpful if you don't lose the ability to add an existing AEP or AET file to your current project and keep it unique.  ... View more

Unfortunately, Blend modes cannot be keyframed. The only option I can see is to duplicate layers and then keyframe or use expressions to change opacity settings.  ... View more

Try adding the Fade Up Words text animator from Animation Presets/Text/Animate In. Then press 'uu' to reveal the animator and use the add button to add Scale and Tracking.    Then add Slide Down by Character, press UU again, spin down Animate Down By Character/Range Selectlr/Advanced, and change Based On to words.    Fiddle with the keyframes and the values until you get something you like. I enabled Rulers and slid out a couple of guides to adjust the tracking so the characters would stay lined up as they scaled up and changed the tracking value. It should only take you a few minutes. If you need more control over the timing of the scale, for example, you can use the Add button to add another animator, set some keyframes, and then drag the scale into the third animator. I have created several Text Animation Presets that use five or six animators, so I have complete control over the timing of each property I want to animate.    ... View more

Try pressing the green arrow in the top right corner. If you scroll over to reveal the Status column, files not rendered should have a "Ready" tag, and files rendered should say "Done" and have a checkmark. It does not look like you have rendered anything.     ... View more

You can compensate for anchor point problems by using top and left values from sourceRectAtTime() and then throwing in a divide by 2.    I don't have time to modify the expression right now. I'll try later tomorrow. ... View more

I don't know much about designing fonts, but when you create files in Adobe Illustrator for video, you should set the top Artboard size to a standard comp size, and Artboard 2, under that one, should be centered on the pallet and big enough to include any artwork that extends beyond the first artboard. The document should be set up with RGB color space, and the Document Setup should be in Pixels. There are also standard Typography settings in the Document Settings. The latest Illustrator versions include video and film templates for most standard frame sizes to make it easy to use. You should also continually work with snap-to-pixel turned on when creating art for video and film productions. Zooming in to about 400% with pixel preview turned on is also a good idea to ensure your artwork is properly aligned to the pixel grid.   Ensure that the setup you used to create the fonts matches the setup in Illustrator. ... View more

If you set the composition to have an even number of pixels, the problem disappears. Something funky going on with an odd number of pixels in the composition. ... View more

I looked at your original file. As I expected, there were Groups on every layer I checked. I suspect that there were Groups on every layer. I also checked the graphics using the View/Outlines menu and saw that every shape was a closed and filled path. All of the Groups fouled up the XD - After Effects workflow, and converting the vector paths to shape layers will not fix the problem either.   The simplest workflow is to select all layers, lock them all, turn them all off, and then turn on layer 1. Add a new Track Matte layer above Layer 1 and give it a name. Then, decide how you want to reveal that layer and use the pen tool to draw a path with a wide enough stroke to hide the original path. When I started, I was ungrouping the layers, but then I realized that nothing was being gained.    Here's an animated gif of the workflow required to create track mattes for the first dozen layers. Unless you want to group several layers and reveal them all with one track matte, you only have about a hundred to go. I compressed about 30 or 40 minutes of work into about 40 seconds. When you have made all of the track mattes, open the AI file as a composition, retaining layer sizes, and then convert only the Track Matte layers to shape layers.    It would probably take about the same time to create the shape layer track mattes in After Effects, but I think I'm a little faster at creating complex paths in Illustrator than in After Effects. Unfortunately, unless the artwork is remade with animating using After Effects in mind, the project will take a lot of time to set up.   ... View more

If you share the AI file with me, I'll be happy to look at it. The screenshots show that most of those paths are brush strokes.    You may need to create a series of track matte layers by duplicating all of the brush stroke layers, renaming them to make them easy to find, removing the brush strokes, and setting the stroke width to something big enough to cover the graphics. I do that kind of thing all the time and move all the track matte layers to the top of the stack in Illustrator. I always keep one path per layer.   With a complicated graphic like yours, breaking up the original file into smaller pieces might be a good idea. You could remove all but about ten layers from each copy of the original file. The original looks like it has about a hundred layers and a bunch of groups. Groups always complicate the animation process, especially if you use XD to create the AE Project file. If you keep the layers in the same position and eliminate as many groups as possible, it would be much easier to animate ten different 10-layer comps and then stack them all in a main comp to complete the shot. I also do that kind of thing all the time.  ... View more

Your comp screenshot has a blue fill. Check the AI file.  After you import your Illustrator file to XD, don't do anything but go directly to the File/Export menu, and After Effects should be available. Here's the workflow. Unless there is something funky in the Illustrator file, you should have access to every object as a separate shape layer. The After Effects Project file may contain nested comps, and it will have more layers than the original Illustrator file.    If you can share the Illustrator file, I'll take a look. You could even DM me if you want.   ... View more

I posted a solution to this problem back in August. Here it is: https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/continuously-looping-a-dashed-stroke-with-offset/m-p/14844934#M255782 ... View more