And I just tried the put the layer with transparency in HDTV 1080 template but it still doesn't work. Good job. you have managed to break after effects I am going to need a while to examine this. thank you for this investigation. Yup that could do. But I also remember the trick to make it light and responsive by turning off Video Ruler. Good Tip. I will try to remember that. I don't work too much with Ai files. What we are ended up with here is that all the advice you were given should have been taken into consideration. the first and more important one is by Rick Gerard saying this: Unless you specifically need to use shape animators on your illustrator files there is absolutely no reason to covert the vectors to shapes. for instance this figure here of the dude. do you really need ALL these vector layers as shapes? and this is another advice by Rick very early on in this thread Gradient fils, multiple gradient fils, gradients along a stroke, and about a zillion other useful illustrator techniques will not translate directly to shape layers in AE. this is exactly what's causing these problems. take a look here at the help files:  Create and customize shapes and masks in After Effects and this is the transcript from the Convert Vector Art Footage to Shape: Choose Layer > Create Shapes from Vector Layer. A matching shape layer will appear above the footage layer, and the footage layer will be muted. The following issues are known: Not all features of Illustrator files are currently preserved. Examples include: opacity, images, and gradients. Converted shapes ignore PAR overrides specified in the Interpret Footage dialog box. Gradients and unsupported types may show as 50% gray shapes. Files with thousands of paths may import very slowly without feedback. The menu command works on a single selected layer at a time. If you import an Illustrator file as a composition (i.e., several layers), you cannot convert all of those layers in one pass. However, you can import the file as footage, and then use the command to convert the single footage layer to shapes. so guess they should have added: in some cases, when opacity or blend mode are involved, certain object may translate as the artboard bounding box and not the object so to sum everything up, to avoid any problems in the translation from Ai to Ae: 1. first, be sure that you actually need to convert to shapes 2. work withing the HD templates 3. the Ai object translation to Ae shape may translate incorrectly when dealing with gradients, opacity, blend modes and other complex operations, so sometimes you would have to either recreate them within shapes, or dismiss them from your Ai file. ... View more

One thing I'm not using it anymore is because it's more heavy (unresponsive) when working in AI. if this is the case, you could move your elements only when your done. don't forget to check "Paste Remembers Layers" in the Layers panel options before you do And I just tried the put the layer with transparency in HDTV 1080 template but it still doesn't work. good work. please upload the file, I would like to examine this ... View more

Nice work! this is not entirely correct. check this for yourself: place your objects in a video template and you won't have these problems. here are the same objects in a video and film template of HD1080 imported to Ae and objects are cropped. yes you lose the opacity, but you can reintroduce it via fill opacity in the shape hierarchy Conclusion: read this first before you do anything from Ai to Ae - Preparing and importing still images in After Effects Work and design your files however you feel comfortable, but when you are done - create a HD Video Template and place them inside to ensure you won't have any problems. this is only half the reason to use the Templates, the other half is avoiding cropping on the pasteboard. as demonstrated in here: Re: AI (illustrator) layers not showing up in AE (after effects) CC 2014 ... View more

you should prepare your Ai file to Ae and if you still have problems we can investigate. the good advice you got before was solid and important and you should take all of it into account even if could or could not be related to you specific problem. about preparing your Ai file to Ae you should read here: Preparing and importing still images in After Effects I've just tried to separate layer manually, and the problem still exist? let's examine this further. try to isolate the problem: what layer of all your layers is coming as the comp dimensions? show a screen shot or share this Ai file with just that layer. Rick has many good observations and this is one you should listen too very carefully: Unless you specifically need to use shape animators on your illustrator files there is absolutely no reason to covert the vectors to shapes. still let's examine this. we wait for your feedback ... View more

you can't have more than one artboard in your illustrator file. this statement is actually not accurate. you can work with 2 artboards when importing an illustrator file to After Effects and sometimes you really should. different sized artboards are great for the design process in Ai, but when you want to prepare your files for Ae. you should work within your final output dimensions. for example a common output is HD (1920x1080) so you would to work with an artboard at that size, and if you got objects bleeding to the pasteboard - you want another artboard that is bigger than HD and contains the partly cropped object. for this reason there are video templates in Ai and they have 2 Artboards and not one so that object that are on the pasteboard (or partly on the pasteboard) won't be cropped in Ae. let's see for example the HDTV1080 Preset. it comes with 2 artboards and this is a good thing: it's an HD artboard on top of a very big 14400x14400 artboard. as stated in the tutorial later in this post, this is said to be a magic size for this trick to work and not crop layers, but I have found that any artboard that is larger then the HD artboard and contains the cropped elements this is good when I import it to Ae, it will not be cropped this is actually very useful. but what am I explaining this when you actually have the lovely Trish Meyer to explain it to you in this free video from Lynda: After Effects Hidden Gems more about preparing your work from Ai to Ae in here: Preparing and importing still images in After Effects ... View more

after a little of digging around, what I have found is there isn't much information about it in the CC adobe help files or the forums - by looking at the cs4 help files, there was a bit more information Adobe After Effects CS4 * Layer markers and composition markers  here's the relevant text: You can associate a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) with a marker to create an automatic link to the site at that address. After Effects embeds this information within certain kinds of movies, including SWF, Windows Media, and QuickTime movies. When these movies are played in a web browser, the embedded URL is recognized, initiating a jump to the specified URL. You can target a specific frame in the site. For example, you can have specific web pages open when an instructional video reaches specific points in the movie. When these movies are played in a web browser - this is the key for figuring out how it works. I haven't got a site where I can embed videos and test this out. meaning you need to have web page to include your videos in and try to work with this information and report if it works ... View more

Thank you Charles. I updated my post as you wrote yours...  I have found what you were referring to. glad to see it worked for you. ... View more

thanks for the update Charles, it seems that this update was released a year ago, and it's good to know about that a word of caution - this is from the manual for the latest release: Caution! The principle of this effect contradict the After Effects design and several types of problems can occur when using it. Read the instructions carefully to prevent the most common troubles. This plug-in is now obsolete and is not accessible from the effects menu. To use the plug-in please open an old project containing Time Blend FX or download an Animation preset from our website. ... View more

please use this wishform so Adobe knows about this. this is the way to change things for all of us.  Feature Request/Bug Report Form ... View more

it could be just a corrupted preferences file. ctrl+alt+shift+launch app will replace the prefs.txt file with a new one in the folder you mentioned. in my experiance, resetting the preferences (and deleting cache in the preferences) is the one of the first things you should try before going bananas from what appears to be a bug. ... View more

If bandwidth is your main conceren, then Animation is already not the most obvious choice for lossless codec with small file size. Quicktime Png will be the smallest file size but will take more time to render. If render time is also a concern, then Jpeg2000 will give you lossless quality and alpha support with pretty fast render time and still a much smaller filesize than Animation. ... View more

If you do decide to render from Ae straight to AME, you should be aware how it handles your render settings. prior to 2015.3 is described here in this in depth tutorial: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HWzRgxRqUUs in 2015.3 there was a great deal of improvement on the Ae->AME workflow with the addition of "Queue in AME" feature. More about it here (from 02:54): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oWCSVS0s7GU ... View more

it appears you applied the expression in a wrong way. it would be easier to see what's wrong with a screenshots of your Timeline and Composition panels and showing the layers and values that you are trying to connect with expressions. also specify what exactly are you trying to accomplish. ... View more

thank you Nick. I wrote in that other posts that I sent you, when 2 or 3 professional community experts tried their best to explain it to me, that when I figure it all out - I would make a tutorial about it. I just could not simplify it enough for an idiot like me. I consider myself a good teacher because I take pride in my ability to make complicated aspect of the software clear to even the most basic level of users - because that's how I finally got it. but this one got the best of me so I just let it go and focus on other things. ... View more

Thank you Neil. Yes these arguments are all over the net for many years. once and a while comes a guy and simplifies everything for everyone. color management is a tough topic to wrap your head around. I honestly say I could not, so I just let it go. I have recently been there when My wide gamut screen began to cause me trouble. after trying i1display calibrator, then getting into the mess of calibration and visiting ultra geeky forums, then trying to buy a high-end monitor and then regretting in the last minute, I have decided to set everything as sRGB in my Monitor and forget I ever new about WG or color shifts. and my next monitor is going to be Srgb too. if it looks good when I import it back - it's good. if I upload to youtube, download it again and it looks good in my NLE or Ae - it's o.k and that's all I need to know to keep my sanity you are welcome to visit my channel and maybe learn a few things about after effects. AeBlues on Vimeo ... View more

Thank you Neil for your well phrased and clear posts on this controversial subject matter . I am sorry that the user  Jonzy you tried to help with such patience and much time an effort, did not choose to return the courtesy and write the exact steps that supposedly solved his problem. I am assuming her refereed to "Handbrake" which is an open source trans coder that is very good and many users recommend it: https://handbrake.fr/  I used it many times myself (not to "solve" color shifts) but today I am comfortable with AME. Thank you for making the effort and help making this community a source of support, knowledge and positivity to all levels of skill, and I am looking forward to chance upon more of your interesting posts in the future. ... View more

is there a way to keep the object complex but simplify the number of paths that I can set keyframes for or am I asking too much? show us a visual example of a shape you want turning to another shape so we will have a more specific recipe for your case. i.e show your two shapes side by side either in Ai or Ae ... View more

I Believe not. ... View more

Great! I do try to be clear as I can. please tag the suggestions given to you here so this thread would be answered and me and M could get our paycheck from Adobe. ... View more

Hey M how are you . I tried this so this on the opacity: Math.round(thisComp.layer("Audio Amplitude").effect("Both Channels")("Slider")/100)*100 after putting linear on the amplitude: linear(value, 0, 10, 0, 100) and it seems what math.round does is that if the value is above 50 it makes it 100 and if it's below it's 0. is that it? wouldn't my expression be more accurate to create the variables exactly that control when is the value 0 and when is 100 instead of the 50 threshold? also only one expression instead of two. what do you think? ... View more

o.k but a warning: I am far from an expressions expert. here goes (hope this will translate nice for you!) if you want to control the audio waveform amplitude you need to decide what is the low value for you and what is the high. you can do that with the graph editor. on the both channel parameter look at the value graph and decide what is for you the minimum and maximum. for example my graph looks like this and I decide for myself for a threshold for the opacity for example I want that if the value is higher than 4, my opacity will be 100%. and if it's lower - 0% I need to select my opacity layer and create an if function expression on the opacity value that looks like this: if(thisComp.layer("Audio Amplitude").effect("Both Channels")("Slider")>4) 100 else 0 see if that works for you! ... View more

Two options to fix this problem the way I see it: 1. opening the project in the version it was created in (and installing that version if necessary) 2. doing some manual labor (not that bad) Now the details: Option #1 when you open the project, it will probably tell you that the project will be converted from older version (because you are opening an older version project file, that had GB effect in 8bit) you can see the number and if you have that version - you can open it with that version and you won't have a missing effect. it seems you are opening a very old version of the project because this effect was probably re-introduced in AE 7.0 (2006): https://www.fxguide.com/featured/after_effects_7_brings_32-bit_and_new_ui/ , Adobe After Effects - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia   - look under versions. so it's either having that version / installing that version... OR like M suggested - do some manual labor. option 2 coming up. Option #2 2. when you get this message you click o.k and roll up your sleeves and make this workflow as short as you can with using the search fields in the project window and timeline window and I will show you how: you can click to the search field here type "m" or click on the arrow near the magnifying glass. you will have options so choose Missing Effects now Ae will refer you to all the compositions that contain that missing effects by showing you just them already much easier, right? now when you click on the composition you will see just the the layer with the missing effect as the effect is toggled down. instead of seeing all the layers like this (if it doesn't show you just the layer, make sure no layer is selected and choose missing effects in the Timeline search field again) you are in luck! Gaussian blur has only 2 parameters . you can look in the Effect Controls window of the layer when you click on it. (you will see fewer parameters, I am using a reverse technique just to illustrate the workflow) add your Gaussian blur from the effects panel and make it's parameters match the missing one now you're done and off to the next one.   not that bad is it? ... View more

Cuppatae, Dean - I agree that collapse transformations and render order changes is complicated. maybe the most complicated thing to get wrapped around your head in all of After Effects (that's what I tell my students) and it may seem unpredictable. with a big nested setup of pre-comps with 3D, Cameras and lights and shadows Vector layers, Layer styles, Blend modes, Track Mattes and more - it really is. but you should read here under "render order and collapse transformations" and maybe watch a few tutorials about it: Precomposing, nesting, and pre-rendering After Effects compositions eventually the sunburst switch will be your friend! for example - as you may already know, if you add a layer style to a 3D layer, it breaks the interactivity in 3D space. you may want to use that to your advantage when layers respect the Z position of each other and you don't want them to (Tip: you don't have to actually use a specific layer style, it's enough to have the eyeball switch on the group called "Layer Styles" and remove it from the actual effect) ... View more

look here: After Effects System Requirements for Mac OS and Windows it's pretty straight forward - you would want at least a fast drive for your system (SSD) with enough space. and a handful of RAM (16 is good, 32 is better) and keep in mind there is a threshold how much AE can actually use your CPU/GPU so no need to go over board. ... View more

You're Welcome Buddy! ... View more

Oh yeah... he was talking about the orange of the expression. I thought it was red... guess I wanted to rant about the yellow to blue interface.. oh well... Op solved his problem that's what matters just another day at the plabt! am I saying this right, Rick? ... View more

this is a long shot but see if Hardware Acceleration in the preferences is checked - I have noticed that when this is not checked - my Preview is smooth, and when it is - it will require a second pass to run smooth. ... View more

you're welcome! glad to help. thanks for updating the thread for the correct answer. Rick doesn't mind the points, they are running out of screen space for his anyways ... View more