After Effects (AE) CS6 for Video Editors Workshop Notes Information in this guide on specific effect parameters is taken more or less directly from articles in the Adobe Help Menu. Use this resource! Search with specific terms for detailed results. A note about Dynamic Linking for Premiere Editors In this workshop we focus on importing and working uniquely in After Effects, but using dynamic linking you can work without having to render out of Premiere and After Effects. It is more efficient. If you are working in Adobe Premiere and wish to apply effects or composite video clips using After Effects (AE), select a clip or a stack of clips in a Premiere sequence and then right (control) click and choose Replace with After Effects Composition. After Effects will open with a composition automatically created. Thereafter Premiere will be linking to an AE project. If you move the AE project on your hard drive you will have to relink. Changes made in After Effects will update automatically to the sequence in Premiere. If the composition is complex or if the clip will change duration because of a speed change create a unique sequence in Premiere for the clips to be dynamically linked. Afterwards you can copy and paste the clip into another Premiere sequence. Setting Up in After Effects Preferences: Preferences/General: levels of undo Preferences/Import/Sequence Footage: use for determining the frame rate of imported image sequences Pref/ Media and Disk Cache: Disk Cache is where RAM previews are stored. AE now caches RAM previews when you close the project. Prefs/Auto-Save: a good idea to turn this on (File/Revert: this reverts to the last autosaved version. There is also a history window: Edit/History) Preferences/Memory: by default a quarter of your memory is allocated to other applications. If you have 16 GB of RAM, AE should be using 12 GB. With more RAM, AE can preview more video in real time. Project Settings File/ Project Settings: Time Display: use Timecode for video comps. Command Clicking the timecode reader in the Composition window will also change from Timecode to feet and frames, etc. Color Settings: always 16 bits per channel, never use 8 bit, for color correction or video chroma keying use 32 bit. This setting is also at the bottom of the project window. Working Space: AE has color management so your files will look identical on display devices that accurately reproduce that color space. For HD video the common color working space is HDTV (Rec.709). AE performs color space conversions on any footage or file not matching that profile. If you Interpret footage on any item you can see the color profile of the file. (Interpret footage button at the bottom of the project window). Making a Composition (comp.): A composition is a timeline or sequence. It is short. In AE we always work with one video clip at a time or a very short series of clips. Composition/New Composition (Command N): Use the HDTV presets for HD video material. Other method to make a comp: right click on your footage(video clip): New Comp From Selection Importing As simple as File/Import Importing an Image Sequence AE creates a video file out of any imported image sequence. The image size will be the same size as the original photos. Before importing go to Preferences/Import and determine the Sequence Footage rate. Remember 24p in the NTSC world should be entered as 23.976 fps and 30p will be 29.97 fps. Then File/Import the image sequence by selecting the first image of the hundreds or thousands in your folder. The dialog box will recognize that it is an image sequence. After Effects will recognize image sequences that have broken numbering and you can also import at any frame rate you specify. Working with Proxies In some comps in the workshop we are working with Proxies. These are smaller size video files that speed up RAM preview times. Although proxy files are smaller than the original footage, AE recalculates all key framing parameters correctly when replacing with the original footage. This is very convenient when working with less powerful computers. You will know when a proxy is enabled by looking at the footage layer and it is also indicated in the Project window. To make a proxy file, simply right click on the any footage in the Project window and Create Proxy/Movie. Save the file on your drive since After Effects will now link to this media as well as your original source. In the examples that follow, the number and letter refer to the comps in the workshop project. Part One: Basic Keyframing: 01 A Keyframes Simple Keyframing: animating position and scale Show Transform parameters below footage in comp. Turn on the stopwatch icon to keyframe the position parameter. Turning off the stopwatch will delete all your keyframes. Keyframes are made automatically when you move the object in the comp window. To see the motion path keyframes of the object make sure Position is selected in the comp. There is a Keyframe navigator to move from one keyframe to another. Hold down Shift when doing scale adjustments of objects to maintain proportion. Use the Easy In and Easy Out keyframe options to change speed going into and out of a keyframe. RAM Preview Playback is in real time only with the RAM Preview (use work area to establish preview). The RAM preview playback is the button on the far right of the Preview window. RAM Preview options: use AUTO resolution and From Current Time The Frame Rate should match your comp. frame rate. 01 B Refining Keyframes Preferences/Display/Motion Path – options for how many keyframes to display in comp window Selection Tool (V), Pen Tool (G) Holding down option when selecting the Pen Tool in the toolbar will scroll through all the available pen tools. The convert vertex pen tool is used to square off or add handles to existing keyframes. Keyframes can be group selected in the comp. or comp. window and deleted. Frame Blending and Motion Blur: If desired, turn on frame blending in the comp timeline and on the layer. Frame blending should always be used when the clip is slowed down. Motion Blur will appear when the object is moving quickly. 01 C Motion sketch Window/Motion Sketch: Start Capture An amusing effect but really useful? Part Two: Speed Effects Method One: Using Interpret footage All video slow motion speed adjustments are problematic because the computer must invent frames, new moments in time. The only way to ensure smooth slow motion video is to shoot at a higher frame rate (60p frame rate is available in many cameras) and then ask software like AE or Premiere to play it back at a slower frame rate. Import the 60p video into AE and then go to: File/Interpret footage/Main/Frame Rate/Conform to frame rate. AE will let you conform to any frame rate, even non-standard video frame rates. But usually you will want to conform the 60 fps clip (actually running at the NTSC speed of 59.94 fps) to either 23.976 fps (NTSC 24p) or 29.97 fps (NTSC 30p). The conforming simply plays back the clip at a slower rate. There will be no problematic interpolation or frame blending, no invented frames. Method Two: the Timewarp effect Make Sure to Loop the Clip An important consideration when using the “timewarp” effect: if you will be slowing down the video you must loop the clip in order to see the entire clip slowed down and also make sure that your composition is long enough to compensate for the increased length of the clip. The easiest way to do this: before you create the comp.: right click on the footage in the Project window and Interpret Footage/Main. In Other Options you can loop the clip the appropriate number of times. Then create a comp. from the clip and apply your timewarp effect. 02 A Timewarp Speed controls If you didn’t shoot at 60p and want to do a software speed effect on your video, then the “timewarp” effect in AE is the most sophisticated of the software speed tools. However, when attempting to change motion it will sometimes simply not work. The usual problem is that the background will not separate properly from the foreground object in motion. This happens when the clip is slowed down considerably. The background distorts as if pulled along by the foreground object. Usually this problem cannot be corrected. Try to slow down the clip by a lesser amount. Apply the Timewarp effect to clip on comp. Expand parameters. Choose the method for frame blending in the Timewarp parameters. You have three choices. Pixel Motion is the preferred method. If the clip has a lot of motion blur use Frame Mix. Whole Frames Duplicates the last frame shown. Frame Mix Creates a new frame by blending existing frames. Pixel Motion Creates a new frame by analyzing the pixel movement in nearby frames and creating motion vectors. Motion vectors represent the movement of a pixel or block of pixels from one frame to the next. Images between frames are interpolated using these vectors. In Effect Parameters, choose Adjust time by Speed. Turn on keyframe stopwatch for Speed. Make keyframe adjustments. Negative numbers are reverse motion. Use the Easy In and Easy Out keyframe options to change speed going into and out of a keyframe. Use the Graph Editor view on the comp. to manipulate the transitions between speeds.