Macromedia After Effects - CS5 Instruction Manual

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ADOBE® AFTER EFFECTS® CS5 & CS5.5

Legal notices

For legal notices, see http://help.adobe.com/en_US/legalnotices/index.html.

Last updated 11/28/2011

Chapter 1: What’s new

What’s new . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 2: Workflows, planning, and setup

Setup and installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Workflows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Planning and setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Working with After Effects and other applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Dynamic Link and After Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Chapter 3: User interface

Workspaces, panels, and viewers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

General user interface items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Chapter 4: Projects and compositions

Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Timecode and time display units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Composition basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Precomposing, nesting, and pre-rendering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

iii

Chapter 5: Importing and managing footage items

Importing and interpreting footage items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

Working with footage items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Importing from After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Importing and interpreting video and audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Preparing and importing 3D image files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Preparing and importing still images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Chapter 6: Layers and properties

Creating layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Selecting and arranging layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

Managing layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Layer properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

Blending modes and layer styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

3D layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

Cameras, lights, and points of interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Chapter 7: Views and previews

Previewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

Modifying and using views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

Chapter 8: Animation and keyframes

Animation basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

Setting, selecting, and deleting keyframes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

Last updated 11/28/2011

USING AFTER EFFECTS

Contents

Editing, moving, and copying keyframes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202

Assorted animation tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

Keyframe interpolation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

Speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

Time-stretching and time-remapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

Animating with Puppet tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

Tracking and stabilizing motion (CS5) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246

Chapter 9: Color

Color basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

Color management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273

Chapter 10: Drawing, painting, and paths

Paint tools: Brush, Clone Stamp, and Eraser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

Overview of shape layers, paths, and vector graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

Creating shapes and masks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301

Managing and animating shape paths and masks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312

Shape attributes, paint operations, and path operations for shape layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

Chapter 11: Text

Creating and editing text layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331

Formatting characters and the Character panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337

Formatting paragraphs and the Paragraph panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343

Animating text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

Examples and resources for text animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356

Chapter 12: Transparency, opacity, and compositing

Compositing and transparency overview and resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365

Alpha channels, masks, and mattes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366

Keying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

Roto Brush and Refine Matte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379

Chapter 13: Effects and animation presets

Effects and animation presets overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386

Effect list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414

3D Channel effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422

Audio effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429

Blur & Sharpen effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433

Channel effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441

Color Correction effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447

Distort effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466

Generate effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483

Keying effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503

Matte effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513

Noise & Grain effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515

Perspective effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536

Simulation effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541

Stylize effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571

Last updated 11/28/2011

USING AFTER EFFECTS

Contents

Text effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 582

Time effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584

Transition effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591

Utility effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598

Obsolete effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602

Chapter 14: Markers and metadata

Layer markers and composition markers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609

XMP metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 613

Chapter 15: Memory, storage, and performance

Memory and storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 620

Improve performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 627

Chapter 16: Plug-ins, scripts, and automation

Plug-ins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 631

Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 633

Automation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635

Chapter 17: Expressions

Expression basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 637

Expression language reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 651

Expression examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 674

Chapter 18: Rendering and exporting

Basics of rendering and exporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 680

Rendering and exporting for Flash Professional and Flash Player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 698

Rendering and exporting still images and still-image sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 706

Automated rendering and network rendering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 707

Converting movies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 714

Export an After Effects project as an Adobe Premiere Pro project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 719

Chapter 19: Keyboard shortcuts

Modify keyboard shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 720

Keyboard shortcuts reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 720

Last updated 11/28/2011

Chapter 1: What’s new

What’s new

New and changed features in After Effects CS4, CS5, and CS5.5, collected by Chris and Trish Meyer on the ProVideo

Coalition website.

For a complete list of what’s new and changed in Adobe After Effects CS5.5, see this post on the After Effects Region

of Interest blog.

What’s new in After Effects CS5

Online resources about new and changed features in After Effects CS5

New and changed features in After Effects CS4, CS5, and CS5.5, collected by Chris and Trish Meyer on the ProVideo

Coalition website.

For information on an update to the importer software for RED (R3D) files (for the RED camera Mysterium-X sensor and new color science),

see this post on the After Effects Region of Interest blog.

In After Effects CS5, bugs were fixed for the Apple ProRes 422 and ProRes 4444 codecs. However, there were still a couple of issues.

See this post on the After Effects Region of Interest blog for details about the After Effects CS5 (10.0.1) update:

• Several fixes and improvements for RED (R3D) import and workflow.

• The Apply Color LUT effect can now use .3dl files with floating point values or 3DMESH/Mesh keywords, or those

saved from an ASSIMILATE SCRATCH system (i.e. that have SCRATCH in the comments at the top of the file).

• QuickTime (.mov) files from JVC solid-state cameras can be imported.

The Vector Paint effects was removed for After Effects CS5. See these posts on the After Effects user-to-user forum for a discussion of alternatives and feedback. This post on the After Effects Region of Interest blog has more information about giving feedback in general.

See this post on the Premiere Pro Work Area blog for information about what’s new and changed in Adobe Media

Encoder CS5.

For details of new and changed features in After Effects CS4, see the After Effects CS4 Help document.

See this post on the After Effects Region of Interest for workarounds for two issues in After Effects CS5.

Top new features in After Effects CS5

• 64-bit After Effects CS5 application, with improved performance and memory features: “Memory, storage, and

performance” on page 620

• Roto Brush tool: “Roto Brush and Refine Matte” on page 379

• Refine Matte effect: “Roto Brush and Refine Matte” on page 379

• AVC-Intra import and improved RED (R3D) support: “Supported import formats” on page 71

• Imagineer mocha shape for After Effects plug-in and improved mocha for After Effects planar tracker application:

“Resources for Imagineer mocha shape for After Effects” on page 375 and “Resources for mocha for After Effects

(mocha-AE)” on page 246

Last updated 11/28/2011

USING AFTER EFFECTS

What’s new

• Auto-keyframe mode: “Auto-keyframe mode” on page 198

• Apply Color LUT effect for using color lookup tables: “Apply Color LUT effect” on page 598

• Align panel improvements, including ability to align layers to the edges and center of a composition: “Align or

distribute layers in 2D space” on page 126

• Synthetic Aperture Color Finesse 3, with support for 32-bpc color: “Resources for Synthetic Aperture Color

Finesse” on page 270

• Digieffects FreeForm: “Resources for Digieffects FreeForm” on page 467

Other new and changed features in After Effects CS5

Added Help > Send Feedback command, which opens a web browser to the feature-request and bug-report form on

Adobe website.

the

Projects and compositions changes

• The default composition settings are now for a 30-second 1920x1080 HDTV composition: “Composition settings”

on page 62

• In previous versions, if you were entering or editing text when it was time for an auto-save, you would be forced

out of text-editing mode. Now, if you're in text-editing mode when it's time for an auto-save, that auto-save is skipped:

• The Frame Rate control in the Composition Settings dialog box now includes a menu that allows you to select from

a list of common frame rates:

• The composition background color setting is now located in the Composition Settings dialog box instead of on the

Composition menu, and the keyboard shortcut for accessing only the composition background color has been removed:

• When you double-click a precomposition layer when the Roto Brush tool or a paint tool is active, the

precomposition layer opens in a Layer panel. To open the nested composition in a Composition panel instead, Altdouble-click (Windows) or Option-double-click (Mac OS) the precomposition layer:

nested compositions” on page 66

“Save and back up projects in After Effects CS5” on page 52

“Change frame rate for a composition” on page 80

“Composition settings” on page 62

“Opening and navigating

Importing and managing footage items changes

• Added interpretation rules and gamma rules for ProRes media: “Interpret footage items” on page 75

• Added .mxr and .sxr as filename extensions recognized as OpenEXR files for import: “Supported import formats”

on page 71

• Added interpretation rule for RED (R3D) raw color data that interprets colors as HDTV (Rec. 709) gamma-

encoded (non-linear-light) 32-bpc color:

“Interpret footage items” on page 75

• Improvements in import of Illustrator files with multiple artboards created from Video & Film presets: “Preparing

and importing Illustrator files” on page 113

• After Effects can import multi-channel DPX files, such as those from a Northlight film scanner: “Cineon and DPX

footage items” on page 115

• Removed ability to open or import After Effects projects created by versions of After Effects 5.5 or earlier. After

Effects CS5 can open and import projects created by After Effects 6.0 and later: on page 90

“Import an After Effects project”

• Removed ability to open projects using project links in movies rendered and exported from After Effects CS3 or

earlier. After Effects CS5 can open projects using project links included in movies rendered and exported by After Effects CS4 and later:

“Import an After Effects project” on page 90

Last updated 11/28/2011

USING AFTER EFFECTS

What’s new

• Removed ability to import AAF, OMF, PCX, Pixar, and Filmstrip files: “Supported import formats” on page 71

• Removed ability to import Premiere 6.5 projects. After Effects CS5 can import Premiere Pro projects: “Import an

Adobe Premiere Pro project” on page 91

• Removed ability to import and export FLV files with video encoded using the Sorenson Spark codec. After Effects

CS5 can import and export FLV files encoded with the On2 VP6 codec:

FLV or F4V file” on page 704

“Render and export a composition as an

• When you drag a completed output module to a folder in the Project panel, you import the output file or files into

that folder:

“Output modules and output module settings” on page 691

• Double-click a footage item in the Project panel to open it in a Footage viewer. Alt-double-click (Windows) or

Option-double-click (Mac OS) a footage item in the Project panel to open the source file in the media player assigned for that file type by the operating system. Press Enter on the numeric keypad to open selected footage items in a Footage viewer. The behavior in previous versions was less predictable and more complex, and was limited to specific media players: page 86

Layers and properties changes

“View footage item in the Footage panel or media player assigned by operating system” on

• Added Divide and Subtract blending modes: “Blending mode reference” on page 152

• The Label Colors and Label Defaults preferences categories have been combined into one Labels preference

category. Null Object and Text items have been added to the Label Defaults section, and a new label color control (Dark Green) has been added in the 16th position. Panel tabs include a square label that is the same color as the composition, footage item, or layer’s label if the Use Label Color For Related Tabs preference is selected in the Appearance preference category:

“Color labels for layers, compositions, and footage items” on page 136

• The Camera Settings dialog box includes a new Type option, which specifies if the camera is a one-node or two-

node camera:

“Camera settings” on page 166

• Shift-dragging with the Unified Camera tool selected temporarily activates the Orbit Camera tool and constrains

rotation to one axis:

“Move or adjust a camera or working 3D view with the Camera tools” on page 171

• Dragging with the Unified Camera tool selected and the right mouse button pressed temporarily activates the Track

Z Camera tool and modifies Position only: on page 171

“Move or adjust a camera or working 3D view with the Camera tools”

• Dragging with the Unified Camera tool selected and the right mouse button pressed and Ctrl (Windows) or

Command (Mac OS) pressed temporarily activates the Track Z Camera tool and modifies both Position and Point Of Interest:

“Move or adjust a camera or working 3D view with the Camera tools” on page 171

Views and previews changes

• In After Effects CS4, the default center cut action-safe margin was 30%, and the default title-safe margin was 35%.

In After Effects CS5, the default center cut action-safe margin is 32.5%, and the default title-safe margin is 40%: “About title-safe and action-safe zones” on page 192

• Added Alternate RAM Preview preference, which is used to preview the specified number of frames when you press

Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) while starting a RAM preview: on page 179

“RAM preview a specified number of frames”

• In Previews preferences, added Viewer Zoom Quality and Color Management Quality controls: “Viewer Quality

preferences” on page 185

• New Alpha Boundary and Alpha Overlay view modes in the Layer panel, with keyboard shortcuts: “Layer panel

view options” on page 385 and “Views (keyboard shortcuts)” on page 726

Last updated 11/28/2011

USING AFTER EFFECTS

What’s new

• When you are working with a composition that contains a 3D layer, a light, or a camera, the Composition panel

shows a label in the top-left corner of each view (such as Top or Right) to indicate which view is associated with which camera perspective. To hide these labels, choose Show 3D Labels from the Composition panel menu: “Choose a 3D view” on page 188

• When you click the Current Time control in the upper-left corner of the Timeline panel, you can now enter a time

directly in the box instead of opening the Go To Time dialog box: page 182

“Move the current-time indicator (CTI)” on

• When you click the Time Navigator in the Timeline panel, the Info panel shows the times of the beginning and end

of the Time Navigator duration:

“Zoom in or out in time for a composition” on page 183

• When you click the Work Area bar in the Timeline panel, the Info panel shows the times of the beginning and end

of the work area. The length (duration) of the work area is also shown:

“Work area” on page 186

• Default audio preview duration (Preferences > Previews) is now 30 seconds: “Preview video and audio” on page 178

• The resolution (down-sample factor) of a Layer viewer is now tied to the resolution of the Composition viewer for

the composition in which the layer is contained:

“Resolution” on page 190

• Removed Wireframe preview.

Animation and keyframes changes

• When you place the pointer over a vertex (keyframe) in the Graph Editor, a tooltip now displays the layer name,

property name, time, and value:

“View or edit a keyframe value” on page 202

Color changes

• In the View > Simulate Output menu, Macintosh RGB and Windows RGB have changed to Legacy Macintosh RGB

(Gamma 1.8) and Internet Standard RGB (sRGB). This change corresponds with a change in gamma from 1.8 to

2.2 for Mac OS version 10.6 and later:

Drawing, painting, and paths changes

“Gamma and tone response” on page 271

• Added the Path Point Size preference, which specifies the size of Bezier direction handles and vertices for masks

and shapes, direction handles for motion paths, and some effect control points:

“General preferences” on page 49

• Selecting vertices, direction handles, and effect control points is easier. Instead of needing to click directly on the

point, you can click within a small area around each point:

“Select masks, segments, and vertices” on page 316

• Using Create Masks From Text now trims the new layer to match the original: “Create shapes or masks from text

characters” on page 309

• When you change a mask path color, the new color is used as the default mask path color for new masks: “Change

mask path color” on page 369

Text changes

• Added ability to orient each text character around its anchor point toward the active camera with Orient Each

Character Independently option in Auto-Orientation dialog box:

“Per-character 3D text properties” on page 354

• When you select certain properties in the Timeline panel for a text animation, anchors points are now shown in the

Composition panel:

“Text anchor point properties” on page 353

• Added No Break command in Character panel menu to create nonbreaking spaces: “Create a non-breaking space”

on page 339

• You can now enable or disable the Path Options for a text layer by clicking the visibility (eyeball) switch for the

Path Options property:

“Creating and animating text on a path” on page 355

Last updated 11/28/2011

USING AFTER EFFECTS

What’s new

• Double-clicking a Type tool creates a new text layer: “Enter point text” on page 333

Transparency, opacity, and compositing changes

• After Effects now premultiplies channels with black when creating FLV files with transparency, which solves

problems with fringes and halos in Flash and Flash Player: on page 77

Effects and animation presets changes

“Alpha channel interpretation: premultiplied or straight”

• New Color Correction effects based on Photoshop adjustment layer types. When you import PSD files with these

adjustments, they are preserved:

• “Black & White effect” on page 449

• “Selective Color effect” on page 463

• “Vibrance effect” on page 466

• The results of changes in the Curves effect are now shown as you drag in the Effect Controls panel, rather than only

being shown when you release the mouse button:

“Curves effect” on page 456

• Removed entries in Effects & Presets panel and Effect menu for the Paint effect (and Paint category) and Puppet

effect (from Distort category), because there's no need to apply these effects directly. Use the corresponding tools to apply the effects: on page 239

“Paint tools: Brush, Clone Stamp, and Eraser” on page 285 and “Animating with Puppet tools”

• The histogram in the Levels effect provides the option to see individual color channels in context with other color

channels, as well as showing color channels as colorized:

“Levels effect” on page 460

• The Alpha Levels effect has been removed. Instead, use the Levels effect, which can be assigned to work only on an

alpha channel, has a histogram, and is a 32-bpc effect. Old projects that use the Alpha Levels effect will still open, and you will still be able to modify the Alpha Levels effect properties in these projects:

“Levels effect” on page 460

• The Vector Paint effect has been removed. Compositions created with a previous version of After Effects that use

the Vector Paint effect will still render, but you will not be able to modify the Vector Paint effect properties in these compositions. Instead, use paint tools and shape layers:

“Drawing, painting, and paths” on page 285

• Font preview support (the Show Font option) has been removed from the Basic Text, Path Text, and Numbers

effects.

• The Show Animation Presets option is now off by default in the panel menu of the Effect Controls panel: “Effect

Controls panel” on page 391

• The Effects & Presets panel command Reveal In Finder (Mac OS) or Reveal In Windows Explorer (Windows) now

works for Pixel Bender effects:

“Effects & Presets panel” on page 392

• The Exposure slider in the Exposure effect now has a range from -4 to 4 instead of -20 to 20 to allow for more precise

adjustment:

“Exposure effect” on page 457

• Changed behavior for copying effects when the Effect Controls panel is active. Even if a property of an effect is

selected, the effect itself (not just the selected properties visible in the Timeline panel) will be copied. Behavior when the Effect Controls panel isn't active is unchanged:

“Effect Controls panel” on page 391

Markers and metadata changes

• Added File > Go To Adobe Story menu command: “XMP metadata” on page 613

• Include Source XMP Metadata option is off by default in all output module templates: “Exporting XMP metadata

from After Effects” on page 616

Last updated 11/28/2011

USING AFTER EFFECTS

What’s new

• After Effects writes startTimecode and altTimecode values into XMP metadata. You can view these values in the

Start Timecode and Alternate Timecode fields in the Dynamic Media schema in the Metadata panel:

metadata in After Effects” on page 614

“XMP

• Removed the Clip Notes features.

Memory, storage, and performance changes

• Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing can now use the virtual (logical) processor cores created

by hyperthreading on many modern computers:

“Render multiple frames simultaneously” on page 620

• Simplified Memory & Multiprocessing preferences, improved automatic RAM allocation between foreground and

background processes, added Details dialog box for observation of RAM usage, and improved performance of Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing:

“Memory & Multiprocessing preferences” on page 620

• After Effects now shares a memory pool with Premiere Pro, Adobe Media Encoder, and Encore: “Memory pool

shared between After Effects, Premiere Pro, Encore, and Adobe Media Encoder” on page 623

• The time that After Effects takes to start is reduced. The start-up time for the background processes used in Render

Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing is also reduced.

Plug-ins, scripts, and automation changes

• Esc key interrupts a running script: “Loading and running scripts” on page 633

• After Effects CS5 can load and run only 64-bit plug-ins, not 32-bit plug-ins: “Plug-ins” on page 631

• Pixel Bender Toolkit 2.0 included, and performance of Pixel Bender effects greatly improved: “Plug-ins” on

page 631

Rendering and exporting changes

• Removed QuickTime export functionality from File > Export menu. To export a QuickTime movie, use the render

“Rendering and exporting overview” on page 680

queue:

• Removed ability to export AAF, OMF, PCX, Pixar, Filmstrip, ElectricImage, Softimage PIC, and PICT files:

“Supported output formats” on page 682

• Pressing spacebar no longer stops the render queue: “Pause or stop rendering” on page 685

• Warning for mismatch in frame rate or dimensions between output module settings and other settings, and

automatic correction of mismatches:

“Warning for mismatch in frame rate or dimensions” on page 694

• Removed options dialog box for SGI output. The dialog box contained an option for using RLE (run-length

encoding). This option is now always on.

• Filename extensions are now enforced on output: “Specify filenames and locations for rendered output” on

page 688

• Cineon output module renamed to DPX/Cineon, and DPX is now default. To create Cineon files, choose

FIDO/Cineon 4.5 in the Cineon Settings dialog box:

“Cineon and DPX footage items” on page 115

• Added warning message explaining that custom format settings will be reset to defaults when opening a project

created in After Effects CS4 or earlier if the settings can’t be converted. This can happen with some output modules that reference FLV, F4V, H.264 (and variants), MPEG-2 (and variants), or WMV:

module templates” on page 692

“Create, manage, and edit output

• Added several output module templates for common formats, including F4V, FLV, H.264, and MPEG-2. Renamed

some existing output module templates for increased clarity: on page 692

“Create, manage, and edit output module templates”

Last updated 11/28/2011

USING AFTER EFFECTS

What’s new

• Removed some color depth options from output module settings that used very few bits per pixel (bpp) from output

modules: Black & White (1-bpp color), 4 Colors (2-bpp color), 16 Colors (4-bpp color), Thousands Of Colors (16bpp color), and some grayscale options. This doesn’t affect higher color depths that are expressed in bits per channel (bpc). Remaining are color depth options for 256 Colors (8-bpp color), Millions Of Colors (8-bpc), Trillions Of Colors (16-bpc), and Floating Point (32-bpc):

“Output modules and output module settings” on

page 691

• Removed overflow volumes feature.

• Changed Segment Movie Files At preference to Segment Video-only Movie Files At preference: “Segment settings”

on page 713

• Removed some fractional audio sample rates and ability to set audio sample rate to an arbitrary, custom value in

output module settings. If you need to save audio with a sample rate other than those offered in After Effects, you can reprocess the audio in Adobe Audition:

“Output module settings” on page 693

• Removed Edit > Edit In Adobe Audition command: “Edit audio in Adobe Soundbooth” on page 26

Keyboard shortcuts and miscellaneous user interface changes

• To mitigate the problem of some new Apple keyboards lacking a numeric keypad, alternative shortcuts have been

added for common operations that have shortcuts that use the numeric keypad. These changes are for Mac OS only. For a complete list of keyboard shortcuts, see

“Keyboard shortcuts” on page 720.

function shortcut using numeric keypad new shortcut

RAM preview 0 (zero on numeric keypad) Control+0 (zero on main keyboard)

Shift+RAM preview Shift+0 (zero on numeric keypad) Shift+Control+0 (zero on main

Preview only audio from the current time

Preview only audio in work area

Preview N frames Option+0 (zero on numeric

Add marker at current time (layer marker if layer selected, composition marker otherwise)

Add marker at current time (layer marker if layer selected, composition marker otherwise) and open marker dialog box

. (decimal on the numeric keypad) Control+. (period on main keyboard)

Option+. (decimal on numeric keypad)

keypad)

* (multiply on numeric keypad) Control+8 (on main keyboard)

Option+* (multiply on numeric keypad)

keyboard)

Control+Option+. (period on main keyboard)

Control+Option+0 (zero on main keyboard)

Option+Control+8 (on main keyboard)

• Pressing J or K goes to beginning, end, or base frame of Roto Brush span if viewing Roto Brush in Layer panel:

“Time navigation (keyboard shortcuts)” on page 724

• Pressing PP shows Roto Brush strokes as well as paint strokes and Puppet pins: “Showing properties and groups in

the Timeline panel (keyboard shortcuts)” on page 730

• New keyboard shortcuts for Look At Selected Layers and Look At All Layers commands: “3D layers (keyboard

shortcuts)” on page 732

Last updated 11/28/2011

USING AFTER EFFECTS

What’s new

• New shortcuts to display entire composition duration in the Timeline panel: “Zoom in or out in time for a

composition” on page 183

• Mouse scroll wheel no longer changes camera position when the Unified Camera tool is active. Rolling the mouse

scroll wheel zooms in this context:

“Scroll or zoom with the mouse wheel” on page 47

• Many dialog boxes now have a Preview option that allows you to see the results of changes before you close the

dialog box. Dialog boxes for which the Preview option has been added include Interpret Footage, Composition Settings, Camera Settings, Solid Settings, Light Settings, 3D Rotation, and all transform property dialog boxes.

• In the Project, Render Queue, and Effect Controls panels, you can use the arrow keys to expand or collapse groups.

• Several more features now operate on the visible viewer in ETLAT mode, including keyboard shortcuts for toggling

grids, toggling guides, showing channels, working with snapshots, and sending a preview to an external video monitor:

“Edit this, look at that (ETLAT) and locked Composition viewers” on page 44

• Changed some user interface strings to make their meaning and function more clear.

• In Help menu, changed Community Help And Support to After Effects Support Center: After Effects Support

Center on the Adobe website

• In Composition panel, changed Show Last Snapshot to Show Snapshot: “Snapshots” on page 186

• In Mask Interpolation panel, changed Mask Shape to Mask Path in all items, including changing Add Mask

Shape Vertices to Add Mask Path Vertices:

“Animate a mask path with Smart Mask Interpolation” on page 320

• In the Output Module Settings dialog box, the Output Module Templates dialog box, and the Output Module

section of the Render Queue panel, Stretch has been renamed to Resize:

settings” on page 691

“Output modules and output module

• In several places relevant to importing Photoshop and Illustrator files as compositions, Composition - Cropped

Layers changed to Composition - Retain Layer Sizes: page 109

“Import a still-image sequence as a composition” on

• In the SWF Settings dialog box, the Prevent Import checkbox has been renamed to Prevent Editing to clarify its

“SWF export settings” on page 703

intent:

• Removed Preserve Clipboard Data For Other Applications preference. This option is now always on.

What’s new in After Effects CS5.5

For a complete list of what’s new and changed in Adobe After Effects CS5.5, see this post on the After Effects Region

of Interest blog.

See this series on the video2brain website for video training about every new and changed feature in After Effects CS5.5.

Chris & Trish Meyer provide free video tutorials about new features in After Effects CS5.5. For the tutorials, see this

Adobe TV video series.

New and changed features in After Effects CS4, CS5, and CS5.5, collected by Chris and Trish Meyer on the ProVideo

Coalition website.

Top new features in After Effects CS5.5

• Warp Stabilizer effect: “Stabilize with the Warp Stabilizer effect” on page 259.

• Camera Lens Blur effect: “Camera Lens Blur effect (CS5.5)” on page 434.

Last updated 11/28/2011

USING AFTER EFFECTS

What’s new

• Source timecode: “Source timecode (CS5.5 and later)” on page 57.

• Stereoscopic 3D improvements: “Stereoscopic 3D camera rig (CS5.5)” on page 175.

• Light falloff: “Light settings” on page 170.

• Saving a project backward (as an After Effects CS5 project): “Save and back up projects” on page 52.

• Plus many more.

Last updated 11/28/2011

Chapter 2: Workflows, planning, and setup

Setup and installation

To submit a feature request or bug report about After Effects, choose Help > Send Feedback.

Installing the software

Before installing Adobe After Effects software, review complete system requirements and recommendations in the Read Me file. The Read Me file is on the installation disc, as well as being included in the Release Notes document available through the

For assistance with installation issues, see the Creative Suite Help and Support section on the Adobe website.

In addition to the full version of Adobe After Effects, you can also install additional copies on additional computers to use as After Effects render engines to assist with network rendering. You install render engines in the same manner as the full version of the application. You run the render engine using the Adobe After Effects Render Engine shortcut in the Adobe After Effects CS5 or After Effects CS5.5 folder.

After Effects support section of the Adobe website.

Limitations of the trial version for Adobe After Effects CS5.5 and later

The trial version of After Effects CS5.5 and later includes all of the codecs that are included with the full version of After Effects CS5.5 and later. This means that you can import and export to all of the supported file formats using the trial version. The free trial version of Adobe After Effects CS5.5 and later software does not include some features that depend upon software licensed from parties other than Adobe. For example, Cycore (CC) effects, mocha-AE, mocha Shape, FreeForm, and Color Finesse are available only with the full version of Adobe After Effects software. (Keylight is included, however.) If your installation of After Effects is missing some third-party components, contact your system administrator to ensure that all licensed components have been installed correctly. For more information about limitations of the trial version for After Effects CS5.5, see the

Limitations of the trial version for Adobe After Effects CS5

The free trial version of Adobe After Effects CS5 software does not include some features that depend upon software licensed from parties other than Adobe. For example, mocha for After Effects, some effect plug-ins, and some codecs for encoding and decoding MPEG formats are available only with the full version of Adobe After Effects software. If your installation of After Effects is missing some third-party components, contact your system administrator to ensure that all licensed components have been installed correctly. For more information about limitations of the trial version for After Effects CS5, see the

After Effects CS5 and later is a 64-bit application

After Effects CS5 and later is a 64-bit application, so it can only run on 64-bit operating systems. If you are installing Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium or Master Collection edition on a computer with a 32-bit operating system, then you can install After Effects CS4 and Premiere Pro CS4 using an intaller that is included with the suite. To activate the CS4 versions of these applications, you must use a separate serial number. For assistance, contact

Service.

Adobe website.

Adobe Customer

For more information about installing and activating the 32-bit applications, see the Adobe website.

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More Help topics

“Network rendering with watch folders and render engines” on page 709

“Plug-ins” on page 631

Activate the software

Activation is a simple, anonymous process. After installation, your Adobe software attempts to contact Adobe to complete the license activation process. No personal data is transmitted.

A single-user retail license activation supports two computers. For example, you can install the software on a desktop computer at work and on a laptop computer at home.

For more information on product licensing and activation, see the Read Me file or go to the Adobe website.

Note: Before transferring an activation to a different computer, deactivate the software by choosing Help > Deactivate.

Workflows

General workflow in After Effects

More Help topics

“Basic workflow tutorial: Create a simple movie” on page 12

Online resources for general workflow in After Effects

For a video introduction to After Effects, go to the Adobe website.

Peachpit Press provides a basic step-by-step introduction to the general After Effects workflow in an excerpt from the

After Effects Classroom in a Book.

Trish and Chris Meyer provide a step-by-step introduction to creating a basic animation in a PDF excerpt from their book After Effects Apprentice on the

See this post on the After Effects Region of Interest blog for a collection of resources for getting started with After

Effects.

This video from the After Effects CS5: Learn by Video series provides an introduction to the basic terminology,

workflow, concepts, and user interface items in After Effects.

This video from the “After Effects CS5: Learn by Video” series provides an introduction to the basic terminology,

workflow, concepts, and user interface items in After Effects.

See this page on the After Effects Region of Interest blog for a collection of resources for getting started with After

Effects.

Focal Press website.

Overview of general workflow in After Effects

Whether you use Adobe After Effects to animate a simple title, create complex motion graphics, or composite realistic visual effects, you generally follow the same basic workflow, though you may repeat or skip some steps. For example, you may repeat the cycle of modifying layer properties, animating, and previewing until everything looks right. You may skip the step of importing footage if you intend to create graphical elements entirely in After Effects.

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Import and organize footage

After you create a project, import your footage into the project in the Project panel. After Effects automatically interprets many common media formats, but you can also specify how you want After Effects to interpret attributes such as frame rate and pixel aspect ratio. You can view each item in a Footage panel and set its start and end times to fit your composition. For more information, see

“Importing and interpreting footage items” on page 70.

Create, arrange, and composite layers in a composition

Create one or more compositions. Any footage item can be the source for one or more layers in a composition. You can arrange the layers spatially in the Composition panel or arrange them in time using the Timeline panel. You can stack layers in two dimensions or arrange them in three dimensions. You can use masks, blending modes, and keying tools to composite (combine), the images of multiple layers. You can even use shape layers, text layers, and paint tools to create your own visual elements. For more information, see

“Composition basics” on page 58, “Creating layers” on page 117, “Transparency, opacity, and compositing” on page 365, “Overview of shape layers, paths, and vector

graphics” on page 295, and “Creating and editing text layers” on page 331.

Modify and animate layer properties

You can modify any property of a layer, such as size, position, and opacity. You can make any combination of layer properties change over time, using keyframes and expressions. Use motion tracking to stabilize motion or to animate one layer so that it follows the motion in another layer. For more information, see

“Animation basics” on page 194,

“Expression basics” on page 637, and “Tracking and stabilizing motion (CS5)” on page 246.

Add effects and modify effect properties

You can add any combination of effects to alter the appearance or sound of a layer, and even generate visual elements from scratch. You can apply any of the hundreds of effects, animation presets, and layer styles. You can even create and save your own animation presets. You can animate effect properties, too, which are simply layer properties within an effect property group. For more information, see

“Effects and animation presets overview” on page 386.

Preview

Previewing compositions on your computer monitor or an external video monitor is fast and convenient, even for complex projects, especially if you use OpenGL technology to accelerate previews. You can change the speed and quality of previews by specifying their resolution and frame rate, and by limiting the area and duration of the composition that you preview. You can use color management features to preview how your movie will look on another output device. For more information, see

“Previewing” on page 178 and “Color management” on page 273.

Render and export

Add one or more compositions to the render queue to render them at the quality settings you choose and to create movies in the formats that you specify. In some cases, you export using the File > Export or Composition menu, rather than the Render Queue panel. For more information, see

“Basics of rendering and exporting” on page 680.

Basic workflow tutorial: Create a simple movie

This tutorial assumes that you have already started After Effects and have not modified the empty default project. This example skips the step of importing footage and shows you instead how to create your own synthetic visual elements. After you have rendered a final movie, you can import it into After Effects to view it and use it as you would any other footage item.

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Some people prefer to use the mouse and menus to interact with After Effects, whereas others prefer to use keyboard shortcuts for common tasks. For several steps in this example, two alternative commands are shown that produce the same result—the first demonstrating the discoverability of menu commands and the second demonstrating the speed and convenience of keyboard shortcuts. You’ll likely find that you use some combination of keyboard shortcuts and menu commands in your work.

1 Create a new composition:

• Choose Composition > New Composition.

• Press Ctrl+N (Windows) or Command+N (Mac OS).

2 Change the Duration value in the Composition Settings dialog box by entering 5.00 (5 seconds), choose Web Video

from the Preset menu, and click OK.

3 Create a new text layer:

• Choose Layer > New > Text.

• Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T (Windows) or Command+Option+Shift+T (Mac OS).

4 Type your name. Press Enter on the numeric keypad or press Ctrl+Enter (Windows) or Command+Return (Mac

OS) on the main keyboard to exit text-editing mode.

5 Set an initial keyframe for the Position property:

• Click the triangle to the left of the layer name in the Timeline panel, click the triangle to the left of the Transform

group name, and then click the stopwatch button

to the left of the Position property name.

• Press Alt+Shift+P (Windows) or Option+Shift+P (Mac OS).

6 Activate the Selection tool:

• Click the Selection Tool button in the Tools panel.

• Press V.

7 Using the Selection tool, drag your text to the bottom-left corner of the frame in the Composition panel.

8 Move the current-time indicator to the last frame of the composition:

• Drag the current-time indicator in the Timeline panel to the far right of the timeline.

• Press End.

9 Using the Selection tool, drag your text to the top-right corner of the frame in the Composition panel.

A new keyframe is created at this time for the Position property. Motion is interpolated between keyframe values.

10 Preview your animation using standard preview:

• Click the Play button in the Preview panel. Click Play again to stop the preview.

• Press the spacebar. Press the spacebar again to stop the preview.

11 Apply the Glow effect:

• Choose Effect > Stylize > Glow.

•

Type glow in the search field at the top of the Effects & Presets panel to find the Glow effect. Double-click the effect name.

12 Add your composition to the render queue:

• Choose Composition > Add To Render Queue.

• Press Ctrl+Shift+/ (Windows) or Command+Shift+/ (Mac OS).

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13 In the Render Queue panel, click the underlined text to the right of Output To. In the Output Movie To dialog box,

choose a name and location for the output movie file, and then click Save. For the location, choose something easy to find, like your desktop.

14 Click the Render button to process all items in the render queue. The Render Queue panel shows the progress of

the rendering operation. A sound is generated when rendering is complete.

You’ve created, rendered, and exported a movie.

You can import the movie that you’ve created and preview it in After Effects, or you can navigate to the movie and play it using a movie player such as QuickTime Player, Windows Media Player, or Adobe Bridge.

More Help topics

“Keyboard shortcuts” on page 720

“Import footage items” on page 74

“General workflow in After Effects” on page 11

Planning and setup

Planning your work

Correct project settings, preparation of footage, and initial composition settings can help you to avoid errors and unexpected results when rendering your final output movie. Before you begin, think about what kind of work you’ll be doing in After Effects and what kind of output you intend to create. After you have planned your project and made some basic decisions about project settings, you’ll be ready to start importing footage and assembling compositions from layers based on that footage.

The best way to ensure that your movie is suitable for a specific medium is to render a test movie and view it using the same type of equipment that your audience will use to view it. It’s best to do such tests before you have completed the difficult and time-consuming parts of your work, to uncover problems early.

Aharon Rabinowitz provides an article on the Creative COW website about planning your project with the final delivery specifications in mind.

For a video tutorial on creating and organizing projects, go to the Adobe website.

For more information about encoding and compression options, see this FAQ entry: “FAQ: What is the best format

for rendering and exporting from After Effects?”

Storyboards and scripts (screenplays)

Before you begin shooting footage or creating animations, it is often best to start by planning your movie with storyboards and a script (screenplay).

You can use Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to create storyboards. You can use Adobe Story to collaboratively write and manage screenplays. Adobe Story also converts information from a screenplay into XMP metadata that can automate the creation of shooting scripts, shot lists, and more.

Note: To start the Adobe Story service from within After Effects, choose File > Go To Adobe Story.

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Acquiring, choosing, and preparing footage

Before importing footage, first decide which media and formats you'll use for your finished movies, and then determine the best settings for your source material. Often, it’s best to prepare footage before importing it into After Effects.

For example, if you want an image to fill your composition frame, configure the image in Adobe Photoshop so that the image size and pixel aspect ratio match the composition size and pixel aspect ratio. If the image is too large when you import it into After Effects, you’ll increase the memory and processor requirements of the compositions that use it. If the image is too small, you’ll lose image quality when you scale it to the desired size. See

aspect ratio” on page 81.

If you can shoot footage with consistent lighting and colors—and otherwise prevent the need to do a lot of tedious utility work in post-production—then you’ll have more time for creative work. Consider using Adobe OnLocation while shooting footage to make sure that you get the most out of your time and footage.

If possible, use uncompressed footage or footage encoded with lossless compression. Lossless compression means better results for many operations, such as keying and motion tracking. Certain kinds of compression—such as the compression used in DV encoding—are especially bad for color keying, because they discard the subtle differences in color that you depend on for good bluescreen or greenscreen keying. It’s often best to wait until the final rendering phase to use compression other than lossless compression. See

“Keying introduction and resources” on page 375.

If possible, use footage with a frame rate that matches that of your output, so that After Effects doesn’t have to use frame blending or similar methods to fill in missing frames. See

“Frame rate” on page 79.

“Pixel aspect ratio and frame

The kind of work that you’ll be doing in After Effects and the kind of output movie that you want to create can even influence how you shoot and acquire your footage. For example, if you know that you want to animate using motion tracking, consider shooting your scene in a manner that optimizes for motion tracking—for example, using tracking markers. See

“Motion tracking workflow” on page 249.

David Van Brink shows an excellent example on his omino pixel blog of why shooting in a high-definition format is useful even for standard-definition delivery, because the extra pixels give you a lot of room for synthetic (fake) camera work, such as zooms and pans in post-production.

Trish and Chris Meyer provide tips for planning and delivering high-definition and widescreen work in articles on the ProVideo Coalition website:

• The High-Def Checklist

• Open Wide: Creating That Widescreen Look

Project settings

Project settings fall into three basic categories: how time is displayed in the project, how color data is treated in the project, and what sampling rate to use for audio. Of these settings, the color settings are the ones that you need to think about before you do much work in your project, because they determine how color data is interpreted as you import footage files, how color calculations are performed as you work, and how color data is converted for final output. See “Color management” on page 273 and “Timecode and time display units” on page 55.

If you enable color management for your project, the colors that you see are the same colors that your audience will see when they view the movie that you create.

Note: Click the color depth indicator at the bottom of the Project panel to open the Project Settings dialog box. Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) to cycle through color bit depths: 8 bpc, 16 bpc, and 32 bpc. See

high dynamic range color” on page 263.

“Color depth and

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Composition settings

After you prepare and import footage items, you use these footage items to create layers in a composition, where you animate and apply effects. When you create a composition, specify composition settings such as resolution, frame size, and pixel aspect ratio for your final rendered output. Although you can change composition settings at any time, it’s best to set them correctly as you create each new composition to avoid unexpected results in your final rendered output. For example, the composition frame size should be the image size in the playback medium. See

settings” on page 62.

If you’ll be rendering and exporting a composition to more than one media format, always match the pixel dimensions

for your composition to the largest pixel dimensions used for your output. Later, you can use output modules in the Render Queue panel to encode and export a separate version of the composition for each format. See

and output module settings” on page 691.

“Composition

“Output modules

Performance, memory, and storage considerations

If you work with large compositions, make sure that you configure After Effects and your computer to maximize performance. Complex compositions can require a large amount of memory to render, and the rendered movies can take a large amount of disk space to store. Before you attempt to render a three-hour movie, make sure that you have the disk space available to store it. See

If your source footage files are on a slow disk drive (or across a slow network connection), then performance will be poor. When possible, keep the source footage files for your project on a fast local disk drive. Ideally, you’ll have three drives: one for source footage files, one from which the application runs, and one for rendered output.

“Storage requirements for output files” on page 624.

For more information, see “Improve performance” on page 627 and “Memory & Multiprocessing preferences” on page 620.

Planning for playback on computer monitors and mobile devices

When you create a movie for playback on a personal computer—whether downloaded from the Web or played from a CD-ROM—specify composition settings, render settings, and output module settings that keep file size low. Consider that a movie with a high data rate may not play well from an older CD-ROM drive that cannot read data from the disc fast enough. Similarly, a large movie may take a long time to download over a dial-up network connection.

When rendering your final movie, choose a file type and encoder appropriate for the final media. The corresponding decoder must be available on the system used by your intended audience; otherwise they will not be able to play the movie. Common codecs (encoders/decoders) include the codecs installed with media players such as Flash Player, Windows Media Player, and QuickTime Player.

Aharon Rabinowitz provides an article on the Creative COW website about planning your project with the final delivery specifications in mind.

Trish and Chris Meyer provide an article on the Artbeats website that describes some of the considerations for creating video for the Web.

For more information about encoding and compression options for After Effects, see this FAQ entry: “FAQ: What is

the best format for rendering and exporting from After Effects?”

Mobile devices

Many of the considerations for creating movies for playback on mobile devices, such as mobile phones and the Apple iPod, are similar to the considerations for creating movies for playback on personal computers—but the limitations are even more extreme. Because the amount of storage (disk space) and processor power are less for mobile phones than for personal computers, file size and data rate for movies must be even more tightly controlled.

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Screen dimensions, video frame rates, and color gamuts vary greatly from one mobile device to another. Adobe Device Central contains device profiles that provide information about these characteristics. You can create a set of After Effects compositions tailored for a selected set of devices by using the File > New Document In > After Effects command in Adobe Device Central. (See

Use these tips when shooting video for mobile devices:

“Create compositions for playback on mobile devices” on page 60.)

• Tight shots are better. It’s hard to see a face on a tiny screen unless it’s shot in relative close-up.

• Light your subjects well, and keep them separated from the background; the colors and brightness values between

background and subject should not be too similar.

• Avoid excessive zooming and rolling, which hinder temporal compression schemes.

• Because stable (non-shaky) video is easier to compress, shoot video with a tripod to minimize the shaking of the

camera.

• Avoid using auto-focus and auto-exposure features. When these features engage, they change the appearance of all

of the pixels in an image from one frame to the next, making compression using interframe encoding schemes less efficient.

Use these tips when working in After Effects:

• Use a lower frame rate (12-24 fps) for mobile devices.

• Use motion-stabilization tools and noise-reduction or blur effects before rendering to final output, to aid the

compressor in reducing file size.

• Match the color palette to the mobile devices that you are targeting. Mobile devices, in general, have a limited color

gamut. Previewing in Adobe Device Central can help determine if the colors used are optimal for an individual device or range of devices.

• Consider using cuts and other fast transitions instead of zooming in and out or using fades and dissolves. Fast cuts

also make compression easier.

After you’ve rendered your movie, you can view it exactly as it will appear on any of a large variety of mobile devices, using Adobe Device Central.

More Help topics

“Composition settings” on page 62

“Output modules and output module settings” on page 691

“Render settings” on page 689

Cross-platform project considerations

After Effects project files are compatible with Mac OS and Windows operating systems, but some factors—mostly regarding the locations and naming of footage files and support files—can affect the ease of working with the same project across platforms.

Project file paths

When you move a project file to a different computer and open it, After Effects attempts to locate the project’s footage files as follows: After Effects first searches the folder in which the project file is located; second, it searches the file’s original path or folder location; finally, it searches the root of the directory where the project is located.

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If you are building cross-platform projects, it’s best if the full paths have the same names on Mac OS and Windows systems. If the footage and the project are on different volumes, make sure that the appropriate volume is mounted before opening the project and that network volume names are the same on both systems.

It’s best to store footage in the same folder as the project file or in another folder within that folder. Here’s a sample hierarchy:

/newproject/project_file.aep

/newproject/source/footage1.psd

/newproject/source/footage2.avi

You can then copy the newproject folder in its entirety across platforms, and After Effects will properly locate all of the footage.

Use the Collect Files feature to gather copies of all the files in a project into a single folder. You can then move the folder

containing the copied project to the other platform. See “Collect files in one location” on page 686.

File-naming conventions

Name your footage and project files with the appropriate filename extensions, such as .mov for QuickTime movies and .aep for After Effects projects. Don’t use high-ASCII or other extended characters in filenames to be used crossplatform. If files will be used on the Web, be sure that filenames adhere to applicable conventions for extensions and paths.

Supported file types

Some file types are supported on one platform but not another. See “Supported import formats” on page 71 and “Supported output formats” on page 682.

Resources

Ensure that all fonts, effects, codecs, and other resources are available on both systems. Such resources are often plug-ins.

If you use a native After Effects effect in a project on one operating system, the effect will still work on the other operating system to which you’ve transferred your project. However, some third-party effects and other third-party plug-ins may not continue to operate, even if you have versions of these plug-ins on the target system. In such cases, you may need to reapply some third-party effects.

More Help topics

“Plug-ins” on page 631

“Fonts” on page 337

Working with After Effects and other applications

Working with Adobe Bridge and After Effects

Adobe Bridge is the control center for Adobe Creative Suite software. Use Adobe Bridge to browse for project templates and animation presets; run cross-product workflow automation scripts; view and manage files and folders; organize your files by assigning keywords, labels, and ratings to them; search for files and folders; and view, edit, and add metadata.

• To open Adobe Bridge from After Effects, choose File > Browse In Bridge.

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• To reveal a file in Adobe Bridge, select a file in the Project panel and choose File > Reveal In Bridge.

• To use Adobe Bridge to open template projects, choose File > Browse Template Projects.

• To use Adobe Bridge to browse for animation presets, choose Animation > Browse Presets.

For video tutorials on using Adobe Bridge, go to the Adobe website:

• What is Adobe Bridge?

• New features in Adobe Bridge CS5

• Metadata and keywords in Adobe Bridge

More Help topics

“Template projects and example projects” on page 53

“Animation presets overview and resources” on page 386

Working with Photoshop and After Effects

If you use Photoshop to create still images, you can use After Effects to bring those still images together and make them move and change. In After Effects, you can animate an entire Photoshop image or any of its layers. You can even animate individual properties of Photoshop images, such as the properties of a layer style. If you use After Effects to create movies, you can use Photoshop to refine the individual frames of those movies.

More Help topics

“Preparing and importing Photoshop files” on page 110

“3D object layers from Photoshop” on page 164

Comparative advantages for specific tasks

The strengths of After Effects are in its animation and automation features. This means that After Effects excels at tasks that can be automated from one frame to another. For example, you can use the motion tracking features of After Effects to track the motion of a microphone boom, and then automatically apply that same motion to a stroke made with the Clone Stamp tool. In this manner, you can remove the microphone from every frame of a shot, without having to paint the microphone out by hand on each frame.

In contrast, Photoshop has excellent tools for painting and drawing.

Deciding which application to use for painting depends on the task. Paint strokes in Photoshop directly affect the pixels of the layer. Paint strokes in After Effects are elements of an effect, each of which can be turned on or off or modified at any time. If you want to have complete control of each paint stroke after you’ve applied it, or if you want to animate the paint strokes themselves, use the After Effects paint tools. If the purpose of applying a paint stroke is to permanently modify a still image, use the Photoshop paint tools. If you are applying several paint strokes by hand to get rid of dust, consider using the Photoshop paint tools.

The animation and video features in Photoshop Extended include simple keyframe-based animation. After Effects uses a similar interface, though the breadth and flexibility of its animation features are far greater.

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3D objects, 3D models, and 3D images

In general, After Effects 3D functionality is limited to the manipulation of two-dimensional layers in three dimensions. Photoshop, however, can manipulate complete 3D models and output two-dimensional composites and cross-sections of these 3D models from any angle. After Effects can import and render 3D object layers from PSD files. You can set a layer based on a PSD 3D object layer to honor the active camera in an After Effects composition. When the camera moves around such a layer, it views the 3D object from various angles.

To see a video tutorial about using 3D object layers from Photoshop in After Effects, see the Adobe website.

After Effects can also automatically create 3D layers to mimic the planes created by the Photoshop Vanishing Point feature.

To see video tutorials about using Vanishing Point data from Photoshop in After Effects, see the Adobe website:

• Working with Vanishing Point in Photoshop and After Effects

• Using Vanishing Point to map a 3D environment

Exchanging still images

After Effects can import and export still images in many formats, but you will usually want to use the native Photoshop PSD format when transferring individual frames or still image sequences between After Effects and Photoshop.

When importing or exporting a PSD file, After Effects can preserve individual layers, masks, layer styles, and most other attributes. When you import a PSD file into After Effects, you can choose whether to import it as a flattened image or as a composition with its layers separate and intact.

It is often a good idea to prepare a still image in Photoshop before importing it into After Effects. Examples of such preparation include correcting color, scaling, and cropping. It is often better for you to do something once to the source image in Photoshop than to have After Effects perform the same operation many times per second as it renders each frame for previews or final output.

By creating your new PSD document from the Photoshop New File dialog box with a Film & Video preset, you can start with a document that is set up correctly for a specific video output type. If you are already working in After Effects, you can create a new PSD document that matches your composition and project settings by choosing File > New > Adobe Photoshop File.

Exchanging movies

You can also exchange video files, such as QuickTime movies, between Photoshop and After Effects. When you open a movie in Photoshop, a video layer is created that refers to the source footage file. Video layers allow you to paint nondestructively on the movie’s frames, much as After Effects works with layers with movies as their sources. When you save a PSD file with a video layer, you save the edits that you made to the video layer, not edits to the source footage itself.

You can also render a movie directly from Photoshop. For example, you can create a QuickTime movie from Photoshop that can then be imported into After Effects.

Color

After Effects works internally with colors in an RGB (red, green, blue) color space. Though After Effects can convert CMYK images to RGB, you should do video and animation work in Photoshop in RGB.

If relevant for your final output, it is better to ensure that the colors in your image are broadcast-safe in Photoshop before you import the image into After Effects. A good way to do this is to assign the appropriate destination color space—for example, SDTV (Rec. 601)—to the document in Photoshop. After Effects performs color management according to color profiles embedded in documents, including imported PSD files.

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Working with Flash and After Effects

If you use Adobe® Flash® to create video or animation, you can use

After Effects

to edit and refine the video. For example, from Flash you can export animations and applications as QuickTime movies or Flash Video (FLV) files. You can then use

After Effects

to edit and refine the video.

If you use After Effects to edit and composite video, you can then use Flash to publish that video. You can also export an

After Effects

composition as XFL content for further editing in Flash.

Flash and

After Effects

use separate terms for some concepts that they share in common, including the following:

• A composition in

• After Effects

• is like a movie clip in Flash Professional.

• The composition frame in the Composition panel is like the Stage in Flash Professional.

• The Project panel in After Effects is like the Library panel in Flash Professional.

• Project files in After Effects are like FLA files in Flash Professional.

• You render and export a movie from

• After Effects

• ; you publish a SWF file from Flash Professional.

Additional resources

The following video tutorials provide additional detailed information about using Flash together with After Effects:

• “Importing and exporting XFL files between Flash and After Effects” at www.adobe.com/go/lrvid4098_xp.

• “Exporting an After Effects composition to Flash Professional using SWF, F4V/FLV, and XFL” at

www.adobe.com/go/lrvid4105_xp.

• “Converting metadata and markers to cue points for use in Flash” at www.adobe.com/go/lrvid4111_xp.

• Michael Coleman, product manager for

• After Effects

• , provides a video of a presentation from Adobe MAX on

• Adobe TV

• in which he demonstrates the use of mocha for

• After Effects

• and Flash together to dynamically replace a video at run time in Flash Player:

http://www.adobe.com/go/learn_aefl_vid15383v1008_en

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• Tom Green provides a brief video tutorial on the Layers Magazine website that shows how to use the XFL format

to export an After Effects composition for use in

• Flash Professional

• : http://www.layersmagazine.com/exporting-xfl-fomrat-from-after-effects-to-flash.html

The following articles provide additional information about using Flash and

After Effects

together:

• Richard Harrington and Marcus Geduld provide an excerpt, "Flash Essentials for

• After Effects

• Users", of their book

• After Effects

for Flash | Flash for

• After Effects

• on the Peachpit website. In this chapter, Richard and Marcus explain Flash in terms that an After Effects user can

understand.

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1350895

• Richard Harrington and Marcus Geduld also provide "After Effects Essentials for Flash Users", another excerpt

from their book

• After Effects

for Flash | Flash for

• After Effects

• . In this chapter, Richard and Marcus explain After Effects in terms that a Flash user can understand.

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1350894

• Tom Green provides a detailed article titled Integrating

• Flash Professional

• CS4 with

• After Effects

• CS4 in the Flash Developer Center: http://www.adobe.com/go/learn_aefl_integrating_fl_ae_en

• Robert Powers provides a video tutorial on the Slippery Rock NYC website that shows the basics of using

• After Effects

• from the perspective of someone who is familiar with

• Flash Professional

• .

Exporting QuickTime video from Flash

If you create animations or applications with Flash, you can export them as QuickTime movies using the File > Export > Export Movie command in Flash. For a Flash animation, you can optimize the video output for animation. For a Flash application, Flash renders video of the application as it runs, allowing the user to manipulate it. This lets you capture the branches or states of your application that you want to include in the video file.

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Rendering and exporting FLV and F4V files from After Effects

When you render finished video from After Effects, select FLV or F4V as the output format to render and export video that can play in Flash Player. You can then import the FLV or F4V file into Flash and publish it in a SWF file, which can be played by Flash Player.

Importing and publishing video in Flash

When you import an FLV or F4V file into Flash, you can use various techniques, such as scripting or Flash components, to control the visual interface that surrounds your video. For example, you might include playback controls or other graphics. You can also add graphic layers on top of the FLV or F4V file for composite results.

Composite graphics, animation, and video

Flash and After Effects each include many capabilities that allow you to perform complex compositing of video and graphics. Which application you choose to use will depend on your personal preferences and the type of final output you want to create.

Flash is the more web-oriented of the two applications, with its small final file size. Flash also allows for run-time control of animation. After

Effects is oriented toward video and film production, provides a wide range of visual

effects, and is generally used to create video files as final output.

Both applications can be used to create original graphics and animation. Both use a timeline and offer scripting capabilities for controlling animation programmatically. After

Effects includes a larger set of effects, while the Flash

ActionScript® language is the more robust of the two scripting environments.

Both applications allow you to place graphics on separate layers for compositing. These layers can be turned on and off as needed. Both also allow you to apply effects to the contents of individual layers.

In Flash, composites do not affect the video content directly; they affect only the appearance of the video during playback in Flash Player. In contrast, when you composite with imported video in After

Effects, the video file you

export actually incorporates the composited graphics and effects.

Because all drawing and painting in After Effects is done on layers separate from any imported video, it is always nondestructive. Flash has both destructive and nondestructive drawing modes.

Exporting After Effects content for use in Flash

You can export After Effects content for use in Flash. You can export a SWF file that can be played immediately in Flash Player or used as part of another rich media project. When you export content from After

Effects in SWF format,

some of the content may be flattened and rasterized in the SWF file.

To edit your After Effects content further in Flash, export a composition as an XFL file. An XFL file is a type of Flash file that stores the same information as a FLA file, but in XML format. When you export a composition from

Effects as XFL for use in Flash, some of the layers and keyframes that you created in After Effects are preserved

After in the Flash version. When you import the XFL file in Flash, it unpacks the XFL file and adds the assets from the file to your FLA file according to the instructions in the XFL file.

The following video tutorials provide detailed information about exporting XFL files from After Effects:

• Importing and exporting XFL files between Flash and After Effects (Adobe.com)

• Exporting XFL Format from After Effects to Flash (Tom Green, Layers Magazine)

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Importing Flash SWF files into After Effects

Flash has a unique set of vector art tools that make it useful for a variety of drawing tasks not possible in After Effects or Adobe® Illustrator®. You can import SWF files into After as video with additional creative effects. Interactive content and scripted animation are not retained. Animation defined by keyframes is retained.

Each SWF file imported into After Effects is flattened into a single continuously rasterized layer, with its alpha channel preserved. Continuous rasterization means that graphics stay sharp as they are scaled up. This import method allows you to use the root layer or object of your SWF files as a smoothly rendered element in After capabilities of each tool to work together.

Effects to composite them with other video or render them

Effects, allowing the best

More Help topics

“Rendering and exporting for Flash Professional and Flash Player” on page 698

Working with Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects

Adobe Premiere Pro is designed to capture, import, and edit movies. After Effects is designed to create motion graphics, apply visual effects, composite visual elements, perform color correction, and perform other post-production tasks for movies.

You can easily exchange projects, compositions, sequences, tracks, and layers between After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro:

• You can import an Adobe Premiere Pro project into After Effects. (See “Import an Adobe Premiere Pro project”

on page 91.)

• You can export an After Effects project as an Adobe Premiere Pro project. (See “Export an After Effects project as

an Adobe Premiere Pro project” on page 719.)

• You can copy and paste layers and tracks between After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro. (See “Copy between After

Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro” on page 92.)

If you have Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium or Master Collection, you can also do the following:

• Start Adobe Premiere Pro from within After Effects and capture footage for use in After Effects. (See “Use Adobe

Premiere Pro for capture (Production Premium and Master Collection only)” on page 92.)

• Use Adobe Dynamic Link to work with After Effects compositions in Adobe Premiere Pro without first rendering

them. A dynamically linked composition appears as a clip in Adobe Premiere Pro.

• Use Adobe Dynamic Link to work with Adobe Premiere Pro sequences in After Effects without first rendering

them. A dynamically linked sequence appears as a footage item in After Effects.

• Start After Effects from within Premiere Pro and create a new composition with settings that match the settings of

your Premiere Pro project.

• Select a set of clips in Adobe Premiere Pro and convert them to a composition in After Effects.

For information on using Dynamic Link with After Effects and Premiere Pro, see “Dynamic Link and After Effects” on page 27 and the relevant sections of Adobe Premiere Pro Help.

For a video tutorial about working with After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro using Dynamic Link, go to the Adobe

website.

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Working with Adobe Encore and After Effects

You can use After Effects to quickly create buttons and button layers for use in Adobe Encore. Adobe Encore uses a naming standard to define a button and the role of individual layers as subpicture highlights and video thumbnails. When you select a group of layers in After Effects to use as an Adobe Encore button, After Effects precomposes the layers and names the precomposition according to the naming standards for buttons.

Highlight layer names receive the prefix (=1), (=2), or (=3), and video thumbnail names receive the prefix (%).

After Effects includes template projects that include entire DVD menus for you to use as a basis for your own DVD

menus. To use Adobe Bridge to browse and import these template projects, choose File > Browse Template Projects.

“Template projects and example projects” on page 53.)

(See

For information on using Dynamic Link with After Effects and Encore, see “Dynamic Link and After Effects” on page 27.

For video tutorials about using After Effects with Encore, go to the Adobe website:

• Creating Encore menus with After Effects

• Using Dynamic Link

Paul Tuersley provides a script on the After Effects script website for importing subtitles into After Effects and

controlling their formatting.

More Help topics

“Web links, chapter links, cue points, and markers” on page 611

Create a button for Adobe Encore

1 In the Timeline panel, select the layers for use in the button.

2 Choose Layer > Adobe Encore > Create Button.

3 Enter a name for the button.

4 Use the menus to assign up to three highlight layers and one video thumbnail layer, and then click OK.

A new composition is created with the button name. In keeping with the Adobe Encore naming standards, the prefix (+) is added to the name of the composition to indicate that it is a button.

Important: If you rename the button, be sure to retain the (+) prefix. The prefix ensures that Adobe Encore recognizes the file as a button.

Assign a subpicture highlight and video thumbnail to a layer

1 Select the layer.

2 Choose Layer > Adobe Encore > Assign To Subpicture [number] or Assign To Video Thumbnail.

Export a button for use in Adobe Encore

1 Open the composition that represents the button, and move the current-time indicator to the desired frame.

2 Choose Composition > Save Frame As > Photoshop Layers.

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Edit audio in Adobe Soundbooth

While working in After Effects, you may want to use the more comprehensive audio-editing capabilities of Adobe Soundbooth to fine-tune your audio. You can use the Edit In Adobe Soundbooth command to start Soundbooth from within After Effects.

If you edit an audio-only file (for example, a WAV file) in Soundbooth, you change the original file. If you edit a layer that contains both audio and video (for example, an AVI file), you edit a copy of the source audio file.

1 Select the layer that contains the audio that you want to edit. The item must be of a type that is editable in

Soundbooth.

2 Choose Edit > Edit In Adobe Soundbooth to open the clip in Edit view in Soundbooth.

3 Edit the file, and then do one of the following:

• If you’re editing an audio-only layer, choose File > Save to apply your edits to the original audio file, or choose File

> Save As to apply your edits to a copy of the audio file. If you choose File > Save As, you need to re-import the copy of the file into After Effects.

• If you’re editing a layer that contains both audio and video, choose File > Save As. After you save the file, import it

into After Effects, add it to the composition, and mute the original audio in the audio-video clip by deselecting the Audio switch in the Timeline panel.

Note: Any effects applied to audio in After Effects aren’t included in the copy that is sent to Soundbooth.

Edit in Adobe Audition (CS5.5 and later)

While working in After Effects, you can use the more comprehensive audio-editing capabilities of Adobe Audition to fine-tune your audio. You can use the Edit in Adobe Audition command to start Adobe Audition from within After Effects.

If you edit an audio-only file (for example, a WAV file) in Adobe Audition, you change the original file. If you edit a layer that contains both audio and video (for example, an AVI file), you edit a copy of the source audio file.

1 Select the layer that contains the audio that you want to edit. The item must be of a type that is editable in Adobe

Audition.

2 Choose Edit > Edit In Adobe Audition to open the clip in Edit view in Adobe Audition.

3 Edit the file, and then do one of the following:

• If you’re editing an audio-only layer, choose File > Save to apply your edits to the original audio file. You can

also choose file > Save As to apply your edits to a copy of the audio file. If you choose File > Save As, import the copy of the file into After Effects.

• If you’re editing a layer that contains both audio and video, choose File > Save As. After you save the file, import

it into After Effects. Then, add it to the composition, and mute the original audio in the audio-video clip by deselecting the Audio switch in the Timeline panel.

Note: Any effects applied to audio in After Effects aren’t included in the copy that is sent to Adobe Audition.

Tutorials and resources about using Adobe Audition to modify audio from After Effects can be found on this post from

the After Effects Region of Interest blog.

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Dynamic Link and After Effects

Dynamic Link features of After Effects are available only with Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium edition and Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection edition.

More Help topics

“Working with Adobe Encore and After Effects” on page 25

“Working with Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects” on page 24

“Importing from After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro” on page 90

About Dynamic Link (Production Premium or Master Collection only)

In the past, sharing media assets among post-production applications has required you to render and export your work from one application before importing it into another. This workflow was inefficient and time-consuming. If you wanted to change the original asset, you rendered and exported the asset again. Multiple rendered and exported versions of an asset consume disk space, and they can lead to file-management challenges.

Dynamic Link, a feature of Adobe

Creative Suite

Production Premium and Master Collection, offers an alternative to this workflow. You can create dynamic links between

After Effects

, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Encore. Creating a dynamic link is as simple as importing any other type of asset. Dynamically linked assets appear with unique icons and label colors to help you identify them. Dynamic links are saved in projects generated by these applications.

If you purchase

Premiere Pro

as a standalone product (which includes Adobe Media Encoder and

Adobe Encore

), Dynamic Link works between

Premiere Pro

, Adobe Media Encoder and Encore.

Changes you make in

After Effects

to a dynamically linked composition appear immediately in the linked clips in

Adobe Premiere Pro

or Encore. Changes you make to dynamically linked sequences in Adobe

Premiere Pro

appear immediately in

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After Effects

and Encore. You don’t have to render or save changes first.

Online resources about Dynamic Link

For a video tutorial introducing Dynamic Link, see the Adobe website.

John Dickinson provides a video tutorial on the Motionworks website that shows how to use Dynamic Link between

After Effects

and

Premiere Pro

and between After Effects and Encore.

Tim Kolb provides a video tutorial on the Adobe website that demonstrates the creation of an interactive DVD menu with

Premiere Pro

and Encore, using Dynamic Link.

Andrew Devis explains how to use Dynamic Link from a

Premiere Pro

user’s perspective in this video on the Creative Cow website.

Learn more about

Premiere Pro

workflow for Dynamic Link in this video by Jason Levine.

Linking to and from Adobe Premiere Pro

You can send selected clips from

Adobe Premiere Pro

into

After Effects

as a composition or nested composition, replacing the clips in Adobe

Premiere Pro

with a dynamically linked composition.

With Dynamic Link, you can also send sequences from

Adobe Premiere Pro

into Encore for authoring to DVD, Blu-ray Disc, or SWF files.

In addition to using Dynamic Link, you can share content among applications in any of the following ways:

• copying and pasting between

• After Effects

• and

• Adobe Premiere Pro

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Workflows, planning, and setup

• exporting

• After Effects

• projects to

• Adobe Premiere Pro

• using the Capture In

• Adobe Premiere Pro

• command in After Effects

• importing

• Adobe Premiere Pro

• projects into

• After Effects

Linking to and from After Effects

When you dynamically link to an

After Effects

composition from Adobe

Premiere Pro

or Encore, it appears in the host application Project panel. You can use the dynamically linked composition as you would any other asset. When you insert a linked composition into the host application timeline, a linked clip appears in the Timeline panel. A linked clip is simply a reference to the linked composition in the Project panel.

After Effects

renders the linked composition on a frame-by-frame basis during playback in the host application.

There are two restrictions on the use of dynamically linked clips between

After Effects

and

Adobe Premiere Pro

. Both of these restrictions also apply in reverse: they remain true if you switch composition and sequence:

• If a sequence contains a composition, do not include that sequence, or any sequence in which the sequence is

nested, in any dynamic link from the project of the included composition.

• If a sequence contains a composition, do not include links from that composition, or any composition nested in

that composition, back to any sequence.

Adobe Premiere Pro

, you can do any of the following with a dynamically linked

After Effects

composition:

• preview it in the Source Monitor

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Workflows, planning, and setup

• set In and Out points for it

• add it to a sequence

• edit it with

• Adobe Premiere Pro

• tools

When you add a linked composition that contains both video and audio to a sequence,

Adobe Premiere Pro

inserts linked video and audio clips in the timeline. You can unlink the video from the audio to edit the clips separately.

In Encore, you can do any of the following with a dynamically linked

After Effects

composition:

• create a motion menu with it

• insert it into a timeline

• edit it with Encore tools

You can add a linked

After Effects

composition that contains both video and audio to an Encore timeline. Encore inserts separate video and audio clips in the timeline.

You can create

After Effects

compositions from Encore menus, even without Dynamic Link.

Linking to and from Encore

From Encore, you can do any of the following with dynamically linked clips:

• edit a sequence in

• Adobe Premiere Pro

• using the Edit Original command

• edit an

• After Effects

• composition using the Edit Original command

• update the markers in Encore to match the Encore chapter markers in a sequence in

• Adobe Premiere Pro

Color and Dynamic Link

After Effects works with the RGB (red, green, blue) color model. Adobe

Premiere Pro

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Workflows, planning, and setup

, however, works with the YUV color model. When you work with a dynamically linked composition,

Adobe Premiere Pro

either converts it to YUV or retains the RGB colors, depending on the output format.

Dynamically linked compositions are rendered in the color depth of the

After Effects

project (8, 16, or 32 bpc, depending on project settings). Set the

After Effects

project color depth to 32 bpc if you’re working with HDR (high dynamic range) assets.

Adobe Premiere Pro

, select a sequence. Then, choose Sequence > Sequence Settings. In the Video Previews pane, select Maximum Bit Depth and Maximum Render Quality to have

Adobe Premiere Pro

process at the highest possible quality. However, these options slow processing.

Saving and Dynamic Link

Save your After Effects project at least once before creating a dynamic link from Adobe

Premiere Pro

or Encore to a composition within it. After that, you do not have to save changes to the

After Effects

project to see the changes in a linked composition in

Adobe Premiere Pro

or Encore.

Using the

Save As

command to create a copy of an

After Effects

project does not change dynamic links made to the original project. Adobe

Premiere Pro

and Encore projects continue to use the original project, not the copy, as the sources for their linked compositions. You can, however, relink a dynamically linked clip to a composition in the copy at any time.

Note: In

Note: After Effects

Note: , you can choose File > Increment And Save. The newly saved open project continues to serve frames to any client

projects containing dynamically linked compositions from the open

Note: After Effects

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Workflows, planning, and setup

Note: project.

Create and link to After Effects compositions with Dynamic Link (Production Premium or Master Collection only)

You can create

After Effects

compositions, and dynamically link to them, from

Adobe Premiere Pro

or Encore. You can also dynamically link to existing

After Effects

compositions from Adobe Premiere Pro or Encore.

Create a composition from clips in Adobe Premiere Pro

You can replace selected clips in Adobe Premiere Pro with a dynamically linked

After Effects

composition based on those clips. The new composition inherits the sequence settings from

Adobe Premiere Pro

1 In a sequence, select the clips you want in the composition.

2 Right-click any of the selected clips.

3 Select Replace With

4 After Effects

5 Composition.

Create a dynamically linked composition from Adobe Premiere Pro or Encore

Creating a new dynamically linked composition from

Adobe Premiere Pro

or Encore launches

After Effects

then creates a project and composition with the dimensions, pixel aspect ratio, frame rate, and audio sample rate of the originating project. (If

After Effects

is already running, it creates a composition in the current project.) The new composition name is based on the

Adobe Premiere Pro

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Workflows, planning, and setup

or Encore project name, followed by Linked Comp [x].

1 In

2 Adobe Premiere Pro

3 or Adobe Encore, choose File > Adobe Dynamic Link > New

4 After Effects

5 Composition.

6 If the

7 After Effects

8 Save As

9 dialog box appears, enter a name and location for the

10 After Effects

11 project, and click Save.

When you create a dynamically linked After Effects composition, the composition duration is set to 30 seconds. To

change the duration, select the composition in

After Effects

, choose Composition > Composition Settings. Click the Basic tab, and specify a new value for Duration.

Link to an existing composition

For best results, match composition settings (such as dimensions, pixel aspect ratio, and frame rate) to the settings in the

Adobe Premiere Pro

or Encore project.

❖ Do one of the following:

• In

• Adobe Premiere Pro

• or Encore, choose File > Adobe Dynamic Link > Import

• After Effects

• Composition. Choose an

• After Effects

• project file (.aep), and then choose one or more compositions.

• In

• Adobe Premiere Pro

• or Encore, choose an After Effects project file and click Open. Then choose a composition in the displayed dialog

box and click OK.

• Drag one or more compositions from the

• After Effects

• Project panel to the

• Adobe Premiere Pro

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Workflows, planning, and setup

• Project panel or the Encore Project panel.

• Drag an

• After Effects

• project file into the Adobe

• Premiere Pro

• Project panel. If the

• After Effects

• project file contains multiple compositions, the Import Composition dialog box opens.

Note: You can link to a single

Note: After Effects

Note: composition multiple times in a single

Note: Adobe Premiere Pro

Note: project. In an Adobe Encore project, however, you can link to an

Note: After Effects

Note: composition only once.

If you create a dynamically linked composition from Encore, turn off subpicture highlight layers in

After Effects

, so that you can control their display in Encore.

Dynamically linked

After Effects

compositions

Modify a dynamically linked composition in After Effects (Production Premium or Master Collection only)

Use the Edit Original command in

Adobe Premiere Pro

or Encore to modify a linked

After Effects

composition. Once the composition is open in

After Effects

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Workflows, planning, and setup

, you can change the composition without having to use the Edit Original command again.

1 Select the

2 After Effects

3 composition in the Adobe

4 Premiere Pro

5 or Encore Project panel, or choose a linked clip in the Timeline, and choose Edit > Edit Original.

6 Change the composition in

7 After Effects

8 . Then, switch back to

9 Adobe Premiere Pro

10 or Encore to view your changes.

The changes made in

After Effects

appear in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Adobe Premiere Pro

stops using any preview files rendered for the clip before the changes.

Note: You can change the name of the composition in

Note: After Effects

Note: after creating a dynamic link to it from Adobe Premiere Pro. Adobe Premiere Pro does not update the linked

composition name in the Project panel. Adobe

Premiere Pro does retain the dynamic link, however.

Delete a dynamically linked composition or clip (Production Premium or Master Collection only)

You can delete a linked composition from an Encore project if the composition isn’t used in the project. You can delete a linked composition from an

Adobe Premiere Pro

project at any time, even if the composition is used in a project.

You can delete linked clips from the timeline of an

Adobe Premiere Pro

sequence or from an Encore menu or timeline at any time.

❖ In Adobe Premiere Pro or Encore, select the linked composition or clip and press the Delete key.

Create a linked sequence in Adobe Premiere Pro with Dynamic Link (Production Premium or Master Collection only)

Link to a new sequence

Creating an

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USING AFTER EFFECTS

Workflows, planning, and setup

Adobe Premiere Pro

sequence from

After Effects

launches Adobe Premiere Pro.

Adobe Premiere Pro

then creates a project and sequence with the dimensions, pixel aspect ratio, frame rate, and audio sample rate of the originating project. (If

Adobe Premiere Pro

is already running, it creates a sequence in the current project.)

❖ In

❖ After Effects

❖ , choose File > Adobe Dynamic Link > New

❖ Premiere Pro

❖ Sequence.

Link to an existing sequence

For best results, match sequence settings and project settings in

Adobe Premiere Pro

(such as dimensions, pixel aspect ratio, and frame rate) to those settings in the

After Effects

project.

Do one of the following:

• In

• After Effects

• , choose File > Adobe Dynamic Link > Import

• Premiere Pro

• Sequence. Choose an

• Adobe Premiere Pro

• project, and then choose one or more sequences.

• Drag one or more sequences from the

• Adobe Premiere Pro

• Project panel to the

• After Effects

• Project panel.

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Workflows, planning, and setup

Dynamic Link performance (Production Premium or Master Collection only)

A linked clip can refer to a complex source composition. Actions you perform on the complex source composition require additional processing time.

After Effects

takes time to apply the actions and make the final data available to

Adobe Premiere Pro

or Encore. In some cases, the additional processing time delays preview or playback.

To reduce playback delays, do one of the following:

• take the linked composition offline

• disable a linked clip to temporarily stop referencing a composition

• render the composition and replace the dynamically linked composition with the rendered file

If you commonly work with complex source compositions, try adding RAM or a faster processor.

Note: A linked

Note: After Effects

Note: composition will not support Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing. See “Improve performance

by optimizing memory, cache, and multiprocessing settings” on page 628.

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Chapter 3: User interface

Workspaces, panels, and viewers

Workspaces and panels

Adobe video and audio applications provide a consistent, customizable user interface. Although each application has its own set of panels, you move and group panels in the same way in each application.

The main window of a program is the application window. Panels are organized in this window in an arrangement called a workspace.

Each application includes several predefined workspaces that optimize the layout of panels for specific tasks. You can also create and customize your own workspaces by arranging panels in the layout that best suits your working style for specific tasks.

You can drag panels to new locations, move panels into or out of a group, place panels alongside each other, and undock a panel so that it floats in a new window above the application window. As you rearrange panels, the other panels resize automatically to fit the window.

Example workspace A. Application window B. Grouped panels C. Individual panel

To increase the available screen space, use multiple monitors. When you work with multiple monitors, the application window appears on the main monitor, and you place floating windows on the second monitor. Monitor configurations are stored in the workspace.

Workspaces are stored in XML files in the preferences folder. With some caveats regarding monitor size and layout, these workspaces can be moved to another computer and used there.

• (Windows) [drive]:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\After Effects\10.5\ModifiedWorkspaces

• (Mac OS) [drive]/Users/[user_name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects/10.5/ModifiedWorkspaces

Chris and Trish Meyer provide a video overview of the After Effects user interface on the Focal Press website.

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User interface

See this video tutorial about workspaces by Andrew Devis on the Creative Cow website for more details.

More Help topics

“Panels, viewers, workspaces, and windows (keyboard shortcuts)” on page 721

Online resources about panels and workspaces

For a video about panels and workspaces, go to the Adobe website: www.adobe.com/go/vid0249.

Chris and Trish Meyer provide a video overview of the After Effects user interface on the Focal Press website.

Choose a workspace

• Choose Window > Workspace, and select the desired workspace.

• Choose a workspace from the Workspace menu in the Tools panel.

• If the workspace has a keyboard shortcut assigned, press Shift+F10, Shift+F11, or Shift+F12.

To assign a keyboard shortcut to the current workspace, choose Window > Assign Shortcut To [Workspace Name]

Workspace.

Save, reset, or delete workspaces

Save a custom workspace

As you customize a workspace, the application tracks your changes, storing the most recent layout. To store a specific layout more permanently, save a custom workspace. Saved custom workspaces appear in the Workspace menu, where you can return to and reset them.

❖ Arrange the frames and panels as desired, and then choose Window > Workspace > New Workspace. Type a name

for the workspace, and click

OK.

Note: (After Effects,

Note: Premiere Pro

Note: , Encore) If a project saved with a custom workspace is opened on another system, the application looks for a

workspace with a matching name. If it can’t find a match (or the monitor configuration doesn’t match), it uses the current local workspace.

Reset a workspace

Reset the current workspace to return to its original, saved layout of panels.

❖ Choose Window > Workspace > Reset workspace name.

Delete a workspace

1 Choose Window > Workspace >

1 Delete Workspace

1 .

2 Choose the workspace you want to delete, and then click OK.

Note: You cannot delete the currently active workspace.

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User interface

Dock, group, or float panels

You can dock panels together, move them into or out of groups, and undock them so they float above the application window. As you drag a panel, drop zones—areas onto which you can move the panel—become highlighted. The drop zone you choose determines where the panel is inserted, and whether it docks or groups with other panels.

Docking zones

Docking zones exist along the edges of a panel, group, or window. Docking a panel places it adjacent to the existing group, resizing all groups to accommodate the new panel.

Dragging panel (A) onto docking zone (B) to dock it (C)

Grouping zones

Grouping zones exist in the middle of a panel or group, and along the tab area of panels. Dropping a panel on a grouping zone stacks it with other panels.

Dragging panel (A) onto grouping zone (B) to group it with existing panels (C)

Dock or group panels

1 If the panel you want to dock or group is not visible, choose it from the Window menu.

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2 Do one of the following:

•

To move an individual panel, drag the gripper area in the upper-left corner of a panel’s tab onto the desired drop zone.

Drag panel gripper to move one panel

• To move an entire group, drag the group gripper in the upper-right corner onto the desired drop zone.

Drag group gripper to move entire group

The application docks or groups the panel, according to the type of drop zone.

Undock a panel in a floating window

When you undock a panel in a floating window, you can add panels to the window and modify it similarly to the application window. You can use floating windows to use a secondary monitor, or to create workspaces like the workspaces in earlier versions of Adobe applications.

❖ Select the panel you want to undock (if it’s not visible, choose it from the Window menu), and then do one of the

following:

• Choose Undock Panel or Undock Frame from the panel menu. Undock Frame undocks the panel group.

• Hold down Ctrl (Windows®) or Command (Mac OS®), and drag the panel or group from its current location.

When you release the mouse button, the panel or group appears in a new floating window.

• Drag the panel or group outside the application window. (If the application window is maximized, drag the

panel to the Windows taskbar.)

Resize panel groups

To quickly maximize a panel beneath the pointer, press the ` (accent grave) key. (The accent grave is the unshifted

character under the tilde, ~, on standard US keyboards.) Press the key again to return the panel to its original size.

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When you drag the divider between panel groups, all groups that share the divider are resized.

1 Do either of the following:

• To resize either horizontally or vertically, position the pointer between two panel groups. The pointer becomes a

double arrow

• To resize in both directions at once, position the pointer at the intersection between three or more panel groups.

The pointer becomes a four-way arrow

2 Hold down the mouse button, and drag to resize the panel groups.

Dragging divider between panel groups to resize them horizontally A. Original group with resize pointer B. Resized groups

Open, close, and show panels and windows

Even if a panel is open, it may be out of sight, beneath other panels. Choosing a panel from the Window menu opens it and brings it to the front of its group.

When you close a panel group in the application window, the other groups resize to use the newly available space. When you close a floating window, the panels within it close, too.

• To open or close a panel, choose the panel from the Window menu.

• To close a panel or window, click its Close button .

• To open or close a panel, use its keyboard shortcut.

• If a frame contains multiple panels, place the pointer over a tab and roll the mouse scroll wheel forward or backward

to change which panel is active.

• If a frame contains more grouped panels than can be shown at once, drag the scroll bar that appears above the tabs.

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Scroll bar for showing tabs of other panels

More Help topics

“Panels, viewers, workspaces, and windows (keyboard shortcuts)” on page 721

Viewers

A viewer is a panel that can contain multiple compositions, layers, or footage items, or multiple views of one such item. The Composition, Layer, Footage, Flowchart, and Effect Controls panels are viewers.

Locking a viewer prevents the currently displayed item from being replaced when you open or select a new item. Instead, when a viewer is locked and a new item is opened or selected, After Effects creates a new viewer panel for that item. If you select the item from the viewer menu of a locked viewer, a new viewer isn't created; the existing viewer is used.

Instead of housing multiple items in a single viewer and using the viewer menu to switch between them, you can choose to open a separate viewer for each open composition, layer, or footage item. When you have multiple viewers open, you can arrange them by docking or grouping them, like any other panels.

For example, you can create one Composition viewer each for different 3D views (Top, Bottom, Back, Front, custom views) so that you can maximize each of the views with the ` (accent grave) keyboard shortcut, which maximizes or restores the panel under the pointer.

To create a custom workspace with multiple viewers, ensure that all viewers are unlocked before you save the workspace.

Locked viewers are associated with a specific project context and are therefore not saved in the preferences file.

• To create a new viewer, choose New from the viewer menu. (See “Open panel, viewer, and context menus” on

page 45.)

• To lock or unlock a viewer, choose Locked from the viewer menu, or click the Toggle Viewer Lock button.

• To lock the current viewer, split the current frame, and create a new viewer of the same type in the new frame, press

Ctrl+Alt+Shift+N (Windows) or Command+Option+Shift+N (Mac OS).

• To cycle forward or backward through the items in the viewer menu list for the active viewer, press Shift+period (.)

or Shift+comma (,).

More Help topics

“Choose a viewer to always preview” on page 183

“Panels, viewers, workspaces, and windows (keyboard shortcuts)” on page 721

“Previews (keyboard shortcuts)” on page 725

“Views (keyboard shortcuts)” on page 726

“About precomposing and nesting” on page 63

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Edit this, look at that (ETLAT) and locked Composition viewers

If a Composition viewer is locked, the Timeline panel for another composition is active, and the Composition viewer for the active composition is not shown, then most commands that affect views and previews operate on the composition for which the viewer is shown. For example, pressing the spacebar can start a standard preview for the composition visible in a locked Composition viewer rather than the composition associated with the active Timeline panel.

This behavior facilitates a working setup sometimes referred to as edit-this-look-at-that (ETLAT). The most common scenario in which this behavior is useful is the scenario in which you make a change in the Timeline panel for a nested (upstream) composition and want to preview the result of the change in a containing (downstream) composition.

Note: ETLAT behavior works for keyboard shortcuts for zooming, fitting, previewing, taking and viewing snapshots, showing channels, showing and hiding grids and guides, and showing the current frame on a video preview device.

To prevent this behavior, unlock the Composition viewer or show the Composition viewer for the composition that you want to view or preview.

See this video on the Video2Brain website to learn about the improvements in ETLAT (edit-this-look-at-that) workflow in After Effects CS5.5 and later.

General user interface items

Activate a tool

The Tools panel can be displayed as a toolbar across the top of the application window or as a normal, dockable panel.

Note: Controls related to some tools appear only when the tool is selected in the Tools panel.

• Click the button for the tool. If the button has a small triangle at its lower-right corner, hold down the mouse button

to view the hidden tools. Then, click the tool you want to activate.

• Press the keyboard shortcut for the tool. (Placing the pointer over a tool button displays a tool tip with the name

and keyboard shortcut for the tool.)

• To cycle through hidden tools within a tool category, repeatedly press the keyboard shortcut for the tool category.

(For example, press G repeatedly to cycle through the pen tools.)

• To momentarily activate a tool, hold down the key for the desired tool; release the key to return to the previously

active tool. (This technique does not work with all tools.)

• To momentarily activate the Hand tool, hold down the spacebar, the H key, or the middle mouse button. (The

middle mouse button does not activate the Hand tool under a few circumstances, including when the Unified Camera tool is active.)

To pan around in the Composition, Layer, or Footage panel, drag with the Hand tool. Hold Shift, too, to pan faster.

To show or hide panels most relevant to the active tool, click the panel button if available. For example, clicking this button when a paint tool is active opens or closes the Paint and Brushes panels. Select the Auto-Open Panels option in the Tools panel to automatically open the relevant panels when certain tools are activated.

More Help topics

“Activating tools (keyboard shortcuts)” on page 723

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Open panel, viewer, and context menus

Panel menus provide commands relative to the active panel or frame. Viewer menus provide lists of compositions, layers, or footage items that can be shown in the viewer, as well as commands for closing items and locking the viewer. Context menus provide commands relative to the item that is context-clicked. Many items in the After Effects user interface have associated context menus. Using context menus can make your work faster and easier.

• To open a panel menu, click the button in the upper-right corner of the panel.

• To open a viewer menu, click the name of the active composition, layer, or footage item in the viewer tab.

• To open a context menu, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS). This action is sometimes referred to as

context-clicking.

Columns

The Project, Timeline, and Render Queue panels contain columns.

• To show or hide columns, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) a column heading (or choose Columns

from the panel menu), and select the columns that you want to show or hide. A check mark indicates that the column is shown.

Note: In general, the search and filter functions in the Project and Timeline panels only operate on the content of columns that are shown.

• To reorder columns, select a column name and drag it to a new location.

• To resize columns, drag the bar next to a column name. Some columns cannot be resized.

• In After Effects CS5.5 and later, sort footage items in the Project panel, click the column heading. Click once more

to sort them in reverse order.

More Help topics

“Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels” on page 45

Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels

The Project, Timeline, and Effects & Presets panels each contain search fields that you can use to filter items in the panel.

• To place the insertion point in a search field, click in the search field.

• To place the insertion point in the search field for the active panel, choose File > Find or press Ctrl+F (Windows)

or Command+F (Mac OS).

• To clear the search field, click the button that appears to the right of the text in the search field.

When you type in the search field, the list of items in the panel is filtered, showing some items and hiding others. Only items with entries that match the search query that you’ve typed are shown. The folders, layers, categories, or property groups that contain the matched items are also shown, to provide context.

In general, only text in columns that are shown is searched for this filtering operation. For example, you may need to show the Comments column to search and filter by the contents of comments. (See

“Columns” on page 45.)

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If one or more layers are selected in a composition, the filtering operation in the Timeline panel only affects selected layers. In this case, unselected layers are not filtered out (hidden) if they don’t match the search query. However, if no layers are selected in the composition, the filtering operation applies to all layers in the composition. This behavior matches that for showing and hiding of layer properties by pressing their property shortcut keys. (See

properties in the Timeline panel” on page 140.)

Clearing the search field and ending the search causes expanded folders and property groups to collapse (close).

Therefore, it’s easier to work with the items that are found by the filter operation if you operate on them before you clear the search field and end the search.

If the text that you type in the search field in the Project or Timeline panel contains spaces, the spaces are treated as and-based operators. For example, typing dark solid matches footage items or layers named Dark Red Solid and Dark Gray Solid. In the Effects & Presets panel, spaces are treated as space characters in the search field. For example, typing change color matches the Change Color effect, but not the Change To Color effect.

Project, Timeline, and Effects & Presets panels accept or-based searching in After Effects CS5.5 and later. In an orbased search, a comma denotes an or, with and-based operators taking precedence over or-based ones. For example, sometimes the name of the property that determines the amount for a blur effect is Amount, sometimes it is Blurriness, and sometimes it is Blur Radius. If you search for Amount, Blurriness, Radius, then you will see the equivalent values for all of your blur effects.

Project, Timeline, and Effects and Presets panels accept mru-based (most recently used) searching in After Effects CS5.5 and later. When you type in a search field, recent search strings that match your input appear.

“Show or hide

This search method also allows a way to save items you use often via a menu that opens when you click the search icon in the search field. The search menu consists of two lists, separated by a divider. The top list contains the six most recent searches, with the most recent one at the top. The bottom list contains saved search items. As you type, the top list filters to show matching terms.

• To save a search item, Shift-click it in the top list of the search menu. Up to ten items may be saved.

• To delete a saved search item from either list, hover the mouse over the the item to highlight it, and then press

Delete or Backspace.

See this video on the Video2Brain website to learn about the new features for searching and filtering in panels in After Effects CS5.5.

Examples of searches in the Project panel

• To show only footage items for which the name or comment contains a specific string, start typing the string.

• To show only footage items for which the source file is missing, type the entire word missing. (This search works

whether or not the File Path column is shown, which is an exception to the general rule that only shown columns are searched.)

• To show only unused footage items, type the entire word unused.

• To show only used footage items, type the entire word used.

• To show only Cineon footage items, type Cineon with the Type column shown.

Examples of searches in the Timeline panel

• To show only layers and properties for which the name or comment contains a specific string, type the string. For

example, type starch to show pins created by the Puppet Starch tool.

• To show only properties that have an expression that uses a specific method, type the method name.

• To show only layers with a specific label, type the label name. (See “Color labels for layers, compositions, and

footage items” on page 136.)

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Click the swatch for a label to see the context menu that lists the label names. Alternatively, drag the right edge of the Label column heading to expand the column to read the label names.

More Help topics

“Effects & Presets panel” on page 392

“Organize, view, manage, and trim footage items” on page 84

“Select layers” on page 122

Scroll or zoom with the mouse wheel

You can use the mouse wheel to zoom in the Timeline, Composition, Layer, and Footage panels. You can use the mouse wheel to scroll in the Timeline, Project, Render Queue, Flowchart, Effect Controls, Metadata, and Effects & Presets panels.

• To zoom into the center of the panel, or into the feature region when tracking, roll the mouse wheel forward.

• To zoom out of the center of the panel, or out of the feature region when tracking, roll the mouse wheel backward.

• To zoom into the area under the pointer, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) as you roll the mouse

wheel forward. In the Timeline, Footage, and Layer panels, this action zooms in time when the pointer is over the time navigator or time ruler.

• To zoom out of the area under the pointer, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) as you roll the mouse

wheel backward. In the Timeline, Footage, and Layer panels, this action zooms in time when the pointer is over the time navigator or time ruler.

• To scroll vertically, roll the mouse wheel forward or backward.

• To scroll horizontally, hold down Shift as you roll the mouse wheel backward or forward. In the Timeline, Footage,

and Layer panels, Shift-rolling backward moves forward in time and vice versa when the pointer is over the time navigator or time ruler.

You can scroll or zoom with the mouse wheel in a panel even if it is not currently active, as long as the pointer is over it.

More Help topics

“Zoom an image for preview” on page 189

“Zoom in or out in time for a composition” on page 183

“Move or adjust a camera or working 3D view with the Camera tools” on page 171

Undo changes

You can undo only those actions that alter the project data. For example, you can undo a change to a property value, but you cannot undo the scrolling of a panel or the activation of a tool.

You can sequentially undo as many as 99 of the most recent changes made to the project, depending on the Levels Of Undo setting (Edit > Preferences > General (Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > General (Mac OS)). The default is 32.

To avoid wasting time undoing accidental modifications, lock a layer when you want to see it but do not want to

modify it.

• To undo the most recent change, choose Edit > Undo [action].

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• To undo a change and all changes after it, choose Edit > History, and select the first change that you want to undo.

• To revert to the last saved version of the project, choose File > Revert. All changes made and footage items imported

since you last saved are lost. You cannot undo this action.

More Help topics

“Lock or unlock a layer” on page 135

After Effects user interface tips

• Use ClearType text anti-aliasing on Windows. ClearType makes the outlines of system text, such as menus and

dialog boxes, easier to read. See Windows Help for information on how to enable ClearType text anti-aliasing.

• To show tool tips, select the Show Tool Tips preference (Edit > Preferences > General (Windows) or After Effects

> Preferences > General (Mac OS)).

• Use a workspace that contains the Info panel, and leave that panel in front of other panels in its panel group

whenever possible. The Info panel shows messages about what After Effects is doing, information about items under the pointer, and much more.

• In Windows, disable the Aero compositing mode. Hardware acceleration of panels and OpenGL features perform

better in After Effects when Windows is operating in Basic mode. For information, see the

• Use context menus.

• Use keyboard shortcuts.

Microsoft website.

More Help topics

“Open panel, viewer, and context menus” on page 45

“Keyboard shortcuts” on page 720

Preferences

• To open the Preferences dialog box, choose Edit > Preferences > [category name] (Windows) or After Effects >

Preferences > [category name] (Mac OS).

• To open the Preferences dialog box to the General category, press Ctrl+Alt+; (semicolon) (Windows) or

Command+Option+; (Mac OS).

• To restore default preference settings, hold Ctrl+Alt+Shift (Windows) or Command+Option+Shift (Mac OS)

while the application is starting. To also restore default keyboard shortcuts, Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) the OK button.

Preferences, including keyboard shortcuts and workspaces, are stored in files in the following locations:

• (Mac OS) <drive>/Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects/10.0

• (Windows) <drive>\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\After Effects\10.0

Note: You shouldn’t need to modify the files in this directory manually. In general, modify preferences in the Preferences dialog box. For information on modifying keyboard shortcuts, see information on managing workspaces, see “Workspaces and panels” on page 38.

“Modify keyboard shortcuts” on page 720. For

This section provides links to pages in which the various preferences that aren’t self-explanatory are explained in context.

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General preferences

• Levels Of Undo: “Undo changes” on page 47

• Path Point Size: Specifies size of Bezier direction handles and vertices for masks and shapes, direction handles for

motion paths, and other similar controls.

• Show Tool Tips: “After Effects user interface tips” on page 48

• Create Layers At Composition Start Time: “Layers overview” on page 117

• Switches Affect Nested Comps: “About precomposing and nesting” on page 63

• Default Spatial Interpolation To Linear: “About spatial and temporal keyframe interpolation” on page 215

• Preserve Constant Vertex Count When Editing Masks: “Designate the first vertex for a Bezier path” on page 320

• Synchronize Time Of All Related Items: “Preferences and composition settings that affect nested compositions” on

page 64

• Expression Pick Whip Writes Compact English: “Edit an expression with the pick whip” on page 640

• Create Split Layers Above Original Layer: “Split a layer” on page 131

• Allow Scripts To Write Files And Access Network: “Loading and running scripts” on page 633

• Enable JavaScript Debugger: After Effects scripting guide at the Adobe After Effects Developer Center on the

Adobe website

• Use System Color Picker: “Choose a color picker” on page 266

• Create New Layers At Best Quality: “Layer image quality and subpixel positioning” on page 137

• Use System Shortcut Keys (Mac OS only): “Keyboard shortcuts” on page 720

Previews preferences

• Adaptive Resolution Limit: “Preview modes and Fast Previews preferences” on page 184

• Enable OpenGL and Accelerate Effects Using OpenGL (When Possible): “Render with OpenGL” on page 696

• Enable Adaptive Resolution With OpenGL: “Preview modes and Fast Previews preferences” on page 184

• Viewer Quality (Zoom Quality and Color Management Quality): “Viewer Quality preferences” on page 185

• Audio Preview Duration: “Preview video and audio” on page 178

Display preferences

• Motion Path: “Motion paths” on page 207

• Disable Thumbnails In Project Panel: “Composition thumbnail images” on page 63

• Show Rendering Progress In Info Panel And Flowchart: “Preview video and audio” on page 178

• Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, And Footage Panels: “Improve performance” on page 627

Import preferences

• Still Footage: “Create layers from footage items or change layer source” on page 118

• Sequence Footage: “Import a single still image or a still-image sequence” on page 108

• Interpret Unlabeled Alpha As: “Alpha channel interpretation: premultiplied or straight” on page 77

• Drag Import Multiple Items As: “Import footage items by dragging” on page 75

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• Adobe After Effects CS5.5 and later contains a dropdown menu to choose drop-frame or non-drop-frame timecode

for Indeterminate Media NTSC, which applies to imports like still image sequences in which timecode values are not present or are unknown.

Output preferences

• Segment Sequences At, Segment Movie Files At, and Audio Block Duration: “Segment settings” on page 713

• Use Default File Name And Folder: “Name output files automatically” on page 689

Grids & Guides preferences

• “Safe zones, grids, guides, and rulers” on page 192

Labels preferences

• “Color labels for layers, compositions, and footage items” on page 136

Media & Disk Cache preferences

• Enable Disk Cache and Maximum Disk Cache Size: “Caches: RAM cache, disk cache, and media cache” on page 625

• Conformed Media Cache and Clean Database & Cache: “Media cache” on page 626

• Create Layer Markers From Footage XMP Metadata and Write XMP IDs To Files On Import: “XMP metadata in

After Effects” on page 614

Video Preview preferences

• “Preview on an external video monitor” on page 187

Appearance preferences

• Use Label Color For Layer Handles And Paths and Use Label Color For Related Tabs: “Color labels for layers,

compositions, and footage items” on page 136

• Cycle Mask Colors: “Cycle through colors for mask paths” on page 369

• Use Gradients: Use gradients in user interface.

• Brightness: Brightens or darkens user interface (UI) colors.

Auto-Save preferences

• “Save and back up projects in After Effects CS5” on page 52

Memory & Multiprocessing preferences

• “Memory & Multiprocessing preferences” on page 620

Audio Hardware and Audio Output Mapping preferences

• “Preview video and audio” on page 178

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Chapter 4: Projects and compositions

Projects

About projects

An After Effects project is a single file that stores compositions and references to all of the source files used by footage items in that project. Compositions are collections of layers. Many layers use footage items (such as movies or still images) as a source, though some layers—such as shape layers and text layers—contain graphics that you create within After Effects.

A project file has the filename extension .aep or .aepx. A project file with the .aep filename extension is a binary project file. A project file with the .aepx filename extension is a text-based XML project file.

The name of the current project appears at the top of the application window.

A template project file has the filename extension .aet. (See “Template projects and example projects” on page 53.)

More Help topics

“Automation” on page 635

XML project files

Text-based XML project files contain some project information as hexadecimal-encoded binary data, but much of the information is exposed as human-readable text in and edit some details of the project without opening the project in After Effects. You can even write scripts that modify project information in XML project files as part of an automated workflow.

For a video tutorial about the XML project file format, go to the Adobe website.

Elements of a project that you can modify in an XML project file:

• Marker attributes, including comments, chapter point parameters, and cue point parameters

• File paths of source footage items, including proxies

• Composition, footage item, layer, and folder names and comments

Note: Footage item names are exposed in string elements in XML project files only if the names have been customized. Footage item names derived automatically from the names of source files and solid color names are not exposed in

Some strings, such as workspace and view names, are exposed as human-readable strings, but modifications made to these strings are not respected when After Effects opens the project file.

Important: Do not use the XML project file format as your primary file format. The primary project file format for After Effects is the binary project file (.aep) format. Use the XML project file format to save a copy of a project and as an intermediate format for automation workflows.

string elements

string elements. You can open an XML project file in a text editor

To save an XML project (.aepx) file as a binary project (.aep) file, choose File > Save As and enter a file name ending

with .aep, without the x. (See “Save and back up projects in After Effects CS5” on page 52.)

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Project links embedded in QuickTime, Video for Windows, FLV, and F4V files

When you render a movie and export it to a container format, you can embed a link to the After Effects project in the container file. Container formats include FLV, F4V, QuickTime (MOV), and Video for Windows (AVI).

To import the project, import the container file, and choose Project from the Import As menu in the Import File dialog box. If the container file contains a link to a project that has been moved, you can browse to locate the project.

Note: After Effects CS5 can open projects using project links included in movies rendered and exported by After Effects CS4 and later.

Create and open projects

Only one project can be open at a time. If you create or open another project file while a project is open, After Effects prompts you to save changes in the open project, and then closes it. After you create a project, you can import footage into the project.

Note: After Effects CS5 can open and import After Effects projects created by After Effects 6.0 and later.

• To create a project, choose File > New > New Project.

• To open a project, choose File > Open Project, locate the project, and then click Open.

Jeff Almasol provides a script on his redefinery website that creates and saves a new project for each selected composition in the current project.

Lloyd Alvarez provides a script on his After Effects Scripts website that gives you the ability to specify a project or template project that After Effects opens each time that After Effects starts.

More Help topics

“Import an After Effects project” on page 90

Save and back up projects

Save and back up projects in After Effects CS5

• To save a project, choose File > Save.

• To save a copy of the project with a new automatically generated name, choose File > Increment And Save, or press

Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S (Windows) or Command+Option+Shift+S (Mac OS).

A copy of the current project is saved in the same folder as the original project. The name of the copy is the name of the original followed by a number. If the name of the original ends with a number, that number is increased by 1.

• To save the project with a different name or to a different location, choose File > Save As.

The open project takes the new name and location; the original file remains unchanged.

• To save the project as a copy in the XML project file format, choose File > Save A Copy As XML. (See “About

projects” on page 51.)

• To save a copy of the project with a different name or to a different location, choose File > Save A Copy.

The open project retains its original name and location, and a copy is created with the new settings but is not opened.

• To automatically save copies of projects at regular intervals, choose Edit > Preferences > Auto-Save (Windows) or

After Effects > Preferences > Auto-Save (Mac OS), and select Automatically Save Projects.

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Auto-saved files are saved in the After Effects Auto-Save folder, which is located in the same folder as the original project file. Auto-saved filenames are based on the project name: After Effects adds “auto-save n” (where n is the number of the file in the auto-save series) to the end of the filename. Maximum Project Versions specifies how many versions of each project file you want to save. When the number of versions saved reaches the maximum you specify, the Auto-Save feature overwrites them starting with the oldest file.

• To save a copy of the project and copies of assets used in the project to a single folder on disk, use the Collect Files

command. (See

An After Effects CS5 project cannot be saved for use in After Effects CS4 or earlier.

Note: After Effects will only execute an auto-save when there are unsaved changes in the currently open project. This also applies when the program is in the background or minimized. The potential consequence is leaving open with unsaved changes for a long enough period of time that eventually all of the auto-save versions will be identical. For example, when auto-save is set to save every 10 minutes and to keep 10 versions, after 1 hour and 40 minutes all auto-saves will be identically overwritten.

“Collect files in one location” on page 686.)

Save and back up projects in After Effects CS5.5 and later

Saving and backing up projects in After Effects CS5.5 and later is similar to previous versions, however, there are new ways to to do so. For example, you can now save a project in the XML project file format, or a copy of a CS5.5 and later project as CS5.

• To save the project with a different name or to a different location, choose File > Save As > Save As.

• To save the project as a copy in the XML project file format, choose File > Save As > Save A Copy As XML.

• To save a copy of the project with a different name or to a different location, choose File > Save As > Save A Copy.

• To save a project that can be opened in After Effects CS5 or later, choose File > Save As > Save A Copy As CS5.

For details, tutorials, and resources about saving a project from After Effects CS5.5 as a copy that can be opened in After Effects CS5,

Note: New features from After Effects CS5.5 and later that are used in a project will be ignored after the project is saved as an After Effects CS5 project. For example, the CS5.5. If you used the 3D Glasses effect in an After Effects CS5.5 project, the parameters from the newer effect would not carry over to the project when saved to disk.

see this post on the After Effects Region of interest blog.

“3D Glasses effect” on page 536 has new parameters in After Effects

Template projects and example projects

A template project is a file with the filename extension .aet. You can use the many template projects included with After Effects—including DVD menu templates—as the basis for your own projects, and you can create new templates based on your projects.

When you open a template project, After Effects creates a new, untitled project based on the template. Saving changes to this new project does not affect the template project.

A great way to see how advanced users use After Effects is to open one of the template projects included with After

Effects, open a composition to activate it, and press U or UU to reveal only the animated or modified layer properties. Viewing the animated and modified properties shows you what changes the designer of the template project made to create the template.

Often, the creator of a template project locks layers that should be left unmodified, and leaves layers that should be modified unlocked. This is a convenient way to prevent accidental or inappropriate modifications.

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You can download example projects and template projects from many websites, including the After Effects Exchange on the Adobe website. For more sources of After Effects example projects and template projects, see After Effects

community resources on the Adobe website.

See this video tutorial by Andrew Devis on the Creative Cow website for information about where to find template

projects and sample expressions included with After Effects.

More Help topics

“Lock or unlock a layer” on page 135

Open a template project

• To browse and open template projects using Adobe Bridge, choose File > Browse Template Projects. Double-click

a template project to open it.

• To open a template project, choose File > Open Project. On Windows, choose Adobe After Effects Project Template

from the Files Of Type menu.

Create a template project

• To convert a project to a template project, change the filename extension from .aep to .aet.

• To save a copy of a project as a template project, choose File > Save A Copy, and then rename the copy with the

filename extension .aet.

Flowchart panel

In the flowchart for each project or composition, individual boxes (or tiles) represent each composition, footage item, and layer. Directional arrows represent the relationships between components.

Note: The Flowchart panel shows you only the existing relationships. You cannot use it to change relationships between elements.

Nested compositions and other elements that make up the composition appear when you expand a composition tile.

Mid-gray lines between tiles in the flowchart indicate that the Video or Audio switch for those items is deselected in the Timeline panel. Black or light gray lines indicate that the switch is selected, depending on the Brightness setting in the Appearance preferences.

• To open the project flowchart, press Ctrl+F11 (Windows) or Command+F11 (Mac OS), or click the Project

Flowchart

• To open a composition flowchart, select the composition and choose Composition > Composition Flowchart, or

click the Composition Flowchart

• To activate (select) an item, click its tile in the Flowchart panel.

When you click a composition in the flowchart, it becomes active in the Project panel and the Timeline panel. When you click a layer, it becomes active in the Timeline panel. When you click a footage item, it becomes active in the Project panel.

• To customize the appearance of the flowchart, use the Flowchart panel menu and the buttons along the bottom of

the panel.

For tool tips identifying the buttons in the Flowchart panel, let your pointer hover over a button until the tool tip

appears.

button at the top of the vertical scroll bar on the right edge of the Project panel.

button at the bottom of the Composition panel.

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• To delete elements, select them and press Delete. If the selected element is a footage item or composition, it is

deleted from the project and no longer appears in the Timeline and Project panels. If the selected element is a layer, it is deleted from the composition in which it appears.

• To access the context menu for a selected element, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the icon to the

left of the name in the element tile. The icons have various appearances, depending on the element type, such as layers effects, or to change switches, apply transformations, and adjust layer image quality.

Note: When you change element properties in the Flowchart panel, be careful to context-click the icon in the tile, not the name of the element. The context menu associated with the element icon is different from the one that opens from the element name.

Rich Young provides additional information about the Flowchart panel and the Composition Mini-flowchart on the

After Effects Portal website.

and compositions . For example, you can use the context menu for a layer to work with masks and

More Help topics

“Layer switches and columns in the Timeline panel” on page 134

“Opening and navigating nested compositions” on page 66

Timecode and time display units

Many quantities in After Effects are either points in time or spans of time, including the current time, layer In and Out points, and durations of layers, footage items, and compositions.

By default, After Effects displays time in Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) timecode: hours, minutes, seconds, and frames. You can change to another system of time display, such as frames, or feet and frames of 16mm or 35mm film.

You may want to see time values in feet plus frames format, for example, if you are preparing a movie for eventual output to film; or in simple frame numbers if you plan to use your movie in an animation program such as Flash. The format you choose applies to the current project only.

Important: Changing the time display format does not alter the frame rate of your assets or output—it changes only how frames are numbered for display in After Effects.

Video-editing workstations often use SMPTE timecode that is recorded onto videotape for reference. If you are creating video that will be synchronized with video that uses SMPTE timecode, use the default timecode display style.

In After Effects CS5.5 and later, timecode from source files can be displayed from a variety of file formats. Source timecode is found in several areas of the interface including the Project panel, Project Settings dialog box, Composition Settings dialog box and Preferences dialog box. See information.

For details, tutorials, and resources about source timecode and Timecode effect changes in After Effects CS5.5, see this

post on the After Effects Region of Interest blog.

“Source timecode (CS5.5 and later)” on page 57 for more

Change time-display units in After Effects CS5

• To cycle through Timecode Base, Frames, and Feet + Frames, Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS)

the current-time display. The current-time display is in the upper-left corner of the Timeline panel and at the bottom of the Layer, Composition, and Footage panels. (See

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• To change time display units, choose File > Project Settings, and choose from the options in the Display Style

section.

Change time-display units in After Effects CS5.5 and later

• To cycle through Timecode Base, or Frames / Feet + Frames (depending if you have the “Use Feet + Frames” option

checked in the Project Settings), Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) the current-time display. The current-time display is in the upper-left corner of the Timeline panel and at the bottom of the Layer, Composition, and Footage panels. (See displayed as smaller text underneath.

“Timeline panel” on page 61.) The option that is not selected in Project Settings will be

• To change time display units, choose File > Project Settings, and choose from the options in the Time Display Style

section.

Options for time-display units in After Effects CS5

Timecode Base Displays time as timecode, using the frame rate that you specify as the timecode base. Auto uses the

rounded frame rate of the footage item or composition. If an item doesn’t have timecode (such as an audio file), After Effects uses a default value (30 fps for English, Japanese, and Korean versions of After Effects, or 25 fps for French, German, Spanish, and Italian versions) or the last non-auto value you specified in the Project Settings dialog box. You can also specify that After Effects use a specific frame rate.

Note: You can specify specific frame rates for display in the Timecode Base menu; however, in most cases, you should leave the timecode base set to Auto.

Drop Frame versus Non-Drop Frame Two of the more commonly used combinations of time display settings are 30 fps

drop-frame timecode and 30 fps non-drop-frame timecode. When the frame rate is a non-integer number—as is the case with the NTSC frame rate of 29.97 frames per second—a compromise of one sort or another must be made in displaying time. Either the time display can accurately show clock time (after one hour, the time display shows 1:00:00:00) or the time display can be continuously numbered (frame n is always followed by frame n + 1, modulo the number of frames per second). Drop-frame timecode does the former; non-drop-frame timecode does the latter. In the case of NTSC 30 fps drop-frame timecode, two frame numbers are skipped for each minute, except for every tenth minute. Drop-frame timecode is conventionally indicated by separating the time units with semicolons. The most common case for which drop-frame versus non-drop-frame timecode is relevant is 29.97 fps NTSC, but it also applies to 23.976 fps (which After Effects treats as non-drop-frame timecode) and 59.94 fps.

Timecode for 59.94 fps compositions and footage items matches that in Premiere Pro: When the timecode base is 30 fps, each timecode value repeats twice. When the timecode base is 60 fps drop-frame, frame numbers 0, 1, 2, and 3 are dropped in the same places as where 0 and 1 are dropped for drop-frame timecode with a timecode base of 30 fps.

Frames Displays frame number instead of time. Use this setting for convenience when doing work that you are

integrating with a frame-based application or format, like Flash or SWF.

Feet + Frames Displays number of feet of film, plus frames for fractional feet, for 16mm or 35mm film. Numbering

starts at the frame number that you specify with the Start Numbering Frames At value.

Options for time-display units in After Effects CS5.5 and later

Timecode Displays time as timecode in the time rulers of the Timeline, Layer and Footage panels, using either Use

Media Source (source timecode) or starting at 00:00:00:00. Select the Timecode option to use timecode instead of Frames. Note that there are no options for choosing frame rate or drop-frame / non-drop-frame, as source timecode is detected and used instead.

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Note: In After Effects CS5.5 and later, timecode is no longer a global setting for projects. You may have both drop-frame and non-drop-frame timecode in any composition within a project.

Frames Displays frame number instead of time. Use this setting for convenience when doing work that you are

integrating with a frame-based application or format, like Flash or SWF. To use Frames, select Frames and deselect Feet + Frames.

Feet + Frames Displays the number of feet of film, plus frames for fractional feet, for 16mm or 35mm film. To use Feet

+ Frames, select Frames and select Feet + Frames.

Frame Count Determines the starting number for the time display style for Frames.

• Timecode Conversion Timecode value of the item is used for the starting number (if the item has source timecode).

If there is no timecode value, counting begins with zero. Timecode Conversion causes After Effects to behave as it has in previous versions, where the frame count and the timecode count of all assets are mathematically equivalent.

• Start at 0 The counting for frames begins at zero.

• Start at 1 The counting for frames begins at one.

Note: The new options of “Start at 0” and “Start at 1” allow you to specify different frame counting schemes between the “Frames” and “Timecode.” For example, you might choose to honor the source timecode of footage items, but count frames beginning at zero or one.

Source timecode (CS5.5 and later)

Source timecode support file formats After Effects can read and use timecode for most formats including: QuickTime, DV, AVI, P2, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, h.264, AVCHD, RED, XDCAM EX, XDCAM HD, WAV and DPX image sequence importers.

Project panel Source timecode is displayed in columns in the Project panel: Media Start, Media End, Media Duration

and Tape Name. These refer to the source’s start, end and total duration. In addition, columns have been added for In, Out, and Duration, which reflect the In and Out points set by the user in the Footage panel for footage item, or the work area for compositions.

Project Settings The Project Settings dialog box has been substantially reworked to accommodate the source timecode

feature set. For details, see

Composition Settings dialog box The Composition Settings dialog box has been changed to accomodate the source

timecode feature set. For details, see

Preferences dialog box The Preferences dialog box’s Import pane has been changed to support source timecode

features. See

“Import preferences” on page 49.

“Options for time-display units in After Effects CS5.5 and later” on page 56.

“Frame rate” on page 79.

For details, tutorials, and resources about source timecode and Timecode effect changes in After Effects CS5.5, see this

post on the After Effects Region of Interest blog.

Online resources about timecode

Trish and Chris Meyer provide an article on the ProVideo Coalition website that describes the difference between drop-frame and non-drop-frame timecode.

Chris Pirazzi provides technical details about timecode on his Lurker's Guide to Video website.

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Composition basics

For more information about creating compositions, see this video by Andrew Devis on the Creative Cow website.

About compositions

A composition is the framework for a movie. Each composition has its own timeline. A typical composition includes multiple layers that represent components such as video and audio footage items, animated text and vector graphics, still images, and lights. You add a footage item to a composition by creating a layer for which the footage item is the source. You then arrange layers within a composition in space and time, and composite using transparency features to determine which parts of underlying layers show through the layers stacked on top of them. (See

properties” on page 117 and “Transparency, opacity, and compositing” on page 365.)

A composition in After Effects is similar to a movie clip in Flash Professional or a sequence in Premiere Pro.

You render a composition to create the frames of a final output movie, which is encoded and exported to any number of formats. (See

Simple projects may include only one composition; complex projects may include hundreds of compositions to organize large amounts of footage or many effects.

In some places in the After Effects user interface, composition is abbreviated as comp.

“Rendering and exporting overview” on page 680.)

“Layers and

Each composition has an entry in the Project panel. Double-click a composition entry in the Project panel to open the composition in its own Timeline panel. To select a composition in the Project panel, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) in the Composition panel or Timeline panel for the composition and choose Reveal Composition In Project from the context menu.

Use the Composition panel to preview a composition and modify its contents manually. The Composition panel contains the composition frame and a pasteboard area outside the frame that you can use to move layers into and out of the composition frame. The offstage extents of layers—the portions not in the composition frame—are shown as rectangular outlines. Only the area inside the composition frame is rendered for previews and final output.

The composition frame in the Composition panel in After Effects is similar to the Stage in Flash Professional.

When working with a complex project, you may find it easiest to organize the project by nesting compositions— putting one or more compositions into another composition. You can create a composition from any number of layers by precomposing them. If you are finished modifying some layers of your composition, you can precompose those layers and then pre-render the precomposition, replacing it with a rendered movie. (See

pre-rendering” on page 63.)

You can navigate within a hierarchy of nested compositions using the Composition Navigator and Composition MiniFlowchart. (See

Use the Flowchart panel to see the structure of a complex composition or network of compositions.

Timeline button Click this button at the bottom of the Composition panel to activate the Timeline panel for the

current composition.

Press the backslash (\) key to switch activation between the Composition panel and Timeline panel for the current

composition.

“Opening and navigating nested compositions” on page 66.)

“Precomposing, nesting, and

Comp button Click this button in the upper-right corner of the Timeline panel to activate the Composition panel

for the current composition.

Flowchart button Click this button at the bottom of the Composition panel to activate the Flowchart panel for the

current composition.

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More Help topics

“Creating layers” on page 117

“Preview video and audio” on page 178

“Flowchart panel” on page 54

“Basics of rendering and exporting” on page 680

Create a composition

You can change composition settings at any time. However, it’s best to specify settings such as frame aspect ratio and frame size when you create the composition, with your final output in mind. Because After Effects bases certain calculations on these composition settings, changing them late in your workflow can affect your final output.

For more information about creating compositions, see this video by Andrew Devis on the Creative Cow website.

Note: You can override some composition settings when rendering to final output. For example, you can use different frame sizes for the same movie. For more information see

module settings” on page 691.

When you create a composition without changing settings in the Composition Settings dialog box, the new composition uses the settings from the previous time that composition settings were set.

“Render settings” on page 689 and “Output modules and output

Note: New compositions do not inherit the previous Preserve Frame Rate When Nested Or In Render Queue and Preserve Resolution When Nested settings.

You can create a set of After Effects compositions tailored for a selected set of devices by using the File > New Document In > After Effects command in Adobe Device Central. See

devices” on page 60.

Jeff Almasol provides a script on his redefinery website that creates and saves a new project for each selected composition in the current project. If a folder is selected in the Project panel when you create a new composition, the new composition is placed in the selected folder.

“Create compositions for playback on mobile

More Help topics

“Composition settings” on page 62

“About precomposing and nesting” on page 63

Create a composition and manually set composition settings

❖ Choose Composition > New Composition, or press Ctrl+N (Windows) or Command+N (Mac OS).

Create a composition from a single footage item

❖ Drag the footage item to the Create A New Composition button at the bottom of the Project panel or choose

File > New Comp From Selection.

Composition settings, including frame size (width and height) and pixel aspect ratio, are automatically set to match the characteristics of the footage item.

Create a single composition from multiple footage items

1 Select footage items in the Project panel.

2 Drag the selected footage items to the Create A New Composition button at the bottom of the Project panel, or

choose File > New Comp From Selection.

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3 Select Single Composition and other settings in the New Composition From Selection dialog box:

Use Dimensions From Choose the footage item from which the new composition gets composition settings, including

frame size (width and height) and pixel aspect ratio.

Still Duration The duration for the still images being added.

Add To Render Queue Add the new composition to the render queue.

Sequence Layers, Overlap, Duration, and Transition Arrange the layers in a sequence, optionally overlap them in time,

set the duration of the transitions, and choose a transition type.

Create multiple compositions from multiple footage items

1 Select footage items in the Project panel.

2 Drag the selected footage items to the Create A New Composition button at the bottom of the Project panel, or

choose File > New Comp From Selection.

3 Select Multiple Compositions and other settings in the New Composition From Selection dialog box:

Still Duration The duration of the compositions created from still images.

Add To Render Queue Add the new compositions to the render queue.

Duplicate a composition

1 Select the composition in the Project panel.

2 Choose Edit > Duplicate or press Ctrl+D (Windows) or Command+D (Mac OS).

Create compositions for playback on mobile devices

Screen dimensions and video frame rates vary from one mobile device to another. Adobe Device Central contains a database of device profiles that provide information about these characteristics. Using this information, you can create movies that play correctly and look as you intend on the mobile devices that you choose.

For information on acquiring footage for playback on mobile devices, see “Planning for playback on computer

monitors and mobile devices” on page 16.

For a video tutorial about creating compositions for mobile devices, go to the Adobe website at

www.adobe.com/go/lrvid4110_xp.

1 In Adobe Device Central, choose File > New Document In > After Effects.

2 Select one or more devices.

3 In the New Composition tab, select Create Master Composition.

4 Click Create in the lower-right corner of the New Composition tab.

If After Effects is already running, then the new compositions are created in the existing project. If After Effects is not already running, then After Effects starts and the new compositions are created in a new project.

You do your design, animation, and other work in the Device Master composition. You use the device-specific compositions for previews and to render for final output.

The Device Master composition is nested and centered in each of the device-specific compositions. The frame rate, height, and width settings for the Device Master composition are each set to the maximum of the values for the devicespecific compositions. You can resize or move the nested Device Master composition within each device-specific composition—for example, to tweak layout for different frame aspect ratios. A guide layer for each device in the Device Master composition facilitates your design work.

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A Preview composition is also created. The Preview composition consists of a grid of device-specific compositions so that you can preview your master composition in the context of several mobile devices simultaneously.

After you render and export the compositions, you can preview and test the resulting movies on the simulated devices within Adobe Device Central.

More Help topics

“Basics of rendering and exporting” on page 680

Timeline panel

Each composition has its own Timeline panel. You use the Timeline panel to perform many tasks, such as animating layer properties, arranging layers in time, and setting blending modes. The layers at the bottom of the layer stacking order in the Timeline panel are rendered first and—in the case of 2D image layers— appear farthest back in the Composition panel and in the final composite.

To cycle forward through Timeline panels, press Alt+Shift+period (.) (Windows) or Option+Shift+period (.) (Mac

OS). To cycle backward through Timeline panels, press Alt+Shift+comma (,) (Windows) or Option+Shift+comma (,) (Mac OS).

The current time for a composition is indicated by the current-time indicator (CTI), the vertical red line in the time graph. The current time for a composition also appears in the current time display in the upper-left corner of the Timeline panel. For more information on moving the current-time indicator, see

(CTI)” on page 182.

“Move the current-time indicator

A B C

A. Current-time display B. Current-time indicator (CTI) C. Time ruler D. Layer switches E. Time graph

The left side of the Timeline panel consists of columns of controls for layers. The right side of the Timeline panel—the time graph—contains a time ruler, markers, keyframes, expressions, duration bars for layers (in layer bar mode), and the Graph Editor (in Graph Editor mode).

Press the backslash (\) key to switch activation between the Composition panel and Timeline panel for the current

composition.

More Help topics

“Show and hide layers in the Timeline panel” on page 136

“Layer switches and columns in the Timeline panel” on page 134

“The Graph Editor” on page 195

“Columns” on page 45

“Keyboard shortcuts” on page 720

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Composition settings

You can enter composition settings manually, or you can use composition settings presets to automatically set frame size (width and height), pixel aspect ratio, and frame rate for many common output formats. You can also create and save your own custom composition settings presets for later use. Resolution, Start Timecode (or Start Frame), Duration, and Advanced composition settings are not saved with composition settings presets.

Note: The limit for composition duration is three hours. You can use footage items longer than three hours, but time after three hours does not display correctly. The maximum composition size is 30,000x30,000 pixels. A 30,000x30,000 8-bpc image requires approximately 3.5 GB; your maximum composition size may be less, depending on your operating system and available RAM.

More Help topics

“About precomposing and nesting” on page 63

Working with composition settings

• To open the Composition Settings dialog box to change composition settings, do one of the following:

• Select a composition in the Project panel or activate the Timeline or Composition panel for a composition, and

choose Composition > Composition Settings, or press Ctrl+K (Windows) or Command+K (Mac OS).

• Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) a composition in the Project panel or Composition panel (not

on a layer), and choose Composition Settings from the context menu.

• To save a custom composition settings preset, set Width, Height, Pixel Aspect Ratio, and Frame Rate values in the

Composition Settings dialog box, and then click the Save button

• To delete a composition settings preset, choose it from the Preset menu in the Composition Settings dialog box,

and click the Delete button

• To restore default composition settings presets, Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) the Delete button

or the Save button in the Composition Settings dialog box.

Note: You cannot move custom composition settings presets from one system to another, as they are embedded into the preferences file.

• To scale an entire composition, choose File > Scripts > Scale Composition.jsx.

Note: Ensure all layers are unlocked in the selected composition or the script will fail.

Jeff Almasol provides a script on his redefinery website to set the frame rate and duration of the current composition and all compositions nested within it.

Christopher Green provides a script (Selected_Comps_Changer.jsx) on his website with which you can change the composition settings for compositions selected in the Project panel.

Basic composition settings

Start Timecode or Start Frame Timecode or frame number assigned to the first frame of the composition. This value

does not affect rendering; it merely specifies where to start counting from.

Background Color Use the color swatch or eyedropper to pick a composition background color. (See “Select a color or

edit a gradient” on page 265.)

Note: When you add one composition to another (nesting), the background color of the containing composition is preserved, and the background of the nested composition becomes transparent. To preserve the background color of the nested composition, create a solid-color layer to use as a background layer in the nested composition.

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For information on specific Basic composition settings not listed here, see the related sections:

• “Pixel aspect ratio and frame aspect ratio” on page 81

• “Frame rate” on page 79

• “Resolution” on page 190

Advanced composition settings

Anchor Click an arrow button to anchor layers to a corner or edge of the composition as it is resized.

For information on specific Advanced composition settings not listed here, see the related sections:

• “Specify resolution to use for rendering shadows” on page 174

• “Preferences and composition settings that affect nested compositions” on page 64

• “Motion blur” on page 211

Composition thumbnail images

You can choose which frame of a composition to show as a thumbnail image (poster frame) for the composition in the Project panel. By default, the thumbnail image is the first frame of the composition, with transparent portions shown as black.

• To set the thumbnail image for a composition, move the current-time indicator to the desired frame of the

composition in the Timeline panel, and choose Composition > Set Poster Time.

•

To add a transparency grid to the thumbnail view, choose Thumbnail Transparency Grid from the Project panel menu.

• To hide the thumbnail images in the Project panel, choose Edit > Preferences > Display (Windows) or After Effects

> Preferences > Display (Mac OS) and select Disable Thumbnails In Project Panel.

Precomposing, nesting, and pre-rendering

About precomposing and nesting

If you want to group some layers that are already in a composition, you can precompose those layers. Precomposing layers places them in a new composition, which replaces the layers in the original composition. The new nested composition becomes the source for a single layer in the original composition. The new composition appears in the Project panel and is available for rendering or use in any other composition. You can nest compositions by adding an existing composition to another composition, just as you would add any other footage item to a composition. Precomposing a single layer is useful for adding transform properties to a layer and influencing the order in which elements of a composition are rendered.

Nesting is the inclusion of one composition within another. The nested composition appears as a layer in the containing composition.

A nested composition is sometimes called a precomposition, which is occasionally abbreviated in casual use to precomp or pre-comp. When a precomposition is used as the source footage item for a layer, the layer is called a precomposition layer.

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During rendering, the image data and other information can be said to flow from each nested composition into the composition that contains it. For this reason, nested compositions are sometimes referred to as being upstream of the compositions that contain them, and the containing compositions are said to be downstream of the nested compositions that they contain. A set of compositions connected through nesting is called a composition network. You can navigate within a composition network using the Composition Navigator and Mini-Flowchart. (See

“Opening and

navigating nested compositions” on page 66.)

Precompositions in After Effects are similar to Smart Objects in Adobe Photoshop.

More Help topics

“Precompose layers” on page 65

“Create layers from footage items or change layer source” on page 118

“3D layer interactions, render order, and collapsed transformations” on page 163

“Layer switches and columns in the Timeline panel” on page 134

“Parent and child layers” on page 146

Uses for precomposing and nesting

Precomposing and nesting are useful for managing and organizing complex compositions. By precomposing and nesting, you can do the following:

Apply complex changes to an entire composition You can create a composition that contains multiple layers, nest the

composition within the overall composition, and animate and apply effects to the nested composition so that all of the layers change in the same ways over the same time period.

Reuse anything you build You can build an animation in its own composition and then drag that composition into

other compositions as many times as you want.

Update in one step When you make changes to a nested composition, those changes affect every composition in

which it is used, just like changes made to a source footage item affect every composition in which it is used.

Alter the default rendering order of a layer You can specify that After Effects render a transformation (such as

rotation) before rendering effects, so that the effect applies to the rotated footage.

Add another set of transform properties to a layer The layer that represents the composition has its own properties, in

addition to the properties of the layers that it contains. This allows you to apply an additional set of transformations to a layer or set of layers.

For example, you can use nesting to make a planet both rotate and revolve (moving like the Earth, which spins on its own axis and also travels around the Sun). To create such a system, animate the Rotation property of the planet layer, precompose that layer, modify the Anchor Point property of the precomposition layer, and then animate the Rotation property of the precomposition layer.

Preferences and composition settings that affect nested compositions

Because a precomposition is itself a layer, you can control its behavior using layer switches and composition switches in the Timeline panel. You can choose whether changes made to the switches in the containing composition are propagated to the nested composition. To prevent layer switches from affecting nested compositions, choose Edit > Preferences > General (Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > General (Mac OS), and then deselect Switches Affect Nested Comps.

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In the Advanced tab of the Composition Settings dialog box (Composition > Composition Settings), choose Preserve Resolution When Nested or Preserve Frame Rate When Nested Or In Render Queue for a composition to retain its own resolution or frame rate, and not inherit those settings from the containing composition. For example, if you deliberately used a low frame rate in a composition to create a jerky, hand-animated result, you should preserve the frame rate for that composition when it is nested. Similarly, the results of rotoscoping may look wrong when converted to a different frame rate or resolution. Use this setting instead of the Posterize Time effect, which is less efficient.

Jeff Almasol provides a script on his redefinery website that makes toggling the Preserve Resolution When Nested or

Preserve Frame Rate When Nested Or In Render Queue preference setting more convenient.

Changing the current time in one panel updates the current time in other panels associated with that composition. By default, the current time is also updated for all compositions related to the current composition by nesting. To prevent compositions related by nesting from updating their current times when you change the current time in one composition, deselect the Synchronize Time Of All Related Items preference (Edit > Preferences > General (Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > General (Mac OS)).

Online resources about precomposing and nesting

Angie Taylor provides an extensive discussion and explanation of animation using nesting, parenting, expressions, and null object layers in a PDF excerpt from her book

Visual Effects, and Motion Graphics.

Creative After Effects 7: Workflow Techniques for Animation,

Chris and Trish Meyer provide an introduction to precomposing and nesting in a PDF excerpt from the “Parenting and Nesting” chapter of their book

After Effects Apprentice: Real-World Skills for the Aspiring Motion Graphics

Artist.

Chris and Trish Meyer share tips on setting up a composition hierarchy so that making changes in a project is easier

in this article from the ProVideo Coalition website.

See this page on aescripts website for the Un-Precompose script, which extracts layers from a precomposition.

See this page on aescripts website for the Zorro-The Layer Tagger script, which allows you to group layers in your

composition using tags rather than precomposing.

Precompose layers

Precomposing layers places them in a new composition (sometimes called a precomposition), which replaces the layers in the original composition. Precomposing a single layer is useful for adding transform properties to a layer and influencing the order in which elements of a composition are rendered.

1 Select the layers in the Timeline panel, and choose Layer > Pre-compose or press Ctrl+Shift+C (Windows) or

Command+Shift+C (Mac OS).

2 Select one of the following:

Leave All Attributes In Leaves the properties and keyframes of the precomposed layer in the original composition,

applied to the new layer that represents the precomposition. The frame size of the new composition is the same as the size of the selected layer. This option is not available when you select more than one layer, a text layer, or a shape layer.

Move All Attributes Into The New Composition Moves the properties and keyframes of the precomposed layers one

level further from the root composition in the composition hierarchy. When you use this option, changes you applied to the properties of the layers remain with the individual layers within the precomposition. The frame size of the new composition is the same as the frame size of the original composition.

Jeff Almasol provides a script on his redefinery website that precomposes selected layers to the duration of the selected layers, with options for head and tail durations for more editing flexibility.

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More Help topics

“About precomposing and nesting” on page 63

Opening and navigating nested compositions

Nested compositions are sometimes referred to as being upstream of the compositions that contain them, and the containing compositions are said to be downstream of the nested compositions that they contain. The root composition is the most downstream; the most deeply nested composition is the most upstream. A composition flow path is a chain of compositions that are related to one another by containing or being nested within one another. A composition network is the entire set of compositions that are related to one another through nesting.

After Effects provides several ways to open a nested composition (precomposition):

• Double-click the composition entry in the Project panel.

• Double-click a precomposition layer in the Timeline panel. Alt-double-click (Windows) or Option-double-click

(Mac OS) to open the precomposition layer as a layer in the Layer panel.

Note: Double-clicking a precomposition layer when a paint tool or the Roto Brush tool is active opens the layer in the Layer panel.

• To open the most recently active composition in the same composition network as the currently active

composition, press Shift+Esc.

• Use the Composition Navigator.

• Use the Composition Mini-Flowchart.

The Composition Navigator

The Composition Navigator is a bar along the top edge of the Composition panel that shows the composition active in that viewer in relation to other compositions in the same composition network. The compositions shown are the most recently active compositions in the flow path of the currently active composition.

A B C D

upstreamdownstream

A. Active (current) composition B. Arrow for opening Composition Mini-Flowchart C. Panel menu button D. Ellipsis

Arrows between the composition names indicate the direction in which pixel information flows for this flow path. The default is to show compositions in the Composition Navigator bar with downstream compositions on the left and upstream compositions on the right. This default is indicated by the Flow Right To Left option in the Composition panel menu. To show compositions in the other order, choose Flow Left To Right. This setting is a global preference; it applies to all compositions and to the Composition Mini-Flowchart view.

The names of downstream compositions are dim to indicate that their contents are not used or shown in the active composition.

• To show or hide the Composition Navigator bar, choose Show Composition Navigator from the Composition

panel menu.

• To activate any composition shown in the Composition Navigator bar, click the composition name.

• If the flow path is too long to show in the Composition panel, an ellipsis button appears at the left or right edge

of the Composition Navigator bar. To temporarily show the entire flow path, click the ellipsis button.

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To scroll through a long flow path, place the pointer over a composition button in the Composition Navigator and roll the mouse scroll wheel.

The Composition Mini-Flowchart

The Composition Mini-Flowchart is a transient control that you can use to quickly navigate within a composition network. When you open the Composition Mini-Flowchart, it shows the compositions immediately upstream and downstream of the selected composition.

A B C D

A. Indicator that composition does not flow into other compositions B. Flow direction C. Active (current) composition D. Upstream compositions E. Indicators that other compositions flow into these compositions

Colors in the Composition Mini-Flowchart are based on the label colors assigned to compositions in the Project panel. If a composition is used multiple times within one composition, the multiple instances of the nested composition appear as one entry with a number in parentheses indicating the number of instances.

To open the Composition Mini-Flowchart, do one of the following:

• Tap the Shift key when a Composition, Layer, or Timeline panel is active.

Note: Do not hold the Shift key down; press it briefly. Tapping the Shift key to open the Composition Mini-Flowchart doesn’t work if the insertion point is in a search field, text field, or expression field.

• Click the arrow to the right of a composition name in the Composition Navigator bar.

• Choose Composition Mini-Flowchart from the Composition menu, the Composition panel menu, or the Timeline

panel menu.

• Click the Composition Mini-Flowchart button at the top of the Timeline panel.

As with the Composition Navigator, you can choose whether to show the flow direction from left to right or from right to left. Arrows indicate the direction of the flow. If a composition has a

next to it instead of an arrow, then the

composition either does not have any compositions flowing into it or it does not flow into any compositions.

Upstream compositions in the Composition Mini-Flowchart are sorted from top to bottom either alphabetically or by layer order. To switch between these sorting orders, press the S key when the Composition Mini-Flowchart is open. When sorting by layer order, a composition used multiple times is sorted according to its topmost instance in the stacking order. Downstream compositions are always sorted alphabetically.

To navigate among and select compositions in the Composition Mini-Flowchart, use the arrow keys or click the arrow

buttons on either side of a composition. To activate the selected composition, press the spacebar or Enter

or (Windows) or Return (Mac OS). To close the Composition Mini-Flowchart without taking any action, press Esc, tap Shift, or click outside the Composition Mini-Flowchart.

Rich Young provides additional information about the Flowchart panel and the Composition Mini-flowchart on the

After Effects Portal website.

More Help topics

“About precomposing and nesting” on page 63

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Pre-render a nested composition

A complex nested composition can take a long time to render, either for previews or for final output. If you have a nested composition that you do not expect to work on further, you can save time during each rendering operation by pre-rendering the nested composition into a movie and replacing the composition with the rendered movie. You can still modify the original nested composition, because it remains in the Project panel. If you make a significant change to the original nested composition, just render it again.

Pre-rendering a nested composition is especially beneficial when you will use it multiple times in a project.

Note: Apply your final output settings when you pre-render the nested composition.

1 Select the composition in the Project or Composition panel.

2 Choose Composition > Pre-render.

The Pre-render command adds the composition to the render queue and sets the Import & Replace Usage post-render action to replace the composition with the rendered movie.

3 In the Render Queue panel, adjust settings as necessary, and click the Render button to render the composition.

See this video tutorial on the Video2Brain website about how to save time with pre-rendering and proxies in After

Effects.

Note: An alternative to replacing the composition with the movie is to use the rendered movie as a proxy for the nested composition.

More Help topics

“Post-render actions” on page 695

“Placeholders and proxies” on page 87

“Basics of rendering and exporting” on page 680

Render order and collapsing transformations

A composition consists of layers stacked on top of one another in the Timeline panel. When the composition is rendered—either for previewing or for final output—the bottom layer is rendered first. Within each raster (nonvector) layer, elements are applied in the following order: masks, effects, transformations, and layer styles. For continuously rasterized vector layers, the default rendering order is masks, followed by transformations, and then effects.

Transformations are changes to those properties grouped under the Transform category in the Timeline panel, including Anchor Point, Position, Scale, Rotation, and Opacity. What you see in the Layer panel is the result of the rendering before transformations are performed.

Note: For additional control over when transformations are performed, you can apply the Transform effect and reorder it with respect to other effects.

In a group of effects or masks, items are processed from top to bottom. For example, if you apply the Circle effect and then apply the Magnify effect, the circle is magnified. However, if you drag the Magnify effect above (before) the Circle effect in the Effect Controls or Timeline panel, the circle is drawn after the magnification and isn’t magnified.

After a layer has been rendered, rendering begins for the next layer. The rendered layer below may be used as input to the rendering of the layer above—for example, for determining the result of a blending mode.

If a composition contains other compositions nested within it, the nested composition is rendered before other layers in the containing composition.

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Note: Some effects ignore masks on the layer to which they’re applied. To have such an effect operate on a masked layer, pre-compose the layer with the mask applied, and then apply the effect to the pre-composed layer. (See

“About

precomposing and nesting” on page 63.)

Collapsing transformations

If the Collapse Transformations switch is selected for a nested composition, then the transformations for the nested composition are not performed until after the masks and effects for the containing composition are rendered. This render order allows the transformations for the nested composition and the containing composition to be combined— or collapsed—and performed together. The same is true for vector layers that are not continuously rasterized.

Note: Instead of a Collapse Transformations switch, vector layers have a Continuously Rasterize switch in the same location. Vector layers include shape layers, text layers, and layers with vector graphic files as the source footage. Text layers and shape layers are always continuously rasterized.

Collapsing transformations can, for example, preserve resolution when a layer is scaled down by half in a nested composition, and the nested composition is scaled up by a factor of two in the containing composition. In this case, rather than performing both transformations and losing image data in the process, one transformation can be performed—doing nothing, because the individual transformations cancel each other.

If transformations are not collapsed, a nested composition that contains 3D layers is rendered as a 2D image of the 3D arrangement, using the default composition camera. This rendering prevents the nested composition from intersecting with 3D layers, casting shadows on 3D layers, and receiving shadows from 3D layers in the containing composition. The nested composition is also not controlled by the cameras and lights of the containing composition.

If transformations are collapsed, the 3D properties of the layers in the nested composition are exposed to the containing composition. Thus, the nested composition can intersect with 3D layers, cast shadows on 3D layers, and receive shadows from 3D layers in the containing composition. The containing composition's camera and lights can also control the nested composition.

Essentially, collapsing transformations for a nested composition tells After Effects to not flatten and crop the layers in the precomposition. Because an adjustment layer operates on the composite of all of the layers beneath it within the same composition, an adjustment layer within a nested composition with collapsed transformations will force the flattening and cropping that collapsing transformations would normally prevent.

When a closed mask (with mask mode other than None), a layer style, or an effect is applied to a nested composition with collapsed transformations, the layers in the nested composition are first rendered on their own, then masks and effects are applied, and then the result is composited into the main composition. This rendering order means that the blending modes of the nested layers are not applied to any underlying layers in the main composition, and that 3D layers above and below the collapsed layer cannot intersect or cast shadows on each other.

Online resources

This video from the “After Effects CS5: Learn by Video” series provides a detailed visual demonstration of the render

order and how to work with (and around) it.

Chris and Trish Meyer explain collapsing transformations and continuous rasterization in this article on the ProVideo

Coalition website.

More Help topics

“3D layer interactions, render order, and collapsed transformations” on page 163

“Change the stacking order for selected layers” on page 123

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Chapter 5: Importing and managing footage items

Importing and interpreting footage items

See this video tutorial on importing assets on the Creative Cow website by Andrew Devis.

About imported files and footage items

You import source files into a project as the basis for footage items and use them as sources for layers. The same file can be the source for multiple footage items, each with its own interpretation settings. Each footage item can be used as the source for one or more layers. You work with collections of layers in a composition.

You primarily work with footage items in the Project panel. You can use the Footage panel to evaluate footage and perform simple editing tasks, such as trimming the duration of a footage item.

You can import many different kinds of files, collections of files, or components of files as sources for individual footage items, including moving image files, still-image files, still-image sequences, and audio files. You can even create footage items yourself within After Effects, such as solids and precompositions. You can import footage items into a project at any time.

When you import files, After Effects does not copy the image data itself into your project but creates a reference link to the source of the footage item, which keeps project files relatively small.

If you delete, rename, or move an imported source file, you break the reference link to that file. When a link is broken, the name of the source file appears in italics in the Project panel, and the File Path column lists it as missing. If the footage item is available, you can reestablish the link—usually just by double-clicking the item and selecting the file again.

You can find footage items for which the source items are missing by typing missing in the search field in the Project

panel. See “Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels” on page 45.

To reduce rendering time and increase performance, it is often best to prepare footage before you import it into After Effects. For example, it is often better to scale or crop a still image in Photoshop before you bring it into After Effects, rather than scaling and cropping the image in After Effects. It is better to perform an operation once in Photoshop than to force After Effects to perform the same action many times per second—once for each frame in which the image appears.

To save time and minimize the size and complexity of a project, import a source item as a single footage item and then use it multiple times in a composition. It is occasionally useful, however, to duplicate a footage item and interpret each differently. For example, you can use the same footage at two different frame rates.

If you use another application to modify a footage item that is used in a project, the changes appear in After Effects the next time that you open the project or select the footage item and choose File > Reload Footage.

To replace the source footage item for a layer with another footage item, without affecting changes made to the layer

properties, select the layer and then Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Mac OS) the new footage item onto the layer in the Timeline panel.

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To replace all uses of selected footage items with another footage item, select footage items in the Project panel, and

then Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Mac OS) the new footage item onto a selected footage item in the Project panel.

When After Effects imports video and audio in some formats, it processes and caches versions of these items that it can readily access when generating previews. This caching greatly improves performance for previews, because the video and audio items do not need to be reprocessed for each preview. See

For more information about importing assets, see this video tutorial on the Creative Cow website by Andrew Devis.

“Media cache” on page 626.

More Help topics

“Create layers from footage items or change layer source” on page 118

“Footage (keyboard shortcuts)” on page 727

Supported import formats

Important: The trial version of After Effects CS5 doesn't include some features that depend on third-party software components that are only included in the full version of After Effects. The import and export of some formats are not supported in the trial version: AVC-Intra, AVCHD, HDV, MPEG-2, MPEG-2 DVD, MPEG-2 Blu-ray, and XDCAM. The trial version for Adobe After Effects CS5.5 and later includes all codecs that are in the full version.

30-day trial version of After Effects CS5.5.

Details of the free

Some filename extensions—such as MOV, AVI, MXF, FLV, and F4V—denote container file formats rather than denoting a specific audio, video, or image data format. Container files can contain data encoded using various compression and encoding schemes. After Effects can import these container files, but the ability to import the data that they contain is dependent on which codecs (specifically, decoders) are installed.

By installing additional codecs, you can extend the ability of After Effects to import additional file types. Many codecs must be installed into the operating system (Windows or Mac OS) and work as a component inside the QuickTime or Video for Windows formats. Contact the manufacturer of your hardware or software for more information about codecs that work with the files that your specific devices or applications create.

Importing and using some files requires the installation of additional import plug-ins. (See “Plug-ins” on page 631.)

Adobe Premiere Pro can capture and import many formats that After Effects can’t import natively. You can bring data from Adobe Premiere Pro into After Effects in many ways. (See on page 24.)

For workflow guides and updates for P2, RED, XDCAM, AVCCAM, and DSLR cameras and footage, see the Adobe

website.

This video from the "After Effects CS5: Learn by Video" series explains codecs, containers, and formats and shows how

to get information about source files and footage items.

Audio formats

“Working with Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects”

• Adobe Sound Document (ASND; multi-track files imported as merged single track)

• Advanced Audio Coding (AAC, M4A)

• Audio Interchange File Format (AIF, AIFF)

• MP3 (MP3, MPEG, MPG, MPA, MPE)

• Video for Windows (AVI; requires QuickTime on Mac OS)

• Waveform (WAV)

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Still-image formats

• Adobe Illustrator (AI, AI4, AI5, EPS, PS; continuously rasterized)

• Adobe PDF (PDF; first page only; continuously rasterized)

• Adobe Photoshop (PSD)

• Bitmap (BMP, RLE, DIB)

• Camera raw (TIF, CRW, NEF, RAF, ORF, MRW, DCR, MOS, RAW, PEF, SRF, DNG, X3F, CR2, ERF)

• Cineon/DPX (CIN, DPX; 10 bpc)

• Discreet RLA/RPF (RLA, RPF; 16 bpc; imports camera data)

• EPS

• GIF

• JPEG (JPG, JPE)

• Maya camera data (MA)

• Maya IFF (IFF, TDI; 16 bpc)

• OpenEXR (EXR, SXR, MXR; 32 bpc)

Note: 3D Channel effect plug-ins from fnord software are included with After Effects to provide access to multiple layers and channels of OpenEXR files. (See

“Using channels in OpenEXR files” on page 423.)

• PICT (PCT)

• Portable Network Graphics (PNG; 16 bpc)

• Radiance (HDR, RGBE, XYZE; 32 bpc)

• SGI (SGI, BW, RGB; 16 bpc)

• Softimage (PIC)

Note: After Effects can also read ZPIC files corresponding to imported PIC files. See “Importing and using 3D files from

other applications” on page 104.)

• Targa (TGA, VDA, ICB, VST)

• TIFF (TIF)

You can import files of any still-image format as a sequence. See

Video and animation formats

“Preparing and importing still images

” on page 107.

• Animated GIF (GIF)

• CinemaDNG (After Effects CS5.5 and later)

Note: CinemaDNG is a subset of CameraRAW. A subset of CameraRAW settings can be accessed via More Options in the Interpret Footage dialog box. Color management for CinemaDNG includes the same color spaces as After Effects existing CameraRAW: Adobe RGB, sRGB IEC619662.1, ColorMatch RGB, and ProPhoto RGB.

For more information on CinemaDNG, and to download the CinemaDNG importer, go to the Adobe Labs website.

• DV (in MOV or AVI container, or as containerless DV stream)

• Electric Image (IMG, EI)

Note: After Effects can also read EIZ files corresponding to imported EI files. See “Importing and using 3D files from

other applications” on page 104.)

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• FLV, F4V

Note: After Effects CS5 can import FLV files with video encoded using the On2 VP6 video codec; After Effects CS5 can’t import FLV files with video encoded with the Sorenson Spark video codec. As with any unsupported format, transcode the file to a format that After Effects can import.

• Media eXchange Format (MXF)

MXF is a container format. After Effects can only import some kinds of data contained within MXF files. After Effects can import the Op-Atom variety of MXF files used by Panasonic video cameras to record to Panasonic P2 media. After Effects can import video from these MXF files using the AVC-Intra 50, AVC-Intra 100, DV, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, and DVCPRO HD codecs. After Effects can also import XDCAM HD files in MXF format. After Effects CS5.5 and later can import the MXF OP1format, which contains MPEG-2 video that complies with the XDCAM HD format.

• MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 formats: MPEG, MPE, MPG, M2V, MPA, MP2, M2A, MPV, M2P, M2T, M2TS

(AVCHD), AC3, MP4, M4V, M4A

Note: Some MPEG data formats are stored in container formats with filename extensions that are not recognized by After Effects; examples include .vob and .mod. In some cases, you can import these files into After Effects after changing the filename extension to one of the recognized filename extensions. Because of variations in implementation in these container formats, compatibility is not guaranteed.

For information about MPEG formats, see the MPEG website and the MPEG page on the Wikipedia website.

• PSD file with video layer (requires QuickTime)

• QuickTime (MOV; 16 bpc, requires QuickTime)

Note: David Van Brink provides the qt_tools toolset on his omino website. This toolset is useful for converting and examining QuickTime files.

• RED (R3D)

Note: R3D files are interpreted as containing 32-bpc colors in a non-linear HDTV (Rec. 709) color space. The RED R3D Source Settings color adjustments don't preserve overbright values. Color adjustments done within After Effects do preserve overbright colors when you work in 32-bpc (bits per channel) color. To avoid clipping, manipulate exposure in After Effects, rather than in the footage interpretation stage in the RED R3D Source Settings dialog box. (For more information on using R3D files, see the

For information about changes and bug fixes regarding RED (R3D) footage in After Effects CS5 (10.0.1), see this

post on the After Effects Region of Interest blog.

RED website and the Adobe website.)

• SWF (continuously rasterized)

Note: SWF files are imported with an alpha channel. Audio is not retained. Interactive content and scripted animation are not retained. Animation defined by keyframes in the main, top-level movie is retained.

• Video for Windows (AVI, WAV; requires QuickTime on Mac OS)

• Windows Media File (WMV, WMA, ASF; Windows only)

• XDCAM HD and XDCAM EX

Note: After Effects can import Sony XDCAM HD assets if they were recorded to MXF files. After Effects cannot import XDCAM HD assets in IMX format. After Effects can import Sony XDCAM EX assets stored as essence files with the .mp4 filename extension in a BPAV directory. For information about the XDCAM format, see the Sony website.

this PDF document on

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Project formats

• Adobe Premiere Pro 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, CS3, CS4, CS5 (PRPROJ; 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 Windows only)

• Adobe After Effects 6.0 and later binary projects in After Effects CS5 (AEP, AET)

• Adobe After Effects 6.5 and later binary projects in After Effects CS5.5 and later (AEP, AET)

• Adobe After Effects CS4 and later XML projects (AEPX)

You can use the free Pro Import AE plug-in from Automatic Duck to import projects from other applications, including Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, and Avid Media Composer.

You can also import Final Cut Pro projects into Premiere Pro and then bring that project's components into After Effects.

More Help topics

“Supported output formats” on page 682

“Import assets in Panasonic P2 format” on page 101

Import footage items

You can import media files into your project either by using the Import dialog box or by dragging.

Imported footage items appear in the Project panel.

If the Interpret Footage dialog box appears after you import a footage item, it contains an unlabeled alpha channel, and you must select an alpha channel interpretation method or click Guess to let After Effects determine how to interpret the alpha channel. (See

“Alpha channel interpretation: premultiplied or straight” on page 77.)

More Help topics

“Import a single still image or a still-image sequence” on page 108

“Footage (keyboard shortcuts)” on page 727

Import footage items using the Import dialog box

1 Choose File > Import > File, choose File > Import > Multiple Files, or double-click an empty area of the Project

panel.

If you choose Import Multiple Files, then you can perform the next step more than once without needing to choose an Import command multiple times.

To display only supported footage files (excluding project files), choose All Footage Files from the Files Of Type

(Windows) or Enable (Mac OS) menu.

2 Do one of the following:

• Select a file, and then click Open.

• Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) multiple files to select them, and then click Open.

• Click a file and then Shift-click another file to select a range of files, and then click Open.

• (Windows only) Select an entire folder, and then click Import Folder.

Note: If the Sequence option is selected, multiple files from the folder are imported as a sequence of still images.

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Import footage items by dragging

If you always want the layered still-image files that you drag into After Effects to be imported as a composition, choose

Edit > Preferences > Import (Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > Import (Mac OS), and choose Composition or Composition - Retain Layer Sizes from the Drag Import Multiple Items As menu. (See

as a composition” on page 109.)

• To import a single file, drag it from Windows Explorer (Windows) or the Finder (Mac OS) into the Project panel.

• To import the contents of a folder as a sequence of still images that appear in the Project panel as a single footage

item, drag a folder from Windows Explorer (Windows) or the Finder (Mac OS) into the Project panel.

• To import the contents of the folder as individual footage items that appear in the Project panel in a folder, Alt-drag

a folder from Windows Explorer (Windows) or Option-drag a folder from the Finder (Mac OS) into the Project panel.

• To import a rendered output file from the Render Queue panel, drag the corresponding output module from the

Render Queue panel into the Project panel.

Note: If you drag an output module from the Render Queue panel into the Project panel before rendering, After Effects creates a placeholder footage item. References to the placeholder footage item are automatically replaced when the output module is rendered; the placeholder footage item itself is not replaced.

“Import a still-image sequence

Interpret footage items

After Effects uses a set of internal rules to interpret each footage item that you import according to its best guess for the source file’s pixel aspect ratio, frame rate, color profile, and alpha channel type. If After Effects guesses wrong, or if you want to use the footage differently, you can modify these rules for all footage items of a particular kind by editing the interpretation rules file (interpretation rules.txt), or you can modify the interpretation of a specific footage item using the Interpret Footage dialog box.

The interpretation settings tell After Effects the following about each footage item:

• How to interpret the interaction of the alpha channel with other channels (See “Alpha channel interpretation:

premultiplied or straight” on page 77.)

• What frame rate to assume for the footage item (See “Frame rate” on page 79.)

• Whether to separate fields and, if so, what field order to assume (See “Interlaced video and separating fields” on

page 97.)

• Whether to remove 3:2 or 24Pa pulldown (See “Remove 3:2 or 24Pa pulldown from video” on page 100.)

• The pixel aspect ratio of the footage item (See “Pixel aspect ratio and frame aspect ratio” on page 81.)

• The color profile of the footage item (See “Interpret a footage item by assigning an input color profile” on page 278.)

Important: In all of these cases, the information is used to make decisions about how to interpret data in the imported footage item—to tell After Effects about the input footage. The interpretation settings in the Interpret Footage dialog box should match the settings used to create the source footage file. Do not use the interpretation settings to try to specify settings for your final rendered output.

Generally, you don’t need to change interpretation settings. However, if a footage item isn’t of a common kind, After Effects may need additional information from you to interpret it correctly.

You can use the controls in the Color Management section of the Interpret Footage dialog box to tell After Effects how to interpret the color information in a footage item. This step is usually only necessary when the footage item does not contain an embedded color profile.

When you preview in the Footage panel, you see the results of the footage interpretation operations.

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Importing and managing footage items

Jeff Almasol provides a script on his redefinery website that you can use to make guessing the 3:2 pulldown, 24Pa pulldown, or alpha channel interpretation more convenient.

Note: Select Preview in the Interpret Footage dialog box to preview the results of the settings made in this dialog box before you accept the changes.

More Help topics

“Footage (keyboard shortcuts)” on page 727

Interpret a single footage item using the Interpret Footage dialog box

❖ Select a footage item in the Project panel and do one of the following:

• Click the Interpret Footage button at the bottom of the Project panel.

• Drag the footage item to the Interpret Footage button.

• Choose File > Interpret Footage > Main.

• Press Ctrl+Alt+G (Windows) or Command+Option+G (Mac OS).

Interpret a proxy using the Interpret Footage dialog box

❖ Select the original footage item in the Project panel and do one of the following:

• Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) the Interpret Footage button at the bottom of the Project panel.

• Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Mac OS) the footage item to the Interpret Footage button.

• Choose File > Interpret Footage > Proxy.

Apply Interpret Footage settings to multiple footage items

You can ensure that different footage items use the same settings by copying interpretation settings from one item and applying them to others.

1 In the Project panel, select the item with the interpretation settings that you want to apply.

2 Choose File > Interpret Footage > Remember Interpretation.

3 Select one or more footage items in the Project panel.

4 Choose File > Interpret Footage > Apply Interpretation.

Edit interpretation rules for all items of a specific kind

The interpretation rules file contains the rules that specify how After Effects interprets footage items. In most cases, you don’t need to customize the interpretation rules file. When you import a footage item, After Effects looks for a match in the interpretation rules file, and then determines interpretation settings for the footage item. You can override these settings after importing, using the Interpret Footage dialog box.

In most cases, the name of the interpretation rules file is interpretation rules.txt; however, some updates to After Effects install a new interpretation rules file with a name that indicates the updated version number, and the updated application uses this new file. If you’ve made changes to the old interpretation rules file, you may need to apply those changes to the new file, too.

Locations of the interpretation rules file in After Effects CS5:

• (Windows) C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CS5\Support Files

• (Mac OS) Applications/Adobe After Effects CS5

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Locations of the interpretation rules file in After Effects CS5.5 (note that the file is located in the Preferences folder).

• (Windows) <drive>\Users\<username>\Library\Preferences\Adobe\After Effects 10.5.

• (Mac OS) <drive>/Users/<username>/Libarary/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects 10.5

1 Quit After Effects.

2 As a precaution, make a backup copy of the interpretation rules file. By default, this file is in the same location as

the After Effects application.

3 Open the interpretation rules file in a text editor.

4 Modify the settings according to the instructions in the file.

Note: You must supply a four-character file-type code for each footage type or codec. If you don’t know the code for a file or codec in a project, press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) as you select the file in the Project panel. The file-type code and codec code (if the file is compressed) appear in the last line of the file description at the top of the Project panel.

5 Save interpretation rules.txt.

Alpha channel interpretation: premultiplied or straight

Image files with alpha channels store transparency information in one of two ways: straight or premultiplied. Although the alpha channels are the same, the color channels differ.

With straight (or unmatted) channels, transparency information is stored only in the alpha channel, not in any of the visible color channels. With straight channels, the results of transparency aren’t visible until the image is displayed in an application that supports straight channels.

With premultiplied (or matted) channels, transparency information is stored in the alpha channel and also in the visible RGB channels, which are multiplied with a background color. Premultiplied channels are sometimes said to be matted with color. The colors of semitransparent areas, such as feathered edges, are shifted toward the background color in proportion to their degree of transparency.

Some software lets you specify the background color with which the channels are premultiplied; otherwise, the background color is usually black or white. When After Effects creates FLV files with transparency, they are created as premultiplied with black.

Straight channels retain more accurate color information than premultiplied channels. Premultiplied channels are compatible with a wider range of programs, such as Apple QuickTime Player. Often, the choice of whether to use images with straight or premultiplied channels has been made before you receive the assets to edit and composite. Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects recognize both straight and premultiplied channels, but only the first alpha channel they encounter in a file containing multiple alpha channels.

Setting the alpha channel interpretation correctly can prevent problems when you import a file, such as undesirable colors at the edge of an image or a loss of image quality at the edges of the alpha channel. For example, if channels are interpreted as straight when they are actually premultiplied, semitransparent areas retain some of the background color. If a color inaccuracy, such as a halo, appears along the semitransparent edges in a composition, try changing the interpretation method.

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A footage item with premultiplied channels (top) appears with a black halo when interpreted as Straight-Unmatted (lower-left). When the footage item is interpreted as Premultiplied-Matted With Color and the background color is specified as black, the halo does not appear (lowerright).

You can use the Remove Color Matting effect to remove the fringes from the semi-transparent areas of a layer by unmultiplying it.

Aharon Rabinowitz provides a video tutorial on the Creative COW website that describes how and when to use the Remove Color Matting effect.

More Help topics

“Remove Color Matting effect” on page 445

Set the alpha channel interpretation for a footage item

1 In the Project panel, select a footage item.

2 Choose File > Interpret Footage > Main.

3 If you want to switch the opaque and transparent areas of the image, select Invert Alpha.

4 In the Alpha section, select an interpretation method:

Guess Attempts to determine the type of channels used in the image. If After Effects cannot guess confidently, it beeps.

Ignore Disregards transparency information contained in the alpha channel.

Straight - Unmatted Interprets the channels as straight.

Premultiplied - Matted With Color Interprets channels as premultiplied. Use the eyedropper or color picker to specify

the color of the background with which the channels were premultiplied.

Set the default alpha channel preferences

1 Choose Edit > Preferences > Import (Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > Import (Mac OS).

2 Choose options from the Interpret Unlabeled Alpha As menu. The options in this menu are similar to the options

in the Interpret Footage dialog box. Ask User specifies that the Interpret Footage dialog box opens each time a footage item with an unlabeled alpha channel is imported.

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Frame rate

The composition frame rate determines the number of frames displayed per second, and how time is divided into frames in the time ruler and time display. In other words, the composition frame rate specifies how many times per second images are sampled from the source footage items, and it specifies the time divisions at which keyframes can be set.

Note: After Effects CS5.5 and later contains a dropdown menu for drop-frame or non-drop-frame timecode in the Composition Settings dialog box. In previous releases, this option was a global setting per project.

This video form the “After Effects CS5: Learn by Video” series provides and introduction to frame rates for footage

items, compositions, and rendered movies, and how to modify each kind of frame rate to achieve the desired result.

Composition frame rate is usually determined by the type of output that you are targeting. NTSC video has a frame rate of 29.97 frames per second (fps), PAL video has a frame rate of 25 fps, and motion picture film typically has a frame rate of 24 fps. Depending on the broadcast system, DVD video can have the same frame rate as NTSC video or PAL video, or a frame rate of 23.976. Cartoons and video intended for CD-ROM or the web are often 10–15 fps.

Setting the composition frame rate to twice the rate of the output format causes After Effects to display each field of

interlaced source footage as its own, separate frame in the Composition panel. This process lets you set keyframes on individual fields and gain precision when animating masks.

When you render a movie for final output, you can choose to use the composition frame rate or another frame rate. The ability to set the frame rate for each output module is useful when you are using the same composition to create output for multiple media.

Each motion-footage item in a composition can also have its own frame rate. The relationship between the footageitem frame rate and the composition frame rate determines how smoothly the layer plays. For example, if the footageitem frame rate is 30 fps and the composition frame rate is 30 fps, then whenever the composition advances one frame, the next frame from the footage item is displayed. If the footage-item frame rate is 15 fps and the composition frame rate is 30 fps, then each frame of the footage item appears in two successive frames of the composition. (This assumes, of course, the simple case in which no time stretching or frame blending has been applied to the layer.)

Ideally, use source footage that matches the final output frame rate. This way, After Effects renders each frame, and the final output does not omit, duplicate, or interpolate frames. If, however, the source footage has a frame rate slightly different from what you want to output to (for example, 30-fps footage and 29.97-fps final output), you can make the footage frame rate match the composition frame rate by conforming it.

Conforming the frame rate of a footage item does not alter the original file, only the reference that After Effects uses. When conforming, After Effects changes the internal duration of frames but not the frame content. Afterward, the footage plays back at a different speed. For example, if you conform the frame rate from 15 fps to 30 fps, the footage plays back twice as fast. In most cases, conform the frame rate only when the difference between the footage frame rate and the output frame rate is small.

Note: Conforming can change the synchronization of visual footage that has an audio track, because changing the frame rate changes the duration of the video but leaves the audio unchanged. If you want to stretch both audio and video, use the Time Stretch command. (See

“Time-stretch a layer” on page 229.) Keyframes applied to the source footage remain at their original locations (which retains their synchronization within the composition but not the visual content of the layer). You may need to adjust keyframe locations after conforming a footage item.

You can change the frame rate for any movie or sequence of still images. For example, you can import a sequence of ten still images and specify a frame rate for that footage item of 5 frames per second (fps); this sequence would then have a duration of two seconds when used in a composition.

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Note: When you import a sequence of still images, it assumes the frame rate specified by the Sequence Footage preference in the Import category. The default rate is 30 frames per second (fps). You can change the frame rate after importing by reinterpreting the footage item. (See

“Interpret footage items” on page 75.)

Lower frame rates tend to give the impression of unreality, so many people prefer to work at a lower frame rate such as 24 frames per second for creative work instead of working at the 29.97 frames per second that is standard for NTSC video.

Note: If you remove 3:2 pulldown from interlaced video footage, After Effects automatically sets the frame rate of the resulting footage item to four-fifths of the original frame rate. When removing 3:2 pulldown from NTSC video, the resulting frame rate is 24 fps.

The frame rate of the composition should match the frame rate of the final output format. In most cases, you can simply choose a composition settings preset. In contrast, set the frame rate for each footage item to the frame rate of the original source footage.

Trish and Chris Meyer provide tips and tricks regarding conforming footage items to a specific frame rate in an article (PDF) on

Artbeats website.

Trish and Chris Meyer provide links to technical reference materials about frame rates and other details of digital video

ProVideo Coalition website.

on the

John Dickinson provides a video tutorial on the Motionworks website that shows how and why to double the frame rate of a composition so that you can work with individual fields when animating and rotoscoping with interlaced source footage.

More Help topics

“Render settings” on page 689

“Converting movies” on page 714

Change frame rate for a footage item

1 Select the footage item in the Project panel.

2 Choose File > Interpret Footage > Main.

3 Select Conform To Frame Rate, enter a new frame rate for Frames Per Second, and then click OK.

Instead of using Interpret Footage to change a footage item’s frame rate, you can time-stretch a layer based on the footage item. For example, time-stretch a layer by 100.1% to convert between 30fps and 29.97fps. Time-stretching

modifies the speed of audio as well as video. (See

“Time-stretch a layer” on page 229.)

Change frame rate for a composition

1 Choose Composition > Composition Settings.

2 Do one of the following:

• Choose a composition settings preset from the Preset menu.

• Set the Frame Rate value.

Note: Jeff Almasol provides a script on is redefinery website to set the frame rate and duration of the current composition and all compositions nested within it.

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Pixel aspect ratio and frame aspect ratio

Pixel aspect ratio (PAR) is the ratio of width to height of one pixel in an image. Frame aspect ratio (sometimes called image aspect ratio or IAR) is the ratio of width to height of the image frame.

416

A 4:3 frame aspect ratio (left), and a wider 16:9 frame aspect ratio (right)

Most computer monitors use square pixels, but many video formats—including ITU-R 601 (D1) and DV—use nonsquare rectangular pixels.

Some video formats output the same frame aspect ratio but use a different pixel aspect ratio. For example, some NTSC digitizers produce a 4:3 frame aspect ratio, with square pixels (1.0 pixel aspect ratio), and a frame with pixel dimensions of 640x480. D1 NTSC produces the same 4:3 frame aspect ratio but uses nonsquare pixels (0.91 pixel aspect ratio) and a frame with pixel dimensions of 720x486. D1 pixels, which are always nonsquare, are vertically oriented in systems producing NTSC video and horizontally oriented in systems producing PAL video.

If you display nonsquare pixels on a square-pixel monitor without alteration, images and motion appear distorted; for example, circles distort into ellipses. However, when displayed on a video monitor, the images are correct. When you import D1 NTSC or DV source footage into After Effects, the image looks slightly wider than it does on a D1 or DV system. (D1 PAL footage looks slightly narrower.) The opposite occurs when you import anamorphic footage using D1/DV NTSC Widescreen or D1/DV PAL Widescreen. Widescreen video formats have a frame aspect ratio of 16:9.

Note: To preview non-square pixels on a computer monitor, click the Toggle Pixel Aspect Ratio Correction button at the bottom of the Composition panel. The quality of the pixel aspect ratio correction for previews is affected by the Zoom Quality preference in the Previews category. (See

“Viewer Quality preferences” on page 185.)

Square and nonsquare pixels A. Square pixels and 4:3 frame aspect ratio B. Nonsquare pixels and 4:3 frame aspect ratio C. Nonsquare pixels displayed on a square-pixel monitor

If a footage item uses nonsquare pixels, After Effects displays the pixel aspect ratio next to the thumbnail image for the footage item in the Project panel. You can change the pixel aspect ratio interpretation for individual footage items in the Interpret Footage dialog box. By ensuring that all footage items are interpreted correctly, you can combine footage items with different pixel aspect ratios in the same composition.

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After Effects reads and writes pixel aspect ratios directly from QuickTime movies. For example, if you import a movie captured as widescreen (16:9 DV), After Effects automatically tags it correctly. Similarly, AVI and PSD files contain information that explicitly indicates the pixel aspect ratio of the images.

If a footage item does not contain information that explicitly indicates the pixel aspect ratio of the image, After Effects uses the pixel dimensions of the footage item frame to make a guess. When you import a footage item with either the D1 pixel dimensions of 720x486 or the DV pixel dimensions of 720x480, After Effects automatically interprets that footage item as D1/DV NTSC. When you import a footage item with the D1 or DV pixel dimensions of 720x576, After Effects automatically interprets that footage item as D1/DV PAL. However, you can make sure that all files are interpreted correctly by looking in the Project panel or the Interpret Footage dialog box.

Note: Make sure to reset the pixel aspect ratio to Square Pixels when you import a square-pixel file that happens to have a D1 or DV pixel dimensions—for example, a non-DV image that happens to have pixel dimensions of 720x480.

The pixel aspect ratio setting of the composition should match the pixel aspect ratio of the final output format. In most cases, you can simply choose a composition settings preset. In contrast, set the pixel aspect ratio for each footage item to the pixel aspect ratio of the original source footage.

Trish and Chris Meyer provide tips and tricks regarding pixel aspect ratio in two PDF documents on the Artbeats website:

• Pixel aspect ratio, part 1

• Pixel aspect ratio, part 2

Chris Pirazzi provides technical details about aspect ratios on his Lurker's Guide to Video website.

Upgrade pixel aspect ratios to correct values

After Effects CS3 and earlier used pixel aspect ratios for standard-definition video formats that ignore the concept of clean aperture. By not accounting for the fact that clean aperture differs from production aperture in standarddefinition video, the pixel aspect ratios used by After Effects CS3 and earlier were slightly inaccurate. The incorrect pixel aspect ratios cause some images to appear subtly distorted.

Note: The clean aperture is the portion of the image that is free from artifacts and distortions that appear at the edges of an image. The production aperture is the entire image.

The BBC provides technical details and guidelines on the BBC website regarding dimensions and aspect ratios for PAL video, including an explanation of the discrepancy in pixel aspect ratios. The same concepts apply to NTSC video.

Chris Meyer explains why the corrected pixel aspect ratios are better and how some workflows are affected in the “New Pixel Aspect Ratios” video in the

Todd Kopriva summarizes information about the corrected pixel aspect ratios in a post on the Adobe website.

Pixel aspect ratio values in After Effects CS4 and later have been corrected as follows:

format value in After Effects CS4

and later

D1/DV NTSC 0.91 0.9

D1/DV NTSC Widescreen 1.21 1.2

D1/DV PAL 1.09 1.07

D1/DV PAL Widescreen 1.46 1.42

After Effects CS4 New Creative Techniques series on the Lynda.com website.

previous value

This discrepancy is limited to these older, standard-definition formats for which clean aperture differs from production aperture. This discrepancy doesn’t exist in newer formats.

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New projects and compositions created in After Effects CS4 and later use the correct pixel aspect ratio values by default.

Projects and compositions created in After Effects CS3 or earlier are upgraded to use the correct pixel aspect ratios when these projects are opened in After Effects CS4 and later.

Note: If you have a custom interpretation rules file, then you should update it with the correct pixel aspect ratio values.

If you use square-pixel footage items that are designed to fill the frame in a composition with non-square pixels, you may find that the change in pixel aspect ratios causes a difference in behavior. For example, if you previously created 768x576 square-pixel footage items to use in a PAL D1/DV composition, you should now create those items with square-pixel dimensions of 788x576.

Composition settings presets for square-pixel equivalents of standard definition formats have changed as follows:

format pixel dimensions in

NTSC D1 square-pixel equivalent

NTSC D1 Widescreen squarepixel equivalent

PAL D1/DV square-pixel equivalent

PAL D1/DV Widescreen square-pixel equivalent

After Effects CS4 and later

720x534 720x540

872x486 864x486

788x576 768x576

1050x576 1024x576

previous pixel dimensions

Change pixel aspect ratio interpretation for a footage item

1 Select a footage item in the Project panel.

2 Choose File > Interpret Footage > Main.

3 Choose a ratio from the Pixel Aspect Ratio menu and click OK.

Change pixel aspect ratio for a composition

1 Choose Composition > Composition Settings.

2 Do one of the following:

• Choose a composition settings preset from the Preset menu.

• Choose a value from the Pixel Aspect Ratio menu.

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Common pixel aspect ratios

Pixel aspect ratio When to use

Square pixels 1.0 Footage has a 640x480 or 648x486 frame size, is 1920x1080 HD (not

D1/DV NTSC 0.91 Footage has a 720x486 or 720x480 frame size, and the desired result is

D1/DV NTSC Widescreen

D1/DV PAL 1.09 Footage has a 720x576 frame size, and the desired result is a 4:3 frame

D1/DV PAL Widescreen

Anamorphic 2:1 2.0 Footage was shot using an anamorphic film lens, or it was

HDV 1080/DVCPRO HD 720, HD Anamorphic 1080

DVCPRO HD 1080 1.5 Footage has a 1280x1080 frame size, and the desired result is a 16:9

1.21 Footage has a 720x486 or 720x480 frame size, and the desired result is

1.46 Footage has a 720x576 frame size, and the desired result is a 16:9 frame

1.33 Footage has a 1440x1080 or 960x720 frame size, and the desired result

HDV or DVCPRO HD), is 1280x720 HD or HDV, or was exported from an application that doesn’t support nonsquare pixels. This setting can also be appropriate for footage that was transferred from film or for customized projects.

a 4:3 frame aspect ratio. This setting can also be appropriate for footage that was exported from an application that works with nonsquare pixels, such as a 3D animation application.

a 16:9 frame aspect ratio.

aspect ratio.

anamorphically transferred from a film frame with a 2:1 aspect ratio.

is a 16:9 frame aspect ratio.

frame aspect ratio.

Working with footage items

Organize, view, manage, and trim footage items

Compositions and footage items are listed in the Project panel. Unlike items in the Timeline panel and Effect Controls panel, the order of items in the Project panel has no influence on the appearance of the movies that you create. You can organize footage items and compositions however you like, including organizing them using folders. Solid-color footage items are automatically placed in the Solids folder.

Folders that you create in the Project panel exist only in the Project panel. You can expand a folder to reveal its contents, and put folders inside other folders. To move a file or folder to the top level of the Project panel, drag it to the gray information area at the top of the panel.

You can use the search field in the Project panel to find footage items that meet various criteria, such as those with missing source files. See

More Help topics

“Collect files in one location” on page 686

“Color labels for layers, compositions, and footage items” on page 136

“Projects (keyboard shortcuts)” on page 721

“Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels” on page 45.

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Scripts for managing footage items

Jeff Almasol provides a script on his redefinery website that automatically writes specified information about footage items or layers to the Comment fields for the respective items in the Project panel or Timeline panel.

Christopher Green provides a script (Project_Items_Renamer.jsx) on his website with which you can rename compositions and footage items selected in the Project panel. You can search and replace text in the names, append characters to the beginning or end of the names, or trim a specified number of characters from the beginning or end of the names.

Lloyd Alvarez provides a script on the After Effects Scripts website with which you can search an After Effects project and replace the file paths for the sources of footage items. This is convenient for swapping out source files, updating a project after moving sources, or updating a project after moving it to a different computer system.

Show information for items

• To show information about a footage item or composition, select it in the Project panel. Information is displayed

at the top of the Project panel next to the thumbnail image.

• To show the file creator ID for a footage item, Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) it in the Project panel.

Create a folder

❖ Choose File > New > New Folder, or click the Create A New Folder icon at the bottom of the Project panel.

Rename and sort items

• To rename a composition, footage item, or folder, do one of the following:

• Select the item in the Project panel, press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS), and enter the new name.

• Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the item, choose Rename, and enter the new name.

• To rename the Comment column, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the column heading and

choose Rename This.

You can use the Comment column to create a custom sorting option. Rename the column, enter corresponding information for each item (for example, camera number), and then sort by that column.

• To sort items by entries in any column, click the column name in the Project panel.

Copy items

• To duplicate or copy an item in the Project panel, select it and choose Edit > Duplicate or Edit > Copy.

• To copy a footage item to Windows Explorer (Windows) or the Finder (Mac OS), drag the footage item from the

Project panel to the desktop.

Reveal footage items

• To reveal where a footage item is used in a composition, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the

footage item in the Project panel and choose Reveal In Composition; then select the specific instance you want to reveal (composition name, layer name).

• To reveal the source footage item for a layer in the Project panel, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS)

the layer in the Timeline panel, and then choose Reveal Layer Source In Project.

• To reveal the location of a footage item in Adobe Bridge, Windows Explorer, or the Finder, right-click (Windows)

or Control-click (Mac OS) the footage item in the Project panel and choose Reveal In Bridge, Reveal In Windows Explorer, or Reveal In Finder.

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Refresh footage items

❖ To refresh footage items selected in the Project panel to use the current versions of the source footage files, choose

File > Reload Footage.

View footage item in the Footage panel or media player assigned by operating system

When items are previewed in the Footage panel, they show the results of the footage interpretation operations. (See “Interpret footage items” on page 75.)

• To open a footage item in a Footage panel, double-click the footage item in the Project panel.

• To open selected footage items in the Footage panel, press Enter on the numeric keypad when the Project panel is

active.

Note: To open the source for a footage item using the player application associated with that file type, Alt-double-click (Windows) or Option-double-click (Mac OS) the footage item in the Project panel. See the documentation for your operating system for instructions for changing the associations between applications and file types.

Trim footage items in the Footage panel

You can use the Set In Point , Set Out Point , Ripple Insert Edit , and Overlay Edit controls in the Footage panel to trim a footage item and insert it into a composition. Trimming in the Footage panel can be more convenient than adding the footage item to a composition and then trimming its layer in the Timeline panel.

More Help topics

“Trim, extend, or slip-edit a layer” on page 127

“Footage (keyboard shortcuts)” on page 727

Edit footage in its original application

You can open and edit a footage item in the application in which it was created, directly from an After Effects project. The original application must be installed on the computer that you are using, which must have enough available RAM for it to run. When you edit and save changes to the footage in the original application, the changes are applied to all instances of the footage when After Effects becomes the active application.

Note: If you’re editing footage that has an alpha channel, make sure that you’re viewing and editing all of the channels, including the alpha channel, in the other application. Otherwise, changes you make may not be applied to the alpha channel, and it may become misaligned with the color channels.

When you edit a still-image sequence selected in the Timeline or Composition panel, the individual image that is currently displayed opens. When you edit a still-image sequence selected in the Project panel, the first image in the sequence opens.

1 In the Project panel, Composition panel, or Timeline panel, select the footage item or a layer that uses the footage

item as its source. If you selected a still-image sequence from the Composition or Timeline panel, move the currenttime indicator to the frame displaying the still image you want to edit.

2 Choose Edit > Edit Original.

3 Edit the footage in its original application, and save the changes.

Remove items from a project

Before reducing your project, removing unused footage, or consolidating footage, consider making a backup by incrementing and saving your project first. (See

“Save and back up projects in After Effects CS5” on page 52.)

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Carl Larsen demonstrates the use of the Collect Files command and the Consolidate All Footage command in a video tutorial on the

Creative COW website that shows how to organize, consolidate, and archive project files and footage.

• To remove an item from a project, select the item in the Project panel and press Delete.

• To remove all unused footage items from a project, choose File > Remove Unused Footage.

• To remove all duplicate footage items from a project, Choose File > Consolidate All Footage. After Effects considers

footage items to be duplicates only if they use the same Interpret Footage settings.

When a duplicate item is removed, layers that refer to the duplicate item are updated to refer to the remaining copy.

• To remove unselected compositions and unused footage items from selected compositions in the Project panel,

choose File > Reduce Project. This command is available only when the Project panel is active.

This command removes both unused footage items and all other compositions that are not included within a selected composition as nested (subordinate) compositions.

If the selected composition includes items that are turned off (that is, the Video or Audio switch is deselected in the Timeline panel), the Reduce Project command does not remove those items.

If an expression in a selected composition refers to an element in a nonsubordinate composition, Reduce Project removes the nonsubordinate composition and the applied expression. A message appears after you choose Reduce Project to remind you of this possibility, so you can undo the command if needed. To avoid removing the expressions from a nonsubordinate composition, drag the nonsubordinate composition into the composition that refers to it. Then deselect the Audio and Video switches for the composition that you added.

The SaveCompAsProject script from Sebastian Perier on the AEScripts website saves selected compositions as

individual projects.

Placeholders and proxies

When you want to temporarily use a substitute for a footage item, use either a placeholder or a proxy.

Placeholder A still image of color bars used to temporarily take the place of a missing footage item. Use a placeholder

when you are building a composition and want to try out ideas for a footage item that is not yet available. After Effects generates placeholders automatically, so you do not have to provide a placeholder footage item.

Proxy Any file used to temporarily replace a footage item, but most often a lower-resolution or still version of an

existing footage item used to replace the original. Often, storyboard images are used as proxies. You can use a proxy either before you have the final footage or when you have the actual footage item but you want to speed up previewing or rendering of test movies. You must have a file available to use as a proxy.

Any masks, attributes, expressions, effects, and keyframes that you apply to the layer are retained when you replace its placeholder or proxy with the final footage item.

In the Project panel, After Effects marks the footage name to indicate whether the actual footage item or its proxy is currently in use:

• A filled box indicates that a proxy item is currently in use throughout the project. The name of the proxy appears

in bold type at the top of the Project panel when the footage item is selected.

• An empty box indicates that the footage item is in use throughout the project, though a proxy has been assigned.

• No box indicates that no proxy is assigned to the footage item.

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Proxy items in Project panel A. Proxy assigned and in use B. Proxy assigned, but original in use C. No proxy assigned D. Proxy name

More Help topics

“Render settings” on page 689

“Post-render actions” on page 695

Work with placeholders and missing footage items

For best results, set the placeholder to the same size, duration, and frame rate as the actual footage.

If After Effects cannot find source footage when you open a project, the footage item appears in the Project panel labeled Missing, and the name of the missing footage appears in italics. Any composition using that item replaces it with a placeholder. You can still work with the missing item in the project, and any effects you applied to the original footage remain intact. When you replace the placeholder with the source footage, After Effects places the footage in its correct location in all the compositions that use it.

You can find footage items for which the source items are missing by typing missing in the search field in the Project panel. See “Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels” on page 45.

• To use a placeholder, choose File > Import > Placeholder.

• To replace the selected footage item with a placeholder, choose File > Replace Footage > Placeholder.

• To replace a placeholder with the actual footage item, select the placeholder you want to replace in the Project panel,

choose File > Replace Footage > File, and locate the actual footage.

Work with proxies for footage items

When you use a proxy, After Effects replaces the actual footage with the proxy in all compositions that use the actual footage item. When you finish working, you can switch back to the actual footage item in the project list. After Effects then replaces the proxy with the actual footage item in any composition.

When you render your composition as a movie, you may choose to use either all the actual high-resolution footage items or their proxies. You may want to use the proxies for a rendered movie if, for example, you simply want to test motion using a rough movie that renders quickly.

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USING AFTER EFFECTS

Importing and managing footage items

For best results, set a proxy so that it has the same frame aspect ratio as the actual footage item. For example, if the actual footage item is a 640x480-pixel movie, create and use a 160x120-pixel proxy. When a proxy item is imported, After Effects scales the item to the same size and duration as the actual footage. If you create a proxy with a frame aspect ratio that is different from the frame aspect ratio of the actual footage item, scaling takes longer.

❖ In the Project panel, do any of the following:

• To locate and use a proxy, select a footage item, choose File > Set Proxy > File, locate and select the file you want to

use as a proxy, and click Open.

• To toggle between using the original footage and its proxy, click the proxy indicator to the left of the footage name.

• To stop using a proxy, select the original footage item, and choose File > Set Proxy > None.

Create a proxy

Use the Create Proxy command to create a proxy from footage or compositions selected in the Project panel or the Timeline panel. This command adds the selected footage to the Render Queue panel and sets the Post-Render Action option to Set Proxy.

1 Open a footage item or composition in the Project or Timeline panel.

2 Move the current-time indicator in the Footage panel to the frame that you want to use as the proxy still item, or

for the poster frame for the movie footage item.

3 Choose one of the following commands:

• File > Create Proxy > Still to create a still image proxy.

• File > Create Proxy > Movie to create a moving image proxy.

4 Specify a name and output destination for the proxy.

5 In the Render Queue panel, specify render settings, and click Render.

Create placeholders for output

You can create placeholder files that can be used in different compositions. For example, you can create a placeholder for an item in the render queue that will create a 24-fps movie and then drag that placeholder into a 30-fps composition. Then, when you render the 30-fps composition, After Effects first renders the placeholder at 24 fps and uses this rendered version as it renders the 30-fps composition.

❖ Drag the Output Module heading for a queued item from the Render Queue panel to the Project panel. After Effects

creates a placeholder for output in the Project panel and sets the Post-Render Action option for the item to Import & Replace Usage.

Additional resources for working with placeholders and proxies

Trish and Chris Meyer give tips on prerendering and proxies in After Effects in this article on the ProVideo Coalition

website.

Andrew Kramer provides a video tutorial with tips for working with proxies, output modules, and output module templates on the

Jeff Almasol provides a script on his redefinery website that creates, sets, and unsets proxies and placeholders.

Charles Bordenave (nab) provides a script on the After Effects Scripts website with which you can create proxies for multiple selected items.

Chris and Trish Meyer explain how to use Footage Proxies with RED footage in After Effects with this article on the

Pro Video Coalition website.

Video Copilot website.

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Importing and managing footage items

See this video tutorial on the Video2Brain website by Todd Kopriva for information about saving time by pre-

rendering and using proxies in After Effects.

Loop a footage item

If you intend to loop a visual footage item continuously in your project, you only need to create one cycle of the footage item in After Effects.

1 In the Project panel, select the footage item to loop.

2 Choose File > Interpret Footage > Main.

3 Type an integer value for Loop and click OK.

Lloyd Alvarez provides a script on the After Effects Scripts website that automatically loops a footage item, composition, or layer.

Importing from After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro

Import an After Effects project

You can import one After Effects project into another. Everything from the imported project—including footage items, compositions, and folders—appears inside a new folder in the current Project panel.

Note: After Effects CS5 can open and import After Effects projects created by After Effects 6.0 and later. After Effects CS5.5 and later can open and import an After Effects 6.5 project and later.

You can import an After Effects project from a different operating system, as long as you maintain the filenames, folder names, and either full or relative paths (folder locations) for all files in the project. To maintain relative paths, the source footage files must reside on the same volume as the project file. Use the File > Collect Files command to gather copies of all files in a project or composition into a single location. (See page 17.)

1 Choose File > Import > File.

2 Select the After Effects project to import, and click Open.

If the operating system that you are using does not support a file format, if the file is missing, or if the reference link is broken, After Effects substitutes a placeholder item containing color bars. You can reconnect the placeholder to the appropriate file by double-clicking the entry in the Project panel and navigating to the source file. In most cases, you need to relink only one footage file. After Effects locates other missing items if they’re in the same location.

Note: When you render a movie and export it to the QuickTime (MOV), Video for Windows (AVI), FLV, or F4V container format, you can embed a link to the project in the container file. To import the project, import the MOV, AVI, FLV, or F4V file, and choose Project from the Import As menu in the Import File dialog box. If the file contains a link to a project that has been moved, you can browse to locate the project. After Effects CS5 can import projects using such links from movies created in After Effects CS4 and later.

“Cross-platform project considerations” on

More Help topics

“Collect files in one location” on page 686

“Placeholders and proxies” on page 87

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Importing and managing footage items

Import an Adobe Premiere Pro project

Important: Importing an Adobe Premiere Pro project into After Effects does not use Dynamic Link. After Effects can’t import a Premiere Pro project if one or more sequences in it are already dynamically linked to After Effects. (See

with Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects” on page 24.)

When you import an Adobe Premiere Pro project, After Effects imports it into the Project panel as both a new composition containing each Adobe Premiere Pro clip as a layer, and as a folder containing each clip as an individual footage item. If your Adobe Premiere Pro project contains bins, After Effects converts them to folders within the Adobe Premiere Pro project folder. After Effects converts nested sequences to nested compositions.

Note: After Effects CS5 on Mac OS can import Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, CS4, and CS5 projects. After Effects CS5 on Mac OS can’t import Adobe Premiere Pro 1.0, 1.5, or 2.0 projects. After Effects CS5 on Windows can import projects from all Premiere Pro versions. After Effects CS5 can’t directly import Premiere 6.5 projects. If you need to import a Premiere 6.5 project, first convert it to a Premiere Pro project using a version of Premiere Pro that can import Premiere 6.5 projects. After Effects CS5.5 and later can import Premiere 6.5 projects and later.

Not all features of an Adobe Premiere Pro project are preserved when the project is imported into After Effects. The same features are preserved when you import a Premiere Pro project into After Effects as when you copy and paste between Premiere Pro and After Effects. (See

“Importing from After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro” on page 90.)

After Effects preserves the order of clips in the timeline, the footage duration (including all trimmed In and Out points), and marker and transition locations. After Effects bases the arrangement of layers in the Timeline panel on the arrangement of clips in the Adobe Premiere Pro Timeline panel. After Effects adds Adobe Premiere Pro clips to the Timeline panel as layers in the order in which they appeared—from the bottom up and from left to right—in the Adobe Premiere Pro Timeline panel. After Effects preserves changes made to the speed of a clip, for example, with the Clip > Speed command, and these changes appear as a value in the Stretch column in the After Effects Timeline panel.

“Working

After Effects imports effects common to Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, and preserves keyframes for these effects.

Transitions and titles (except for dissolves) included in your Adobe Premiere Pro project appear in the After Effects composition as solid layers with their original location and duration.

Audio Level keyframes are preserved.

1 Choose File > Import > File or File > Import > Adobe Premiere Pro Project.

If you choose Import > Adobe Premiere Pro Project, then only Adobe Premiere Pro projects are shown.

2 Select a project, and click OK.

3 Do any of the following:

• To import only one sequence, choose a sequence from the menu.

• To import audio, select Import Audio.

To add a single item from a track in an Adobe Premiere Pro project, copy the item in Adobe Premiere Pro, and choose Edit > Paste in After Effects.

More Help topics

“Copy between After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro” on page 92

“About precomposing and nesting” on page 63

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Importing and managing footage items

Use Adobe Premiere Pro for capture (Production Premium and Master Collection only)

If you have Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium or Master Collection, you can start Adobe Premiere Pro from inside After Effects and use it to capture footage for use in your After Effects project.

❖ Choose File > Import > Capture In Adobe Premiere Pro.

Copy between After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro

• From the

• After Effects

•

Timeline panel, you can copy layers based on audio or video footage items (including solids) and paste them into the

• Adobe Premiere Pro

• Timeline panel.

• From the

• Adobe Premiere Pro

• Timeline panel, you can copy assets (any items in a track) and paste them into the

• After Effects

• Timeline panel.

• From either

• After Effects

• or

• Adobe Premiere Pro

• , you can copy and paste footage items to the other’s Project panel.

Note: You can’t, however, paste footage items from the

Note: After Effects

Note: Project panel into the

Note: Adobe Premiere Pro

Note: Timeline panel.

If you want to work with all clips or a single sequence from an Adobe

Premiere Pro

project, use the Import command instead to import the project into

After Effects

Use Adobe Dynamic Link to create dynamic links, without rendering, between new or existing compositions in

After Effects

and

Adobe Premiere Pro

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Importing and managing footage items

. (See “About Dynamic Link (Production Premium or Master Collection only)” on page 27.)

Copy from After Effects to Adobe Premiere Pro

You can copy a layer based on a footage item from an

After Effects

composition and paste it into an Adobe Premiere Pro sequence.

Adobe Premiere Pro

converts these layers to clips in the sequence and copies the source footage item to its Project panel. If the layer contains an effect that is also used by Adobe

Premiere Pro

Adobe Premiere Pro

converts the effect and all of its settings and keyframes.

You can also copy nested compositions, Photoshop layers, solid-color layers, and audio layers. Adobe Premiere Pro converts nested compositions to nested sequences, and solid-color layers to color mattes. You cannot copy shape, text, camera, light, or adjustment layers to

Adobe Premiere Pro

1 Start

2 Adobe Premiere Pro

3 (you must start Adobe

4 Premiere Pro

5 before you copy the layer in

6 After Effects

7 ).

8 Select a layer (or layers) from the

9 After Effects

10 Timeline panel.

Note: If you select multiple layers and the layers don’t overlap in

Note: After Effects

Note: , they’re placed on the same track in Adobe

Note: Premiere Pro

Note: . On the other hand, if the layers overlap in After Effects, the order in which you select them determines the order

of their track placement in

Note: Adobe Premiere Pro

Note: . Each layer is placed on a separate track, and the last selected layer appears on Track 1. For example, if you select

layers from top to bottom, the layers appear in the reverse order in

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Note: Adobe Premiere Pro

Note: , with the bottom-most layer on Track 1.

11 Choose Edit > Copy.

12 In

13 Adobe Premiere Pro

14 , open a sequence in the Timeline panel.

15 Move the current-time indicator to the desired location, and choose either Edit > Paste or Edit > Paste Insert.

Results of pasting into Adobe Premiere Pro

When you paste a layer into an

Adobe Premiere Pro

sequence, keyframes, effects, and other properties in the copied layer are converted as follows:

After Effects

item

Audio volume property Channel Volume filter

Blending modes Blending modes supported by

Effect properties and keyframes Effect properties and keyframes, if the

Expressions Not converted

Layer markers Clip markers

Masks and mattes Not converted

Stereo Mixer effect Channel Volume filter

Time Remap property Time Remapping effect

Converted to in

Adobe Premiere Pro

Premiere Pro are converted

Adobe

effect also exists in

Adobe Premiere Pro

Notes

Adobe Premiere Pro

lists unsupported effects as offline in the Effect Controls panel. Some

After Effects

effects have the same names as those in

Adobe Premiere Pro

, but since they’re actually different effects, they aren’t converted.

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USING AFTER EFFECTS

Importing and managing footage items

After Effects

item

Time Stretch property Speed property Speed and time stretch have an

Transform property values and keyframes

Source settings for R3D source files

Converted to in

Adobe Premiere Pro

Motion or Opacity values and keyframes

Source settings for R3D source files

Notes

inverse relationship. For example, 200% stretch in

After Effects

converts to 50% speed in

Adobe Premiere Pro

The keyframe type—Bezier, Auto Bezier, Continuous Bezier, or Hold—is retained.

Copy from Adobe Premiere Pro to After Effects

You can copy a video or audio asset from an

Adobe Premiere Pro

sequence and paste it into an

After Effects

composition.

After Effects

converts assets to layers and copies the source footage items into its Project panel. If the asset contains an effect that is also used by

After Effects

converts the effect and all of its settings and keyframes.

You can copy color mattes, stills, nested sequences, and offline files, too.

After Effects

converts color mattes into solid-color layers and converts nested sequences into nested compositions. When you copy a Photoshop still image into

After Effects

retains the Photoshop layer information. You cannot paste

Adobe Premiere Pro

titles into

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Macromedia After Effects - CS5 Instruction Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

Legal notices

Contents

Chapter 1: What’s new

What’s new

What’s new in After Effects CS5

Online resources about new and changed features in After Effects CS5

Top new features in After Effects CS5

Other new and changed features in After Effects CS5

What’s new in After Effects CS5.5

Top new features in After Effects CS5.5

Chapter 2: Workflows, planning, and setup

Setup and installation

Installing the software

Activate the software

Workflows

General workflow in After Effects

Online resources for general workflow in After Effects

Overview of general workflow in After Effects

Basic workflow tutorial: Create a simple movie

Planning and setup

Planning your work

Storyboards and scripts (screenplays)

Acquiring, choosing, and preparing footage

Project settings

Composition settings

Performance, memory, and storage considerations

Planning for playback on computer monitors and mobile devices

Cross-platform project considerations

Working with After Effects and other applications

Working with Adobe Bridge and After Effects

Working with Photoshop and After Effects

Comparative advantages for specific tasks

3D objects, 3D models, and 3D images

Exchanging still images

Exchanging movies

Color

Working with Flash and After Effects

Working with Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects

Working with Adobe Encore and After Effects

Create a button for Adobe Encore

Assign a subpicture highlight and video thumbnail to a layer

Export a button for use in Adobe Encore

Edit audio in Adobe Soundbooth

Edit in Adobe Audition (CS5.5 and later)

Dynamic Link and After Effects

About Dynamic Link (Production Premium or Master Collection only)

Create and link to After Effects compositions with Dynamic Link (Production Premium or Master Collection only)

Create a composition from clips in Adobe Premiere Pro

Create a dynamically linked composition from Adobe Premiere Pro or Encore

Link to an existing composition

Modify a dynamically linked composition in After Effects (Production Premium or Master Collection only)

Delete a dynamically linked composition or clip (Production Premium or Master Collection only)

Create a linked sequence in Adobe Premiere Pro with Dynamic Link (Production Premium or Master Collection only)

Link to a new sequence

Link to an existing sequence

Dynamic Link performance (Production Premium or Master Collection only)

Chapter 3: User interface

Workspaces, panels, and viewers

Workspaces and panels

Online resources about panels and workspaces

Choose a workspace

Save, reset, or delete workspaces

Dock, group, or float panels

Resize panel groups

Open, close, and show panels and windows

Viewers

Edit this, look at that (ETLAT) and locked Composition viewers

General user interface items

Activate a tool

Open panel, viewer, and context menus

Columns

Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels

Scroll or zoom with the mouse wheel

Undo changes

After Effects user interface tips

Preferences