Adobe After FX -
Interface Intro
by Adam Sale
Terms to Know:
Footage Item - Source Material for a movie. A footage item can be a movie, a still, or an audio file. In AE a footage item is a pointer to a file that is stored somewhere on your hard drive. It is important to practice good file management skills and create appropriate folder structures for each new project you begin. This will save a lot of headache down the road, especially if you need to transfer your work from one computer to another.
Frame - Basic unit of measure in television, video, film, and DV movies. In North America video plays at 30 FPS
Frame Rate - NTSC - National Television Standards committee plays at a rate of 29.97 FPS. Therefore one second of footage contains 30 frames. Many countries use the PAL Phase Alteration Line, or SECAM - Systeme Electronic Pour Couleur Avec Memoire that plays back at a rate of 25 FPS. Film plays back at 24 FPS.
SMPTE - Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers timecode standard is used to describe the duration of a file in terms of Hours: Minutes: Seconds: Frames
Projects - Each time you start a new movie with AE, you create a Project file. The After Effects Project contains all relevant footage items, as well as any effects or animations you may have keyframed on the items themselves. The footage and animations are organized into compositions. In each composition, the various elements are organized along a timeline. You import and arrange the elements of your project within the compositions you create.
AE Preferences File - The Adobe After Effects Preferences File determines window and palette settings that are loaded when you open an AE project. As you work, you'll streamline your workflow by opening and closing various windows. AE stores these options so that the next time you open the software, these settings will be readily available. If you need to reset these preferences, you can navigate to the Prefs folder of your AE software, and delete a file called AEPrefs.txt. If you delete this file, a new one will be created for you the next time you launch After FX.
The first Time:
Launching AE for the first time opens the software with all palettes as well as the project window displayed on your desktop. To display a specific palette, you can select it in the Window menu or open it with a hotkey. The palettes are described below.
Project Window: contains links to all of the footage items in your project, movies, stills, and audio. An AE project does not actually contain any of the source material you use to create the movie, (with the exception of simple solid shapes). Instead the project points to the original source material wherever it may be stored. Once you begin working on a project, its important that you don't delete or move the source files. Selecting a footage item in the project window displays a thumbnail in the upper left of the window as well as other info such as size, duration, and resolution.
Tools Palette: contains tools for moving elements, rotating layers, magnifying images, as well as mask creation and editing tools.
Time Control: Gives VCR or DVD like shuttle control over time in your projects
Info Palette: gives important feedback regarding color values, pixel coordinates, in / out points, as well as other info.
Audio Palette: Gives limited editing capabilities, such as fade in/out over the audio levels of a layer.
Composition Window
When arranging your palettes, you'll likely need to create a new comp window. Choose Composition >New Composition. A comp settings dialogue box appears. The comp window is your main work area where you composite all of the elements of your movie using layers. When you click OK to accept the desired settings in the comp setting window, two windows open. The Comp window, or Stage, and the timeline. You can think of the comp as the stage where you assemble actors and props and control their movements. The comp window contains a number of menus, toggles and info displays.
Time Layout Window:
Each comp window has an associated Time Layout Window with the same name. Where the comp window is used to position items in space, the time layout window allows you to position items in time and control the way they change over time. Closing the comp window also closes the timeline layout window for that comp. You can reopen the timeline and comp again, by clicking the footage icon in the project window. .
Layers
Compositions generally contain multiple items. Each item brought into a composition is called a layer. Each layer consists of one item, a still, audio file, or QuickTime movie. Identifying each layer used in a composition is done by reading the names at the left side of the timeline window. Each layer is accompanied by a number, which represents its order with respect to the other layers. Layers are stacked in the timeline window in the same order they are stacked in the composition, from top to bottom. You can reorder a layer by dragging and dropping it above or below another layer
Timeline Graph
The timeline graph can be adjusted to show a focussed or vast expanse of time. In AE time is displayed in SMPTE. The blue marker with the red line extending down through all of the layers in your comp represents the current time you are currently working at in your comp. All of the layers in the comp represent the composite at that particular time. Each layer consists of a duration bar; a visual that allows you to easily see it's in and out points. A layer duration can be altered in a multitude of ways
Navigating Time
Dragging the blue marker is one way of navigating through time. Clicking Composition >Go to Time is another way, although keep in mind that you'll be entering values based on SMPTE time code. Clicking on the time display at the left side of the time layout window yields a pop up box that allows you to enter a value.
Playing the Comp.
Play a composition by pressing the spacebar, or use the time controls palette. Depending on the complexity of your comp, you may need to dial down the image size or resolution to get an acceptable playback speed. To get a solid idea of the timing of your comps, nothing beats rendering out a quick movie for reference.
Layer Switches
Layers can be displayed in a number of ways within a comp. The switches that activate or deactivate these options can be found along the timeline. The layer switches are described according to the image below
Layer Properties
At the heart of Adobe After Effects lies the ability to adjust the properties of each layer. Until now, we have looked at interface and rendering options. Each layer is defined by the properties applied to it. Masks, color corrections, blurs, scaling, opacity and rotations are only a few of the properties you can apply to a layer in AE. Changing the value of properties over time is the key to creating composites in After Effects. To display the properties of a layer, click the triangle to the left of a given layers name in the timeline window. The triangle should point down and expose the properties that have been given to the layer. By default an image layer is given a scale, opacity, rotation, masks property. Adding effects to a layer adds the effect to the property pull down for that layer. It is through the layer properties that we can begin to create animation.
Rendering
When you've created and composited your movie, you can choose to output in a myriad of formats. Rendering a composition is the only way to preview your movie in real time. Rendering is accomplished by clicking on Composition >Make Movie and adjusting the settings to suit your needs.