Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with aftereffects

Should I upgrade to After Effects CS4?

captainscared — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:51:27 -0800

I am running After Effects version 7.0.1 on my Intel iMac 2.8GHz with 4GB of RAM running Snow Leopard (10.6). It is slow. Slow to render, slow to play, slow everything. Most likely because it's using Rosetta to translate. I'm considering updating to After Effects CS4 but I have several questions. Is After Effects CS4 64-bit? Given my machine, will I be able to utilize OpenGL? My iMac is version 7,1. Will I see a noticeable speed bump? Will I become an effects guru? Thanks.

Useful workspaces now that I have a huge extended desktop?

jtron — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:52:21 -0800

I scored a huge monitor for free! Tips for video editing/motion graphics workspace layout? So I scored one of those 21" CRT monitors that people used to pay thousands of dollars for and are now somewhat devalued. It's got a max res higher than I even use; I keep it around 1600x1200, and it sits next to my laptop.

Does anyone have useful tips on how they arrange windows, timelines, palettes, etc? I use Final Cut Studio and Adobe After Effects and Photoshop the most often.

If there're any other tips for living with a new ginormo-tron on one's desk, I'd appreciate those as well.

If it matters, I'm running OS X 10.5.7 on a first-gen MacBook Pro with 2 gigs of RAM and an octopus tangle of hard drives.

Can't empty Recovered FlashTmp files, problem loading AE project on intel Macbook, why?

talljamal — Thu, 07 May 2009 03:33:45 -0800

FlashTmp files in a "Recovered Files" folder in my trash won't allow being emptied...perhaps also effecting AfterEffects project from loading and subsequently freezing on my intel Mac...What do I do? I'm going crazy!! I'm having two problems that I wonder if they are related and how to fix it... (I'm on a MBP Intel OSX, 2.53 GHz, 4GB memory, lots of hard disk space available, using an ext. drive for cache, I'm kind of new(switched back) to mac)

AE has crashed upon TRYING to open a recent project which really shouldnt be that demanding on the system...
The software isn't responding after loading 14 - 30 % of the project, then I force quit. Then yesterday it loaded no problem, don't remember doing anything differently of course..now today its back to bugging out!

Also... I also have this folder of Recovered files in my trash that won't allow being emptied because it says they are currently in use, when I have nothing running. The files in the folder are sequential FlashTmp0 thru FlashTmp4. Grrrr, what do i do!?? Are these things related?

I've adjusted memory and cache settings as recommended through google searching etc, but this other thing I can't seem to find the answer to...
so thank you MeFi's for your wisdom and sharing.

slooooowwww smoooooth motion in After Effects

SampleSize — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:27:58 -0800

I'm trying to slow down some existing regular-speed footage a whole lot. I'm using After Effects with Twixtor. The problem I'm running into is that, even though it's interpolating frames, there's still a longer pause on each real frame. I've tried non-Twixtor pixel motion and frame blending too. I don't care if it turns into a blurry mess; The important thing is that it's just smooth. Can I do that?

Have a Very Furry Christmas!

katyjack — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:27:25 -0800

I bought some stock video footage of a dog on a green background which I plan to chroma key out. Then I want to morph seamlessly into a graphic - still with the background masked out! And I want to do this all in Flash! For my Christmas Card! Not a total newbie at all of this - details inside. OK, so I do know Flash and Photoshop pretty well and I've got the entire Adobe Suite to use but I've only used Premiere and After Effects a little bit. I've masked out the background from a video before so I think I can remember how to do that with a little difficulty, but what I'd like to do is to use After Effects (I guess) to take the last frame of the image, turn it into a gif or a png and get rid of the background all together so I can take the image into flash and - well - turn it into a talking dog. My lame attempts so far at this have looked far from seamless - my vision of my talking dog christmas card is far exceeding my ability unfortunately. Does anyone have any tips for me on how to best achieve my dream?

Busby Berkeley Effect?

idledebonair — Sat, 10 May 2008 10:23:11 -0800

I want to recreate, as closely as possible, the Busby Berkeley effect where the faces go all kaleidoscopic and hazy, like in 42nd street. Here is a still. Does anyone have any ideas on how to do this, via plugin, or motion paths? Also, for extra credit, how did they do this in the 1930's? I use After Effects and Premiere.

What software should I use for this very simple animation?

The Dutchman — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:19:07 -0800

Flash? After effects? Maya? Toon Boom? Something else? I want to make some very simple abstract animation videos. The simplest would be just full screens of solid colors fading slowly into each other. Slightly more complex would be the same full screens of colors fading into each other, but not all at once. That is, maybe start the fade in the center or corner, and slowly leak in the new color. Or another slightly more complex: The screen divided into multiple blocks of different color that slowly fade into other colors. Real simple, slow, mellow stuff. So, what's the right software for that? Thanks!

What are the best resources for learning how to master the "time remapping" feature of After Effects (CS3)?

jeremias — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 10:38:28 -0800

What are the best resources for learning how to master the "time remapping" feature of After Effects (CS3)? I know AE fairly well, but have never felt I was in full control of the time remapping feature. I've done Creative Cow a bit and hunted online, but am not too interested in separating the signal from the noise. So I'm looking for proven resources, whether it be books, online tutorial, videos, etc.

How can I optimize my computer, or any computer, for Adobe After Effects and Photoshop?

idledebonair — Wed, 09 May 2007 13:25:17 -0800

How can I optimize my computer, or any computer, for Adobe After Effects and Photoshop? Specifically, I have an old Abit IC7-MAX3 that I still do all my rendering with, instead of upgrading to a new motherboard, I just wanted to max out this one. I installed a P4 Extreme Edition 3.4 ghz chip, filled it with 4GB Kingston Value Ram, installed a Promise TX4 to upgrade it to SATA 300, and also a Nvidia Quadro FX3000G.

Now then...

1) The TechNotes on Adobe.com recommend using RAID 0 for best performance and also placing the Photoshop/After Effects scratch disk on a separate disk from the one Windows uses for the page file. And many other sites recommend placing the page file on a different disk than the boot disk. So, in order to truly max out performance, do I need 4 different RAID 0 arrays? One for Windows to boot, one for the page file, one for the scratch disk, and one for the data that I'm actually working on? Is there actually a perceivable difference?

2) Secondly, what are the optimal settings for the Memory & Cache page in After Effects. I read on Adobe.com that the maximum memory can be set higher than 100% because After Effects uses the physical ram and the page file also, but any amount I set it to above 100% maxes out at 3GB, which I expected because of the nature of 32-bit operating systems. In addition, I boot windows with the /PAE and the /3GB switches in order to use this extra RAM. What should I set this to, and to what should I set Maximum RAM Cache Size? Should Disk Cache be enabled and what size should the maximum be?

Also, I frequently need to run Photoshop and After Effects at the same time. How should I configure the Page File/Scratch Disk/RAM Cache/Disk Cache so that all my software plays nicely together?

Any memory/hardware/performance tips geared towards Photoshop/After Effects will be greatly appreciated.

. What's the best workflow for moving between Final Cut Pro and After Effects?

tweebiscuit — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 14:55:10 -0800

Digital video workflow question: I'm editing a greenscreened music video, and wish to do a rough cut in Final Cut, then move the project into After Effects to do compositing. However, the only automated means of conversion the project is Automatic Duck's plugin, the price of which exceeds my budget. What's the best workflow for moving a sequence between the two applications under these conditions? The rough cut will consist of the clips that I want, sequenced and timed properly but without any effects added. The three options I can think of are

1) to export the entire rough cut as a Quicktime and bring it into AE. This is probably the worst option, for obvious reasons.
2) to work clip-by-clip, roundtripping each clip by exporting from After Effects and replacing them individually in my FCP timeline.
3) to recreate my FCP rough cut in an AE composition manually.

Option 2 seems like a lot of work during the editing process (especially if I change something later and end up having to alter and re-export/import 20 AE compositions back into FCP), whereas option 3 seems like an enormous task at the beginning of my AE project, considering how clumsy it is to use AE as a non-linear editor. (Not to mention that the clips will be carefully timed to music.)

If anyone who's worked on a similar project has an advice about the best way to organize this workflow, I would much appreciate it! (The same goes for general tips and tricks in this department.)

Need OS X equivalent of WinXP "Restore Points"

melorama — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 13:43:40 -0800

Help me track down a bug that is causing one of my OS X applications to continually crash! I am reinstalling the OS and Applications on my main Dual 2.7 G5 at work, because I need to get around some unknown issue which is causing Adobe After Effects 7.0 to continually crash at random moments, for no apparant reason.

What I'm looking for is some sort of utility which will allow me to automatically track what software I install on my machine, and when it was installed, so I have some sort of paper/bit-trail which can aid in pinpointing what program/extension is causing AE to bomb out so often.

Does such a utility exist?

I'm pretty much an (unwitting) OSX troubleshooting guru by now, so I've been down all the usual roads already (i.e. repair permissions, safe booting, switching to a new user, cache clearing, font folder clearing, memory testing, PRAM zapping, Diskwarrior, TTP, Applejack, Onyx, et. al.), but this is the only problem that continues to plague me. I've installed the latest AE 7.0.1 updater, as well as killed all AE preference files and disabled OpenGL. Nothing solves the problem.

What I'm looking to do is to start fresh from a completely naked system, and one by one, install the little things that I normally usually want to use in addition to my main applications (of which AE 7 is one of the most important), and then at the point where AE starts acking wonky, I can more easily track down what I recently installed before the wonkiness.

How to use After Effects to clean up crappy DV footage?

idledebonair — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 22:01:10 -0800

How do you clean up ugly DV footage? What are some specific techniques you use in Adobe After Effects to turn amateur DV footage into something cleaner? I'm trying to help a client make an ad, but the footage they gave me is really raw. They want a polished look, even though I explained its never going to look like TV. I just want to come as close as possible given that I have crummy footage.

Guerilla chroma key

prostyle — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 12:30:17 -0800

DV Film Effects: Techniques & Tips I've recently been shooting some short instructional video clips. I've got a GL1, some basic flourescent photo lights and a handful of shielded photographic bulbs. I've rigged up a lazy susan with a circular top on an old dust collection barrel and covered it in a blue photo background paper. This paper also hangs behind that assembly for good measure. I center an item on the circle, filming it while I spin it around slowly to produce a very quick intro view of the item. I've backlit the subject and covered it from three other angles to reduce shadowplay, in general lighting is not a problem.

However, most of these items I am attempting to shoot are constructed of very reflective materials: black phenolic, aluminum rails and colored HDPE to name a few. I've got my bag of tricks for shooting print resolution catalog photos of these materials, but pulling a good key off this video material seems to be very difficult. I'm using AE 7 with the Keylight plugin. I've been generating garbage mattes to reduce the amount of calculations that need to be done but I still think I could get better results on the final key - it's not horrible, but it's not perfect.

So I call on all MeFi video mavens, what say ye? How have you overcome technical issues in your video projects and still accomplished the task on the cheap? I don't think expensive muslin or special chroma material will help, as the subjects are inherently reflective in varying degrees and will always pick up a slight color cast from the nearest object.

Anything else you'd like to mention about shooting DV material at a sub-professional level is certainly welcome, thanks for listening.

The after effects of a day at the theme park on the brain

TheDonF — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 11:29:21 -0800

Brain weirdness: I, with some colleagues, spent the day at Thorpe Park last week and spent the day getting hurled around rides such as Nemesis and more. When I went to bed that evening, as I was trying to get to get to sleep, my brain kept doing strange things; I kept feeling as though I was still being flung left, right, up, down and all over the place - almost like I was still on the rides. I didn't think too much of it until a couple of my colleagues said they experienced the same thing. So, is this after effect common? If so, does it have a name? What triggers it and why?

How can I convert a MAC AVI file to MPEG?

shotsy — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 22:48:39 -0800

I have an AVI file on a mac. I would like to convert it for use in After Effects and eventual burn onto DVD. I can handle the second part, but I'm having trouble converting the AVI to MPEG. (More Inside) My stumbling seems to come from the way the audio is encoded. with the divx plugin I can get video in QT but no audio. I have the pro version of Quicktime, and access to a PC, so if it would be easier there (though I don't have any video software on that), it is an option as well. Many thanks.

Animation Technologies

drezdn — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 10:56:34 -0800

Adobe After Affects Vs. Flash. Which would be better to learn from scratch to create animation for broadcast?