Results tagged “After Effects” from Final Cut Studio, Avid, Adobe, and Video Streaming

In a world of real-time editing and effects software, it's easier every day for new artists to do a great deal of work without really needing to render out their work in order to sufficiently preview it. Especially for After Effects artists who are coming from Premiere or Final Cut Pro, the idea behind the RAM Preview might not make complete sense. 

In today's article, two parts – the Backgrounder is for new AE artists, and the Tips section should be useful to everyone.

Backgrounder
You've no doubt noticed the little green "tape" above your timeline (pardon, "Time Bar") in After Effects.  In fact, if you're coming from other motion graphics or editing software, it's probably familiar: in most circumstances, it refers to portions of your project that are rendered.

The same is true in After Effects.  But in After Effects, you'll be seeing a whole lot more of the little green bar.  While editing software generally streams video straight from the disk to the screen, motion graphics software always represents your project as more of a "recipe card": the computer must manipulate the original video into an intermediate format.  This requires a substantial amount of extra processing power – quite often, it requires so much extra time that the computer can't maintain a real-time framerate during preview playback.  That's where RAM Previews come in.

After Effects is a very RAM intense program that utilizes your RAM to preview your compositions when your press the 0 on the numeric keypad. You will notice that a green bar will live in your timeline any time you RAM preview your composition. This is necessary so that you can render your work and put it in motion. The one big issue that you may run into when you go to open your favorite editing application is that your computer will start running very slow or it may lock up and crash, this especially true if you are running a Windows machine. After Effects will keep your RAM hostage until you purge your cache. Every time you RAM preview your composition After Effects uses your RAM to store the Render information and does not release that amount of RAM until the next render or until you decide to purge your RAM. If you do not purge your RAM and open Avid, Final Cut Pro, or another RAM intense program you will for sure run into problems. The After Effects crew has put in a great feature so that you can do just that. Under the edit menu you will find the Purge menu. You must use cation when you use the purge function. You will notice that there are five options under the purge menu, All, Undo, Image Caches, Snapshot and Video Memory. If you select All everything all the list will be purged. This includes all of your Undos. Once you select All you Undos will no longer be available, you want to select All with great cation. The Undo selection will just clear all the Undos, the Image Caches is the most important one to clear out to release the most amount of RAM. This is really the only one to worry about so that you do not run into problems. The Snapshot and Video Memory normally will not give you problems, just make sure if you select All the you do not need to use you Undo feature.

When you are working in After Effects it sometimes feels that there are almost endless shortcuts to achieve almost every task. Most of them no normal human could ever remember and there are a few that you should always remember. When you are working in your composition window you often need to switch between your selection tool and the hand tool. The shortcut key for the hand tool is H and the shortcut key for the selection tool is V. This is great if you want to change to the hand tool, but a much more effective workflow is to just switch to the hand tool while holding down the spacebar. This give you the movement control of the hand tool while you hold down the space bar and as soon as you release the spacebar you switch back the the selection tool. This may seem like a slight difference, but give it a try and you will see for yourself that this tip is a huge timesaver! 

The custom presets in Adobe After Effects are a great way to quickly animate your layers. The latest version of After Effects has many different presets to choose from and you can apply them to text, backgrounds or any other layer. The often misunderstood concept about presets is that once you apply them that is all you get. These presets are only a jumping off point, there are several presets that look great just the way they are but every preset is fully editable. The two Genius DV logos here were created using the exact same preset and I just modified the color and the motion for a completely different look. The only way to get familiar with presets is to practice and do not be afraid to modify them. You will be amazed how well these presets work and how simple it is to get the look you need.

If you have been using After Effects for very long you know that it takes a long time to render your complex compositions. This is not only time consuming but also a huge waste of money. The time your machine is down you could be working on your next big project. The biggest part about rendering is you really do not know what you have until you look at your rendered project, so if you start an overnight render you will not be able to fix that slight error until the next day. The new Apple Mac Pro will make your life not only faster but easier. I performed a few test comparing my PC with the Mac and there was no contest. Now I do realize that is was not scientific but more of a  real world test. I had a 30 second clip with a Blur Filter, Color Correction, a mask and a lens flare. It took aprox. 6 minutes in the PC and only 84 seconds in the Mac Pro. The processors were of similar speed and both had 4 gbs RAM. Apple has also performed some of there own test comparing the G5 and the new Mac Pro and they show an increase of 2-3 times the amount of render time!