After Effects cs4 note

After Effects cs4 note

Move, Combine, and Consolidate Projects

At some point you probably will want to know how to

. Move an entire After Effects project, including its

source, or archive it

. Merge or combine two projects

. Clean up a project, getting rid of what’s not used or

extra instances of a single fi le

To move or archive a project with only its linked source,

choose File > Collect Files. This command was designed

to enable multimachine Watch Folder rendering (see

Chapter 4) but is also useful for backup, as it allows you to

create a new folder that contains a copy of the project and

all of its source fi les. The source fi les are reorganized with

a directory structure that directly replicates the one in the

Project panel.

Let the computer do what it does best and automate a

clean up of your source. Choose Collect Source Files: For

Selected Comps; After Effects collects only the footage

needed to create that comp. If you check Reduce Project as

well, the unused source is also removed from the collected

project.

File > Reduce Project removes excess items from the project

itself. Select the master compositions in your project

and choose File > Reduce Project; After Effects eliminates

project items not used in the selected comps. You even

get a warning dialog telling you how many items were

removed—not from the disk, only from your project.

You can instead clean out only the source footage (but

keep the comps and solids) with File > Remove Unused

Footage, which deletes from the project any footage that

hasn’t made its way into a comp. If the same clips have

been imported more than once, File > Consolidate All

Footage looks for the extra instances and combines them,

choosing the fi rst instance, top to bottom, in the project.

Need to combine two or more projects? Import one into

the other (just drag it in), or drag several into a new project.

The imported project appears in its own folder, and

if the projects being combined are organized using the

same set of subfolders, you can merge them with the script

rd_MergeProjects.jsx, which is included on the book’s disc

File > Consolidate All Footage looks for two or more

instances of a source fi le and combines them, choosing the

fi rst instance, top to bottom, in the project. File > Remove

Unused Footage rids a project of footage not included in

any composition (but the fi les do remain on your drive).

Advanced Save Options

After Effects projects are saved completely separate from

the elements they contain. They tend to be small, making

it easier to save a lot of them so that you don’t lose

your work.

File > Increment and Save attaches a version number to

your saved project or increments whatever number is

already there, at the end of the fi le name before the .aep

extension.

Preferences > Auto-Save fi lls in the spaces between incremented

versions; toggle it on and you’ll never lose more

than the number of minutes you specify (Save Every 20

Minutes is the default), and you’ll have whatever number

of most recent versions you prefer

Project, Footage, and Composition Settings

After Effects includes a bunch of settings that you need to

understand or you will waste time and effort fi ghting them.

These have to do with essentials like how time, color depth,

transparency, pixel aspect, and fi eld data are handled.

Project Settings

As shown in Figure 1.11, the Project Settings dialog

(Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K/Cmd+Option+Shift+K) contains three

basic sections:

. Display Style determines how time is displayed—predominantly

whether a comp’s frame count is kept in

integers (frames) or in timecode. Broadly, fi lm projects

tend to work in frames, broadcast video projects in

timecode. This won’t effect the frame rates of your footage

or comps, only how they appear.

. The Color Settings section includes the project-wide

color depth (8, 16, or 32 bits per channel), as well as

color management and blend settings. Chapter 11 covers

this in ample depth.

. Audio Settings affects only how audio is previewed;

lowering the rate can save RAM. I never touch this.

If you’re displaying timecode, you’ll almost never want to

change the default Auto setting unless you’re working with

footage containing more than one frame rate and need to

conform everything to a particular standard.

If you’re working with frames, it’s typical to start numbering

them at 1, although the default is 0. This applies to

imported image sequences, not comps. Numbering in a

comp is determined by the Start Frame number in Composition

Settings (Ctrl+K/Cmd+K).

Interpret Footage

This book generally eschews the practice of walking

through After Effects menus, but a well-designed UI helps

you think. Decisions about how footage is interpreted are

both vital and somewhat tedious. This makes the Interpret

Footage dialog (Figure 1.12), where you can specify for

any source clip, even more vital as a pre-fl ight checklist for

source footage:

. Alpha interpretation

. Frame Rate

. Fields and Pulldown

. Pixel Aspect Ratio (under Other Options)

. Color Management (under More Options with certain

fi le types and the new Color Management tab)

To bring up the Interpret Footage dialog for a given clip,

select it in the Project panel and press Ctrl+Shift+G/Cmd+

Shift+G or context-click and select Interpret Footage >

Main. The Interpret Footage icon in the Project panel is

a new shortcut to open this dialog.

Alpha

To composite effectively you must thoroughly understand

alpha channels. Figure 1.13 shows the most visible symptom

of a misinterpreted alpha channel: fringing.

You can easily avoid these types of problems:

. If the alpha channel type is unclear, click Guess in the

mini Interpretation dialog that appears when importing

footage with alpha. This often (not always) yields a

correct setting.

. Preferences > Import contains a default alpha channel

preference, which is fi ne to set on a project with consistent

alpha handling. If you are in any doubt about that,

set it to Ask User to avoid forgetting to set it properly.

More information on alpha channels and how they operate

is in Chapter 3.

Frame Rate

I have known experienced artists to make careless errors

with frame rate. Misinterpreted frame rate is typically an

After Effects does not guess an

alpha unless you specifically click

Guess; if you merely clear the dialog

(Esc) it uses the previous default.

issue with image sequences only, because unlike Quick-

Time, the fi les themselves contain no embedded frame rate.

You can also override the QuickTime frame rate, which is

exactly what After Effects does with footage containing any

sort of pulldown (see next section).

The following two statements are both true:

. After Effects is more fl exible than just about any video

application in letting you mix clips with varying frame

rates and letting you change the frame rate of a clip

that’s already in a comp.

. However, After Effects is very precise about how those

timing settings are handled, so it is essential that your

settings themselves be precise. If your true frame rate is

23.976 fps or 29.97 fps, don’t round those to 24 and 30,

or strange things are bound to happen: motion tracks

that don’t stick, steppy playback, and more.

The current frame rate and duration as well as other interpretation

information is displayed at the top of the Project

panel when you select a source clip