Caching and Previewing
After Effects automatically caches footage as you navigate
from frame to frame (Page Up/Page Down) or load a RAM
preview (0 on the numeric keypad). The green line atop
the Timeline shows which frames are stored for instant
playback.
Given that After Effects tops out at a bit less than 3 GB of
physical memory per session (due to limitations in system
memory allocation), you can do better. To extend the
cache from physical memory (RAM) to physical media
(ideally a high-speed local drive), enable Disk Cache in
Preferences > Memory & Cache. This locks away a portion
of your drive for use only by After Effects. A blue line
shows frames loaded in the Disk Cache (Figure 1.23).
When you activate Enable Disk Cache, you must also
specify a disk location; if in doubt just create a local folder
with an intuitive name such as AE Scratch. Even the default
2 GB (2000 MB) setting greatly extends available cache
without occupying permanent disk space.
Disk Cache saves the time required to re-render a frame
but doesn’t necessarily deliver real-time playback and often
is not invoked when you might think it should be. The
cache is not saved between After Effects sessions.
If refi ned motion is not critical, use Shift+RAM Preview.
Preview Settings
Here’s some cool stuff you do to customize a RAM Preview:
. Loop options (Preview panel). Hidden among the
playback icons atop Preview is a toggle controlling how
previews loop. Use this to disable looping, or amaze
your friends with the ping-pong option.
. From Current Time (Preview panel). Tired of resetting
the work area? Toggle this on and previews begin at the
current time and roll through to the end of the comp.
. Full Screen (Preview panel). Self-explanatory and rarely
used.
. Preferences > Video Preview lets you specify Output
Device and how it is used. If you have an external video
device attached with its own monitor, you can use it to
preview. Third-party output devices, such as Kona and
Blackmagic cards, are supported as well.
Backgrounds
You need to see what you’re doing, and when you use a
contrasting background it is like shining a light behind
layer edges. You can customize the background color of the
Composition viewer (Ctrl+Shift+B/Cmd+Shift+B or Composition
> Background Color) or toggle the Transparency
Grid icon beneath the Composition panel to evaluate edges
in sharp relief.
I even insert background or reference footage or a custom
gradient background that I create (Figure 1.24). If it’s set
as a Guide Layer (Layer > Guide Layer or context-click
the layer), it does not show up when rendered or nested in
another comp.
Several other modes and toggles are available in the viewer
panels. Some are familiar from other Adobe applications:
. Title/Action Safe overlays determine the boundaries of
the frame as well as its center point.
. View > Show Grid (Ctrl+”/Cmd+”) displays an overlay
grid.
. View > Show Rulers (Ctrl+R/Cmd+R) displays not only
pixel measurements of the viewer, but allows you to add
guides as you can in Photoshop.
All of these are toggled via a single menu beneath the
viewer panel (the one that looks like a crosshair). To pull
out a guide, choose Show Rulers and then drag from either
the horizontal or vertical ruler. To change the origin point
(0 on each ruler), drag the crosshair from the corner
between the two rulers.
Masks, keyframes, and motion paths can get in the way.
You can
. Hide them all using View > Hide Layer Controls
(Ctrl+Shift+H/Cmd+Shift+H)
. Use the Toggle Mask and Shape Path Visibility button
at the bottom of the Comp panel
. Customize what is shown and hidden with View > View
Options (Ctrl+Alt+U/Cmd+Option+U)
Beginning in Chapter 5 you’ll be encouraged to study
images one color channel at a time. The Show Channel
icon exists for this purpose (keyboard shortcuts
Alt/Option+1 through Alt/Option+4 map to R, G, B,
and A, respectively). An outline in the color of the
selected channel reminds you which channel is displayed
Effects & Presets
After Effects contains about 200 effects plug-ins that ship
with the application, and far more than that from third
parties. Personally, I use less than 10% of these effects
around 80–90% of the time, so my opinion is that you
don’t need to understand them all in order to use the most
powerful ones.
And even cooler, once you thoroughly understand the core
effects, you can use them together to do things with After
Effects that you might have thought required third-party
plug-ins.
To apply an effect to a layer, my advice is to avoid the
Effect menu and either context-click that layer, then use
the Effect context menu, or double-click it in the Effects &
Presets panel.
The Effects & Presets panel is a versatile tool when problemsolving.
It has options to display effects alphabetically,
without their categories, as well as a search fi eld to help
you look for a specifi c effect by name, or for all the effects
whose names include a specifi c word, such as “blur” or
“channel” .
Animation Presets allow you to save specifi c confi gurations
of layer properties and animations, including keyframes,
effects, and expressions. They’re particularly useful when
working with others and sharing standardized practices.
Save your own by selecting the effects and properties you
want to save and choose Animation > Save Animation
Preset; save it to the Presets folder (the default location) to
have it show up when After Effects is started.
Output via the Render Queue
As you well know, the way to get completed footage out
of After Effects is to render it. Here are a few things you
might not already know about the process of outputting
your work.
To place an item in the Render Queue, it’s simplest either
to use a shortcut (Ctrl+M/Cmd+M) or to drag items from
the Project panel.
There are two key sections for each Render Queue item:
Render Settings and Output Module.
Render Settings: Match or Override the Comp
Render Settings breaks down to three basic sections
(Figure 1.27):
. Composition corresponds directly to settings in the
Timeline; here you choose whether to keep or override
them. The more complex options, such as Proxy Use,
are described in Chapter 4.
. Time Sampling gives you control over the timing of the
render; not just frame rate and duration but the ability
to add pulldown and fi elds—say when rendering a 24
fps fi lm comp for 29.97 video—as well as motion blur
and frame blending .
. Options contains one super important feature: “Skip
existing fi les,” which checks for the existence of a
fi le before rendering it. This is useful for splitting
sequences between sessions (see Chapter 4 for details
on how to use it).
If you fi nd that rendered output doesn’t match your expectations,
Render Settings is generally the place to look (unless
it involves color management, compression, or audio). The
Output Modules handle writing that output to a file
Output Modules: Making Movies
Output Modules convert the rendered frame into an actual
fi le. The main decisions here concern
. Format
. Size
. Audio
. Color management
Several elegant and easily missed problem-solving tools are
embedded in Output Modules:
. Multiple Output Modules per Render Queue item
avoid the need for multiple passes .
. Separate Output Modules can be edited together by
Shift-selecting the modules themselves (not the Render
Queue items that contain them).
. A numbered sequence can start with any number you
like .
. Scaling can be nonuniform to change the pixel aspect
ratio.
. Post-Render Actions automate bringing the result back
into After Effects. Chapter 4 tells all.
. A numbered image sequence must contain a string in
the format [###] somewhere within its name. Each #
sign corresponds to a digit, for padding.
. The Color Management tab is in effect with many still
image formats. Chapter 11 tells all.
. Rendered fi les can include XMP metadata (if toggled
on, as by default); this includes information that the
fi le came from After Effects.
Save Output Modules early and often using the Make
Template option at the bottom of the pop-up menu. If you
intend to render with the same settings even once more,
it saves time. Unfortunately these cannot be easily sent to
another user.
Optimized Output
Following are some suggested output settings (Render Settings
and Output Modules) for specifi c situations:
. Final output should match the delivery format; it’s
usually an editor who decides this. Merely choosing the
default Lossless setting is not suffi cient if, for example,
you’ve been working in 16 bpc to render a 10-bit fi nal
(Lossless is only 8 bit). For sending fi les internally, TIFF
with lossless LZW compression is solid and can handle
higher bit depths and color management.
. Low-loss output is mostly up to you; QuickTime with
Photo-JPEG at around 75% is an old standby, but all
QuickTime formats may display inconsistent gamma,
depending on version and platform.
. Online review typically should be compressed outside
of After Effects; such aggressive compression formats as
H.264 are most successful on multiple passes.
After Effects offers a number of output formats and can
be useful for simple fi le conversion; you need only import
source and drag it directly to the Render Queue, then add
settings and press Render.
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