FINAL Le Creuset Video December 13th

Final Weekly Submission

After Effect Semester Wrap-Up | Problems & Concerns

Melanie Lerner | December 9, 2010

From the beginning of the semester until now I feel like I have at least a basic mastery of AfterEffects. While the program still intimidates me at times I know better how to animate efficiently and effectively than from when I started out.

• The most common problems I encountered dealt with using the camera. Often times I would make my layers 3-D and add in a camera, only to find that when I added any additional layers in and made them 3-D too, they acted strange (became oddly sized and placed outside of the composition). One way around this was to precomp my layers I was done animating with so that I wouldn’t have to worry about messing them up with the inclusion of new ones.
• Another lesson learned was that I shouldn’t manipulate the scale key frames when using a camera. Instead, it makes much more sense to play with position and use the “z” coordinate for sizing/zooming in and out. The more key frames there are within a given sequence can lend to jumps in the camera and choppiness in the presentation. I found sometimes key frames didn’t line up, even if only by just a hair. To solve this I held down the shift key and moved my cursor to the proper spot in the time cue to make sure they started and ended at the exact same time.
• Towards the beginning of the term I didn’t understand how to prepare my files so that they were ready to import into AfterEffects. You can’t just import your images in storyboard format. It took some time before I understood that every layer needed to be by itself if it was to be animated. And that when I made the Illustrator/Photoshop file I had to think very methodically as to how to break the storyboard apart so that I could animate the parts I wanted. It was more or less a process of trial and error but it was nice to get to the end of the semester and know exactly what to do to make my life easier when I was ready for AfterEffects. It was convenient too that you can always go back and update the original file and it will automatically change in After Effects.
• Another area I struggled with were using masks, especially on an object with lots of curves such as a paperclip. The best way to remedy the situation was to go very slowly around the form and use a combination of masks to complete it rather than one big one (sometimes subtracting out areas I didn’t want seen quite yet and revealing them later).
• For a while I was confused as to how to add in audio and play it using ram preview. I thought the only way to hear the voiceover was to make a QuickTime movie out of the file. Now I know I can hold down “0” and it will play audio and visual on screen in After Effects.
• I also had to learn to watch segments of the animation rather than the whole thing because it slowed the program down. By hitting “bn” on the keyboard I could choose what part of the animation and determine a length I wanted to watch so that it played faster.
• Working in full quality proved problematic so I figured out how to work in quarter size, but then make sure to render the file in full size prior to the final version in order to catch small inconsistencies that aren’t seen on a poorer quality version.
• Also, rendering became problematic when I would save a file to the computer and it would work, but as soon as it transferred over to a jump drive the audio and/or visual would skip. This was solved by changing my rendering options to HD 264 rather than After Effect’s default settings. I further learned to be patient while the file rendered and to save the motion blurs for the very final render because they slowed down the program and render time.
• As far as execution abilities, sometimes I would have an idea in my head but not know how to follow through with it in the program. If I couldn’t figure it out I would think of other ways to animate instead. I struggled most with transitions between scenes and finding ones that made sense and were not just “easy” or PowerPoint like. Often times it was a matter of playing around with different things before finding the right one, and getting feedback from classmates to help as well. 

Le Creuset Option II Final

Le Creuset Final Video Option I

December 3rd In Progress Video

After Effects Tutorial Number 5

After Effects Tutorial | Proxies & Workflow Tips

Melanie Lerner | December 1, 2010

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/proxies_and_workflow_tips/

In Andrew Kramer’s tutorial he shows simple tips on how to work on a project quickly at a decent resolution. He explains that a proxy is a lower resolution version (video or still image) of a project that temporarily takes the place of something that is higher resolution. The benefits are being able to work and preview your project faster.

To start with he says to check your composition and footage settings (HDTV is a standard 1920 x 1080 format). Once you set the dimensions that you want, you have a couple options as to how to work with a lower resolution in After Effects. The first is to lower the resolution of the project window (say quarter, third, half, or full size), but doing this means After Effects is still sampling from the bigger footage file. Another, better way to go about it is to look at the output module and format a proxy that way. You can right click on the footage layer, go to create proxy – movie and a render queue window will pop up. You can then go to output module settings to format your proxy, which is how a proxy saves itself. You can choose such settings such as Quicktime movie and change animation to a photo jpeg sequence, then hit ok and render. Now a square box pops up next to your footage to show that the footage has been converted to a photo jpeg Quicktime movie (hence it’s easier to work with). You have the liberty of toggling the switch back and forth between your regular full resolution project and the proxy clip. You can shut the proxy off at any time as well.

Now if you have several pieces of footage you can’t unfortunately convert all of them at the same time and create a proxy but you can create a proxy template that can be applied to each. To do this, right click – create proxy – movie (do this for each file so that all files are included in the render queue), then go to output module – make template. Now if you go to the output module and hold down the shift key for each item, you can select all the render queue items and choose the template you made to apply to all of them. Or, if you would rather make global changes in regards to proxy settings, you can change After Effect’s defaults by going to edit and output module so that when you add your composition to the render que, your settings are already in place.

Kramer mentions too that if you are working with a proxy that is ½ the resolution, you should set the original file to ½ the resolution as well (there’s no point in seeing extra pixels if you aren’t going to render them). Proxies do come with their limitations. For instance, you never want to do motion tracking with a proxy in place. Also you will want to check that your resolution is not set to full while tracking because After Effects has a tendency to change it back for you. And if a render ever dies an easy trick is just to duplicate it and the composition will re-render for you.

Kramer concludes by saying that you never want to render the final video using a proxy. To double check that the proxy is turned off while rendering you can go to add to render queue – proxy use – use no proxy. For the most part, proxies are extremely helpful and a quick way to work while keeping fairly decent resolution. Color correction and compositing are just two things that would benefit from proxy use. Kramer's techniques are certainly viable in rendering large files, which I know will come in handy in my current and future projects.

Le Creuset December 1st