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After Effects Basics
Adobe After Effects is a digital visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing application developed by Adobe Systems. It is used in the post-production process of film making and television production.
Examples of what you can do in After Effects includes, visual effects creation such as fire, water, lighting, weather, explosions; editing out objects and editing objects into its place; and logo/text animation.
After Effects is an incredible software, but it isn’t ideal for editing footage. In an editing context, Adobe After Effects is usually used to apply effects after your footage has been roughly edited. We recom-mend you edit the footage beforehand in Premiere, then apply effects afterwards.
What is After Effects?
Setup
Press File > Save As > Save As… > Title and save your file to a location in your computer
Go to Edit > Preferences > Auto-Save > set
Save Every to your desired time.
We recommend auto-saving every 5-10
minutes depending on your editing speed.
Open After-Effects by
double-clicking the icon.
-This window will display
any previous projects
you have worked on.
Select New Project
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We recommend you save your file to multiple locations. One on the hard drive of the computer, one on a
portable hard drive, and one copy online. Hard drives fail quite frequently, so for important projects, having
the three step saving method will be a wise choice.
Importing Media
There are a few different options to import media:
1. Double-click in the Project Panel, navigate to your files,
and select the media you would like to import.
-To select multiple files, hold Ctrl while left-clicking each
item once.
-To select multiple files in a row, click the first item in the
sequence, hold Shift, then click the last item.
2. Right-Click in the Project Panel and select Import
3. Select File in the upper left, select Import
4. Drag-and-drop footage from the folder that contains your
items
NOTE: It is very important that you have your footage organized beforehand, if you change the
location of your footage after you have imported, After Effects will not be able to find it.
There are also a few different options
to placing the selected media, drag-
and-drop the media onto the Timeline
or to the Layers Panel.
You can also drag-and-drop media
directly into the Composition Panel.
This can be very useful for placing
logos directly onto the area of the clip
that you would like it to go.
Placing the Media
Making Adjustments
Your media can be adjusted in a few different ways with Scale, Position, Rotation, and Opacity.
Scale, Position, Rotation, & Opacity
Scale adjusts how large or small the media
is, or how zoomed in it appears. To bring up
Scale, click in the Layers Panel and press S.
Position adjusts where the media appears
on the screen, based on the X (horizontal)
axis and Y (vertical) axis. To bring up Posi-
tion, press P.
Rotation will adjust the angle at which the
media will appear. To bring up Rotation,
press R.
Opacity adjusts how transparent the media appears. To bring up Opacity, press T.
To adjust the these attributes, click and hold the blue numbers next to the attribute and drag the
mouse left and right to adjust it.
You can also double-click the blue numbers and manually type in the number you would like.
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Holding Shift and then pressing S, P, R, or T will allow you to bring up more than one attribute at a time.
Navigating the Timeline
You can click anywhere in the Timeline, and the blue
Timeline Indicator will appear. You can click and hold
the Timeline Indicator and drag it left and right to
“scrub” through the media.
Press the Home key to go to the beginning of the Time-
line.
Press the End key to go to the end of the Timeline.
Press Page Up/Down to move frame by frame
-Hold Shift while pressing Page Up/Down to move ten
frames at a time.
There are a few ways to navigate through your material in the Timeline, mainly by using the blue
Timeline Indicator. Wherever the Timeline Indicator is placed, that exact point of the media will display
on the Composition screen.
Hours Minutes Seconds Frames
These numbers indicate where the Timeline Indicator is placed. Each set of numbers indicates a different
measurement of time:
Keyframes and Animation
Drag-and-Drop the logo onto the Timeline. Ensure that the logo
is the top layer.
Press P to bring up Position.
Place the logo in the upper left hand corner of the Composi-
tion.
Select the Stopwatch Icon next to Position in the Layers Panel.
This creates what is called a Keyframe.
-A Keyframe is a location on a timeline which marks
the beginning or end of a transition. It holds special
information that defines where a transition should
start or stop. The intermediate frames are gradually
adjusted over time between those definitions to
create the illusion of motion.
Move the Timeline Indicator further down the Timeline
Select and drag the Logo to another point on the Composition screen
A new Keyframe should have automatically been created once you let go of
the icon. If not, select the Stopwatch Icon again to do so.
Press Space on the keyboard to play the footage and view your animation
Beginning Keyframe Ending Keyframe
Effects
After Effects comes with many effects that can do everything from correcting color, to distorting, blur-
ring, specialty filters, even audio adjustments. They can be accessed via the Effects and Presents Panel
on the far right of the workspace.
Applying Effects
Drag-and-drop the desired Effect either directly onto the Com-
position Panel, or drag-and-drop the Effect onto the desired
Layer.
Once you have applied an Effect onto a Layer, the
Project Panel in the upper left has changed into the
Effects Panel, displaying the various adjustable
settings.
You can set Keyframes here as well to have the
Effects change over time.
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You can toggle on and off the Effects by selecting the “fx” icon in the Layers Panel
Exporting
Open up Adobe Media Encoder Queue beforehand.
In After Effects, go to Composition at the
top and select Add to Adobe Media Encod-
er Queue or use the keyboard shortcut of
Ctrl+Alt+M
Once Adobe Media Encoder Queue opens, select the
drop down triangle icon to the left of Match Source
This drop-down menu contains all of the
possible ways to export your video.
Navigate to the end of the list and select YouTube
Select the blue text underneath Output File, name it, and
choose a location to save your exported video.
Select the video file and select the green triangle button in
the upper right to export the video
Resources
After Effects Guide:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/user-guide.html
Effects Information:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/effect-list.html
Lynda.com
After Effects CC 2017 Essential Training: The Basics
Youtube.com
After Effects Series Tutorials ChanneL
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOi5hBrqjJX0BiK3CqYWXsQ
Book-a-Librarian
http://tx-plano.civicplus.com/FormCenter/Libraries-5/Book-a-Librarian-98