An Introduction to Adobe After Effects

I have spent the last four years working with Adobe After Effects, and over that time many friends and colleagues have asked whether the program is easy to learn and worthwhile to know. The answer is a resounding “Yes!”

This is the first in a series of articles that will offer basic After Effects training and (later) specialized how-to’s geared toward the editor. In this article, I’ll introduce After Effects — what it does, why you might want to use it and what equipment you’ll need to run it. In the next issue, I’ll begin to teach you how to use it.

After Effects is a sophisticated software program for compositing, animating and creating layered visual effects. Most often, After Effects (“AE” from here on) is used to create motion graphics, such as video montages, animated logos, network identities and special title and logo effects for broadcast design.

AE can also be used to composite — that is, layer and blend — different footage elements for traditional and multi-media animation, as well as for visual effects. Due to hardware limitations, the program’s use in animation is typically limited to short-form production (around five minutes or less). I expect that as desktop computers become more capable of dealing with higher resolution material, more full-length animation will be composited in AE.

AE can accommodate any sort of source material, from still images or text all the way to digitized film footage. It gives you the technical control to work at just about any resolution, including film, high- and standard-definition video. With a fast computer, working with high-res material is now much more practical than in the past. The program can convert between and prepare material for film, video and the web. I know many editors who use AE simply for its compression and conversion capabilities.

To start with, you need the software. AE is available in two different versions: standard and production bundle. While both packages have the same basic functions and interface, the pro bundle version has several powerful added features, such as motion tracking, that take the program’s capabilities from the level of hobby filmmaking to full production capability. While there is a big difference in cost — the standard version costs $649, while the production bundle costs $1499 — it is justified, and if you are planning on using AE as a professional tool, you really should get the production bundle.

Available for Mac and PC, AE is built from the ground up to run on a desktop computer. Version 5.0, which came out in May, 2001, is the most recent release of the software, although 4.1 (the previous version) is still widely used. Both versions take advantage of the velocity engine on the Apple G4 chip, which makes a big difference when previewing effects and the like. AE will run under different flavors of Windows, too. I have worked in AE on a top-of-the-line NT machine and found the performance to be comparable to that on a G4, although there seemed to be a slight lag when minimizing windows.

Regardless of platform, you should run AE on a system with a fast processor (no slower than 300Mhz), a large hard drive to accommodate video files and plenty of RAM — the more the better. Giving AE lots of RAM will allow you longer real-time previews, and it will enable you to work with higher resolution files. While 120 MB is enough to get you started, ideally I suggest giving AE around 300 to 500 MB of RAM, especially as your projects get bigger. At work, I run AE on a top-of-the-line G4 with 1GB of RAM and over 90GB of available storage. But for a lower-end solution that is still capable of doing impressive work, I just put together a G4/400mhz with 256MB RAM and 20GB storage for under $1500.

Unlike the editing programs that you’re familiar with, AE does not provide capture functions. Instead, you use another application to digitize, such as Avid, Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere. Full-res film or HD material must be scanned at a facility equipped for this task. Once you’ve got your digitized material, you simply supply AE with the file or files, as needed. (In earlier versions, you’d also need to use the editing program to play material out to video, but AE 5 allows you to preview compositions directly from the timeline.) We’ll explore capture issues in greater detail later in the series, after we get comfortable with the basics.

There is a lot of overlap between video editing and compositing, and as a result, the AE interface is reminiscent of typical editing products. It has a project window into which you import your clips and other footage items, and it has a Timeline (called the ‘Time Layout’ in older versions of the program — I use the terms interchangeably) and Composition Window where you work with your footage (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. The basic After Effects interface — Project, Composition and Timeline Windows. Two pieces of footage (still images) are layered in the Timeline window and the effect is shown in the Composition window.

But this is where the main interface similarities stop. AE has what is referred to as a “layer-based” timeline, rather than the “track-based” timeline found in most editing programs. In a track-based timeline, you can add many clips to the same track. But in a layer-based program like AE, every piece of footage you add to the timeline appears on its own layer, and every time you make a cut and set a new in/out point for a video clip in the timeline, you create a new layer.

When viewed in the Composition Window, items at the top of stack in the Timeline appear in front of the items at the bottom of the stack. You can rearrange layers in the Timeline, so that they’re in the order you want them to be stacked from bottom to top. If you’re familiar with Adobe Photoshop, you’ll recognize this as being the same principle used in the Layers Palette.

In Figure 1, we can see part of the Timeline, as well as the Composition Window. The airplane appears in front of the clouds in the Comp Window, because the layer containing the airplane artwork appears above the layer containing the cloud artwork in the Timeline.

To begin building an AE project, you first import your source footage and images into the AE Project Window, either by dragging and dropping or by selecting Import Footage File from the File menu. After the footage is in the Project Window, you must create a composition (similar to an Avid sequence) in which to assemble and animate the footage. You do this by going to the Composition menu and selecting New Composition. This will open both the Comp and Time Layout windows.

Once you have your Time Layout window in front of you, you can drag footage from the Project Window into the Timeline, where each item will appear as a separate layer. You can then animate your layers by setting values for basic properties such as position, scale and opacity, and changing them over time. You can add effects to layers, change how they blend with others and apply keys and mattes as well.

That’s all I have room for in this issue. Next time I’ll explain how to work with layers to plot basic animation, using some sample files that I’ll provide for you on the Guild web site.