I Make Videos, Why Should I Upgrade?

Ok, so maybe you are like me and you see these new enhancements to Flash, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc. and you wonder why, as a video editor/graphics person, you should upgrade to Creative Suite 4. There are not nearly as many 'sexy' updates on the video side as we may have seen before. I know exactly what you are saying:

"With Cs3, After Effects had some really neat updates to After Effects like the Puppet Tool and the Brainstorm function. This version just seems to have some dumb filter called Cartoon."

Ok, yes. Cartoon is dare I say it...pretty useless. Someone else has mentioned it out there but it is basically there to do the Richard Linklater effect which is apparently now in vogue now with those Charles Schwab commercials (which seems to be a really silly use of the effect, in my opinion).

Before I get to After Effects, let me start with Premiere. As a Final Cut Editor, reading down the list of improvements, I certainly notice a lot of, let's say, similar functions which have been added to the product. But they really were worth adding on. The functionality has been greatly improved.

The neatest part of Premiere however is definitely the Speech/Transcription function which labels clips with searchable metadata. Now before you get out your credit card - this is not an effective automatic transcription. But it is pretty good. And you can edit the text easily. Plus you can just edit based upon these words which are tagged to the time code.... I hope I am not the only one that thinks that this is incredible. It is not yet perfect - but it is sure pretty cool.

Now back to After Effects - two really neat things (neither having to do with Cartoon). Ok not the most interesting thing, but very useful: Improved composition navigation. Mini-flowcharts and keyboard shortcuts makes it SO much easier to jump into your precomps. I have always hated how difficult it is to go four comps deep...and I really like to precomp.

Second thing, Unified Camera tool. Ok this should have been a no-brainer several versions ago, but Adobe put this into place where you do not need to switch between three different camera tools, just to change between x, y , and z movement. I was amazed at how much easier Motion's camera was when it came out, but this is now once again comparable. All you need is a three button mouse and it work much like some popular 3-D programs work.

So final verdict...you'll be fine with CS3 if you don't want to outlay the cash. If you are CS2 or earlier, it is definitely worth it for you to update. These updates are not nearly as essential as something like Flash CS4 is or as I felt AE 6.5 and 7 were - but still cool enough to venture a look.

Oh - and all of the products now have trials available for download....FINALLY.

CTC Conference After Effects Hands-on Files

For everyone who was in the After Effects hands-on, here is a link to many of the files that we worked on - and some we did not get to:

http://mythtaken.com/CTC/

If anyone in the class wants to contact me - feel free to email me at:
alex@c2gps.com

Cool way to learn keyboard shortcuts

Another reason for me to geek out. Now everyone can learn the Apple keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop, Aperture, Final Cut Pro, After Effects and more! Photojojo has release a new series of keyboard skins for your mac with pre-printed shortcuts for many popular applications! Check out the product and order here!

After Effects Quick Tip - Illustrator Images Straight Into After Effects

I like After Effects. Possibly an unhealthy amount. But it allows me to do things just like my mind thinks.

Sometimes my mind wanders and thinks about integration across programs, like copying and pasting text, and I wonder...why can't this work in other situations?

Part of After Effects' beauty, and there is a lot that is beautiful, is its integration with Photoshop and Illustrator, allowing you to import files with their layers, and even with their layer styles attached and editable inside of After Effects.

But sometimes there are parts of pre-created images that I want to animate.

Now if I am making shapes, I can always create them inside of After Effects - but frankly I still don't like to do this, even with the shape tools and shape controls inside of CS3. The benefit would be that I could animate these shapes by individual points by using the Mask Shape attribute. But with a pre-made image you can't do this...or can you?

If you make an image inside of Illustrator, you can select the path and copy it (command-C) and paste it (command-V) inside of After Effects on a solid layer, voila.

Hmm...even better I can make one shape turn into another by pasting it later into the same Mask Shape. This is like Shape Tweening inside of Flash - yet without having to make a single thing inside of After Effects.

God, I love this program!

This means you can even take things like custom symbols (like a Fish) from Illustrator and turn it into a mask just by copying and pasting.