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(More customer reviews)After Effects is an incredibly powerful video effects editor and creator. It may seem expensive but for less than the price of a decent video camera, assuming you already have a decent computer that can run 64bit programs, you have a sophisticated program that allows you to build effects in your house that can rival and even match the work done in professional television and movie studios. Of course, much of the professional work you see on television and in films is already being done using After Effects and similar programs (after using it for a while, when I watch television, I'm on the lookout for commercials and effects within television programs that with a bit more practice I know I could create on my Mac using this program). As far as I'm concerned, After Effects is pretty much an essential tool for independent videographers and filmmakers. Basically, it allows you to manipulate and enhance video footage you already have in order to achieve exactly the look you want, and allows you to create video effects that can either stand alone or combine with your footage for some astonishing results. One thing, though, is that because this is an incredibly versatile program, that can accomplish nearly anything you could imagine, it is also quite complex.
This is not really a program to learn on your own by tinkering - I tried playing around with it for a few days, and was able to copy a few intriguing effects based on web tutorials. But when I tried to tweak things to my own taste or modify the recipe I found myself getting lost. There are lots of helpful guides online, and there is a very active and eager-to-help bunch of After Effects users with great advice, especially on Adobe's help site and their video tutorial site. To really get started with this program, though, you should expect to spend a few weeks working through something like the After Effects Apprentice, a highly recommended, easy-to-follow, hands-on guide and book. After working through that text, there's still a lot to learn, but you'd be ready at least to do some fairly interesting things on your own, and you'd know enough to follow along on some of the more sophisticated tutorials available on the web that show you how to do some amazing things.
One of the very cool features of After Effects is that while there is an enormous range of tools and adjustments and effects, they all work more or less the same way, or at least along the same lines. Each layer, each effect, each style, all have various properties or parameters, some general such as position, opacity, scale and color, and some quite specific to the effect. Each of these properties can be adjusted, not just once and for all but can be set to vary between two or more points over time, to create a smooth (or rough, as desired) animation. The basic workflow for any project in After Effects is roughly this: get your files, arrange them in layers in the time line, add effects or adjustments as appropriate, consider the various properties of your layers and effects and set keyframes to animate these properties over time, then see what you've done, and tweak it to taste. So while the possibilities are endless, the basic idea of each possibility is more or less the same as for all the others. What is exciting, though, is that because each effect or adjustment has so many different parameters, you can use each one of them in ways that perhaps no one ever anticipated. For example, I followed an online tutorial that showed me how to take a radar effect (that ordinarily generates little outwardly radiating concentric circles) and tweak it to the point where it could generate organic wisps of smoke in roughly the shape of words. (For an example of the kind of thing I'm talking about, see the opening sequence of the video attached to this review).
I'd played around a very little with earlier versions of After Effects, and always wanted to learn it better because of what I knew it could do (especially after reading The DV Rebel's Guide, whose author swears by After Effects as an essential postproduction tool for getting the best quality render from your video), but it's only with the new release of CS5 that I finally decided to put in the time to get to know the program. I'm still basically a beginner but I'm amazed at what I've been able to learn and accomplish in a month or so. One thing I noticed right away with the latest version is that performance has been enhanced; it previews more quickly, it has never "hung up" on me, and it is able to handle HD footage with lots of effects dropped on it. I don't have enough RAM (4GB) to take full advantage of the 64-bit processing of CS5, and that means that it can sometimes lag a bit when I'm trying to preview sophisticated effects, but I'm still able to use it just fine and achieve some very cool things. (For serious professional work, if you're using After Effects on a regular basis, it'd be smart to make sure you had at least 8GB of RAM with a multicore processor and a fast video card).
Just a few of the features I've really enjoyed using and exploring are: (1) its sophisticated time remapping capacities, that allow you to slow down and speed up footage without the artificial feel that results when I've tried to do that in standard editing software programs (such as Final Cut Express 4); (2) the upgraded Color Finesse plug-in that comes with After Effects CS5 and seems to me to be a much better color correction tool than I've worked with in either Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express (admittedly I've never worked with Final Cut Studio's Color program); (3) if you have Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 as well, it's easier than ever to open up Final Cut edits into After Effects (by opening them in Premiere Pro, and then sending them to After Effects via Dynamic Link; (4) the ease with which it allows you to animate titles and text, and the range of possibilities you can work with - especially for independent film work I can see how this would be a huge benefit because when you use the standard presets that come with the popular editing programs it's going to be obvious to other filmmakers, but with After Effects titling you can vary things to be exactly what you want them to be (in a realistic-looking 3-d space) and totally unique; (5) though professionals might laugh, I really dig the brainstorm feature, that allows you to select several parameters for a layer or effect and then let the computer show you a range of different results that could be achieved from tweaking these parameters; sometimes it comes up with some very cool looking approaches, and you get to take credit for them; (6) obviously, the really exciting innovation on CS5 is the rotobrush, which allows you to create animated masks, isolating elements from a video background in order to apply unique effects or adjustments to those elements, or even to extract them entirely from their background and place them in a new background. Effectively, if you really had to, you could go without the green screen. Of course, it's not completely automatic, and has to be finessed over time -- but it saves a huge amount of time over creating masks frame by frame, which is the traditional approach to rotoscoping.
I'm really just getting started with After Effects CS5, and I'll use it mostly for my own non-professional video projects, in the classroom and for fun, but I expect to be using it and learning with it for a long time. I assume that most video graphics professionals already know and use this tool, and will easily see the value of its new tools and performance. I'm mostly writing this review for independent filmmakers (like me) who have so far stuck with doing most or all of their post-production work (editing and effects) in their non-linear editor. To those I would strongly recommend checking this out, and I'm confident that if anybody like that takes the time to learn the basics of this program they'll quickly find it to be indispensable. It does things you just can't do in a piece of software, even a sophisticated piece of software, designed primarily for cutting up and arranging video. The program as a whole is a winning combination of some powerful new features for working with video in sophisticated ways, several enhancements on its already robust video and effect generation tools, and to top it all off its new support of 64-bit processing and its integration with a range of other powerful Adobe tools such as Photoshop and Illustrator and Premiere Pro. Highly recommended.
About the video: I like to say most of what I want to say in the written part of the review, and think of the video as a simple illustration, so this is just a quick and dirty look at a few things you can do with this program. I play around with words in the opening sequence, then I give a quick look at what you can do with the new rotobrush (obviously I didn't put the time into refining this that I could have, as you'll notice if you look at my right ear in the video), and also with older features such as the cartoon effect, and a demonstration of how After Effects can help fix shaky video.
By the way, one final thing I should mention is that Adobe has a very talented team of professionals who create the help files for each of the programs and who are active in the support forums, and available to give artistic and technical support. Nearly any problem you might face has been asked about and answered on the Adobe Forums, and any question that is posted gets a quick response,...Read more›
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Adobe After Effects CS5 delivers the visual richness required to get noticed in today's media culture. Use open-ended creative tools. Work efficiently on high-resolution projects thanks to native 64-bit support. And benefit from tight integration with Adobe's other leading software. Whether you're working in film, broadcast, online, or mobile media, Adobe After Effects enables you to create groundbreaking motion graphics and blockbuster visual effects.
Create motion graphics and visual effects with the industry standard
Innovative compositing and animation tools Create high-impact communications by combining moving imagery, still images and graphics, text, and sound in 2D or 3D space, and then animating virtually any aspect of each element.
Responsive 64-bit performance Work more easily with complex high-resolution projects and see longer RAM previews thanks to native 64-bit operating system support. Enhanced disk caching allows you to spend less time waiting and more time creating.
Unmatched integration with industry standard Adobe applications--Enjoy a streamlined workflow with support for importing Adobe Photoshop images and layer types. Move easily between After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 software. Export projects for enhancement in Adobe Flash Professional CS5 software.
Unlimited creative options Manipulate moving and still images using hundreds of effects that stylize, distort, shatter, and more. Combine effects to create Hollywood-caliber visual effects. Create grids, radio waves, particles, and more.
Text and vector graphics creation and animation Create text and vector graphics in After Effects using familiar Adobe tools, and then animate these elements to create visually innovative motion graphics.
Comprehensive masking and keying tools, including new Roto Brush Control which portions of a layer are visible by drawing and animating masks. The revolutionary new Roto Brush tool handles rotoscoping in a fraction of the time. Remove bluescreen and greenscreen backgrounds with the award-winning Keylight.
Timesaving presets and learning tools Get a jump start animating text and creating synthetic backgrounds with more animation presets. Use Brainstorm to experiment and refine designs. Learn fast with help, tool tips, and training resources on the web.
Powerful motion controls Apply realistic motion blur. Use Timewarp to slow down and speed up footage. Remove unwanted movement with the Motion Stabilizer, or precisely match the motion of source footage with mocha for After Effects.
Professional results for every media type Deliver your work anywhere. Compatibility with an extensive list of output formats lets you produce animated content for virtually any media, from film and broadcast to the web and mobile devices.
High-fidelity color Get precise, predictable color in After Effects with support for high dynamic range (32-bit-per-channel floating point) color, including Pro EXR files, ICC-based color management tools, and new color lookup tables (LUTs).
Top new features of Adobe After Effects CS5
Native 64-bit application One of the most significant advances in After Effects is that it is now a fully native 64-bit application. This yields numerous advantages, including the ability to fully use your computer's memory for dramatic improvements when working on high-resolution projects.
Just a few years ago, it was normal to work on standard-definition video at a color depth of 8 bits per channel (bpc). Today, it is common to work on high-definition video at a depth of 16 bpc. And while some artists have used After Effects on film projects since the earliest versions, digital cinema cameras such as the RED One are now commonly in use--making 4K images in 32-bit floating-point color increasingly common. And the memory demands don't stop there.
For example, RED has announced cameras that sport 5K, 6K, 9K, and even 28K frame sizes. Native 64-bit OS support in After Effects CS5 means you can work on ever-higher-resolution projects with confidence.
On 32-bit operating systems, the 2GB to 4GB memory restriction for each application sharply limit how many image frames can be held in RAM at the same time--which in turn constrains the length of full-motion previews and the complexity of projects overall. Even with disk caching and virtual memory, working with HD content using older versions of After Effects on 32-bit systems means you may be forced to wait while images are swapped in and out of RAM or re-rendered the next time they are needed. Resourceful artists have developed strategies to work around these limitations--such as working at lower resolutions or frame rates or using "proxies" of lower-quality sources--but these come with the trade-off of not seeing your composition in its final form while you work.
With After Effects CS5, these limitations no longer apply. Support for 64-bit operating systems means After Effects CS5 can access all of your computer's available RAM. This has a dramatic, positive effect on the type, size, and complexity of projects you can take on--as well as how fluidly you can work. With After Effects CS5 running on a 64-bit operating system with 32GB of RAM, you can preview a 30-second HD comp at full resolution and at 32 bpc. This enables you to preview your entire composition at maximum fidelity without interruption.
Beyond being able to preview longer continuous stretches of your project, rendered image frames are more likely to be kept in memory, allowing you to move around a project's timeline or between compositions without losing already-rendered frames. Additionally, memory buffer errors due to RAM constraints are virtually eliminated. These improvements increase productivity, which in turn facilitates creativity.
Integrated memory management In Adobe Creative Suite 5 Production Premium, you can coordinate RAM allocation for After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro , Adobe Encore, and Adobe Media Encoder thanks to cross-component memory management. This allows you to make the most of your system resources without learning complex memory-management settings.
Roto Brush Many shots require separating a foreground object--such as an actor--from its current live action background so that the object may be placed in a completely new environment. The revolutionary new Roto Brush provides a fast, efficient solution for isolating these foreground elements in complex scenes. In the past, this kind of work was time-consuming and expensive, and as a result, the technique was often reserved for big-budget projects. The new Roto Brush is so fast that After Effects artists can now perform rotoscoping on virtually any project--from previsualization to final composites--with greatly reduced concern about project budgets or deadlines.
To use the new Roto Brush, just draw simple paint strokes inside the foreground object, and let After Effects calculate where the rest of the foreground object is. If the foreground and background are similar, you can draw additional paint strokes to teach After Effects which elements are in the background. After Effects determines where the foreground and background are on subsequent frames; you can refine results with additional strokes. The process is fast and intuitive--and because After Effects does the hard work of finding the edges, Roto Brush eliminates the tedium traditionally associated with the task.
Once you've defined the foreground and background areas, you can control the quality of the edges between the two using options for smoothing, feathering, or choking (spreading inside or outside of the original edge). After Effects can calculate motion blur for fast-moving portions of the edge to deliver photo-realistic, professional results with minimal effort. "Edge chatter" from frame to frame is automatically reduced, and in addition you can remove background color from semitransparent edges of the foreground object. And if the resulting alpha channel still requires additional refinement, you can use the paint tools already built into After Effects to further tweak your results.
The Roto Brush expands your creative options by enabling you to offer results that require sophisticated rotoscoping--on virtually any project. Professional-quality results can be realized dramatically faster and with far less tedium: artists are already reporting that the process of rotoscoping is taking a fraction of the time it required in the past. This means you can accomplish creative treatments that previously were feasible exclusively on big-budget projects--from isolating elements for targeted color enhancement to placing design elements such as text or logos between actors and their backgrounds.
mocha for After Effects CS5 Real-world projects typically require motion tracking, and many shots present tracking challenges such as elements that go partially out of frame or include motion blur. mocha for After Effects CS5--an updated version of the software included with After Effects CS5--has a unique planar tracker that makes it easy to handle even the most difficult tracking and stabilization tasks. Also included in this release is the mocha shape plug-in, which enables you to use tracking data in new ways. stabilization tasks. (mocha for After Effects CS5 and mocha shape have user interfaces that are English only.)
This updated release of mocha includes the ability to apply motion tracking to hand-drawn masks, which is a significant time-saver. In addition, motion-blurred or semitransparent areas are easily handled with new support for varible-width mask feathers. And like After Effects CS5, mocha for After Effects CS5 is a native 64-bit application.
Included for the first time in After Effects CS5, the mocha shape plug-in enables you to copy and paste multiple motion-tracked masks from mocha to any After Effects layer, fully preserving all their qualities, including any variable-width mask feather settings. This is particularly useful for shots that contain camera movements or moving objects that require masking.
One of the other new features you will find useful is that Bezier or X-spline animated roto shapes created in mocha may be converted into mask shapes in After Effects, where they can be further refined and manipulated without requiring a trip back into mocha. Also with mocha for After Effects CS5, motion blur data is now included in the exported tracking data. This enables you to re-create the motion blur that occurred in the original footage.
AVC-Intra support and expanded RED camera support After Effects CS5 includes native support for the new AVC-Intra 50 and AVC-Intra 100 codecs, as well as expanded native support for footage from RED cameras.
AVC-Intra is used by high-quality Panasonic cameras like the AJ-HPX300, AJ-HPX3700 VariCam, and AJ-HPX2700 VariCam, as well as recorders like the AJ-HPM110. According to Panasonic documents, AVC-Intra 100 is the highest recording quality available in a one-piece camcorder--comparable to mastering video quality--and is explicitly designed and optimized for broadcast and production. Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 also supports AVC-Intra, so there's no barrier to integrating After Effects with Adobe Premiere Pro projects if you want to use AVC-Intra.
After Effects CS5, like Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, provides full native support for RED R3D files, allowing you to import them directly without transcoding, rewrapping, or installing additional software. Because the files you import contain raw sensor data, you edit footage that is as close to what the camera captured as possible, enabling you to work nondestructively on the color and look of your projects. This includes the ability to edit enhanced parameters such as Debayer Detail, Chroma Denoise, White Balance, ISO settings, and more.
With After Effects CS5, you can work with content in all common RED R3D file permutations, including 2K, 3K, 4K, 4K HD, 16x9, and 2x1, using a number of different frame rates.
Auto-keyframe mode After Effects has long featured powerful, flexible keyframing. However, artists new to After Effects have expressed a wish for an automatic way to begin keyframing their animations.
To assist these artists, After Effects CS5 offers an Auto-keyframe mode. When Auto-keyframe mode is on, modifying a property automatically turns its stopwatch on and adds a keyframe at the current time. This prevents you from working with a layer's properties only to realize later that After Effects did not capture any of your changes. Parameters that can be automatically keyframed include position, rotation, shape properties, mask properties, effect point controls, and camera manipulation.
New Refine Matte effect and dozens of other enhancements In every release, After Effects introduces dozens of refinements to popular features. Experienced professionals know that while individually these changes may seem subtle, collectively they make the day-in and day-out experience of working with After Effects smoother and more intuitive. Among many such features added in After Effects CS5 are:
The new Refine Matte effect that allows you to take advantage of the intelligent edge tracking, dechattering, and motion blurring capabilities found in Roto Brush and apply them to any layer with a problematic alpha channel, such as keyed footage
New options that allow you to align layers to a composition's boundaries, making it easier to precisely center objects and clean up the layout of your image frame overall
Enhanced support for Photoshop adjustment layer types, including Selective Color, Black & White, and Vibrance; you can also apply these color correction effects to any layer
A new option for per-character 3D text animation that allows each character to orient toward the camera around its own anchor point, further enhancing the illusion of 3D
A new Type option in the Camera Settings dialog box that allows you to easily specify if the camera is a one-node or two-node camera, adapting to your preferred approach for aiming and animating 3D cameras
The ability to import layered PSD files which include extruded 3D layers created with the new Adobe Repoussé feature inPhotoshop CS5 Extended.
A new keyboard shortcut to point the camera to either selected layers or all layers, along with many other improvements to camera tools and settings
New options to color-code panel tabs with the composition, footage item, or layer's label color, making it easier to identify elements at a glance in a complex project
Rendered Output Modules can now be dragged to a folder in the Project panel, resulting in the import of the output files into that folder for quick inclusion of rendered elements
New keyboard shortcuts and mouse functionality to quickly move between viewing the entire timeline and returning to your previous zoom level
An enhanced Levels effect Histogram display showing individual color channel strengths
New options for specifying the size of Bezier direction handles and vertices for masks and shapes as well as direction handles for motion paths, making them easier to see on today's larger monitors
Tooltips added for each vertex in the Graph Editor, which display the layer name, property name, time, and value of the keyframe, making it easier to precisely check values at a glance
Numerous enhancements to scripting, including the ability to access parameters for adaptive motion blur, text tracking, label attributes, and per-character auto-orientation
Color Look-Up Table support After Effects CS5 adds support for custom color look-up tables (LUTs) in the popular 3DL and CUBE file formats, which may be loaded into the new Apply Color LUT effect. This makes it possible, for example, to receive from a film output facility a custom LUT that reflects the specific color correction they are performing on a project, and simulate within After Effects what the result would look like on a specific piece of footage or final composite. You can also use this new feature to predict how your images will look through an unusual output chain such as displaying through a certain projector at a trade show or site-specific installation. In short, Color LUT support gives you confidence that the creative and technical decisions you make will translate properly to final output in an even wider variety of situations than before, and help ensure color consistency across multiple devices.
Color Finesse 3 LE After Effects CS5 includes an updated version of one of the most powerful desktop color correction tools available: Synthetic Aperture's Color Finesse 3 LE. (Color Finesse has a user interface that is English only.) The latest release of this versatile tool introduces numerous refinements, providing you with new ways to perfect your images. New features in Color Finesse 3 LE include:
Hue and saturation curve controls, yielding finer control over your color corrections
A new vibrance control that works in a way similar to the one in Adobe Lightroom software, providing a more subtle alternative to altering saturation
Auto Color and Auto Exposure buttons for instant corrections
New highlight-recovery feature, meaning you lose less image detail when you have to conform high dynamic range footage to the limitations of video
Improved handling of non-square pixels
A simplified plug-in user interface for improved ease of use
Color Finesse LE is also capable of exporting your "looks" as color look-up tables, which can then be applied in After Effects CS5 using its new Apply Color LUT effect. Plus, Color Finesse 3 LE has been updated to natively support 64-bit operating systems.
Digieffects FreeForm Digieffects FreeForm--included with After Effects for the first time in Creative Suite 5--vastly increases your 3D design options, allowing you to do more in After Effects, such as creating flags, bending floating video panels, and extruding layers without requiring a side trip into dedicated 3D software. FreeForm automatically responds to 3D cameras and lights in After Effects, making it easy to integrate the results of this effect into any 3D scene. (FreeForm has a user interface that is English only.)
Work with collaborative online services Users of After Effects CS5 may also enhance their workflow on large After Effects projects by accessing Adobe CS Live online services, available separately, including:
Adobe Story, the innovative new online service for crafting scripts. Story allows you to capture metadata in the writing phase, and use that metadata to plan your shoot more efficiently in Adobe OnLocation and help produce a preliminary rough cut in Adobe Premiere Pro.
Adobe CS Review, an online service that enables peers and clients to take part in the review of page layouts, image comps, illustrations, and video sequences.
Acrobat.com, a set of online services for creative professionals who need to accelerate discussion and information exchange with colleagues and clients.
For more information about these and other CS Live services, visit www.adobe.com/go/CSLive.
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