Adobe After Effects; opinions please.

[Bern]

I'm thinking of getting Adobe After Effects as I have Adobe CS2.

The reason being I use my iSight to take video (sometimes time lapsed vids as well) and I would like to edit it eg: remove elements, add sound effects, music that I have created, add titles, special effects, etc. I also want to use images I have photographed and edited in PS + Illustrator.

Now I do have Flash 8 so I would like to be able to edit the videos I create and from time to time convert them to Flash for web and sometimes to QT.

I would like to read the point of view of people who are familiar with After Effects in regards to what I want to do.

 

[RatVega]

I'm thinking of getting Adobe After Effects as I have Adobe CS2.

The reason being I use my iSight to take video (sometimes time lapsed vids as well) and I would like to edit it eg: remove elements, add sound effects, music that I have created, add titles, special effects, etc. I also want to use images I have photographed and edited in PS + Illustrator.

Now I do have Flash 8 so I would like to be able to edit the videos I create and from time to time convert them to Flash for web and sometimes to QT.

I would like to read the point of view of people who are familiar with After Effects in regards to what I want to do.

After Effects is an effects system, not a general editing tool. You can do everything you mention with Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express, and much of it could be done in iMovie. I'd recommend you consider Final Cut Express. After you have the basic editing down and really know how much further you want to go, ask about effects. A huge number of things can be done in FCE, and if you need more, I'll pontificate on Boris RED, it makes After Effects look like iMovie.

Final Cut can accept many graphical formats, I use Pshop and Illustrator in conjunction with FCP all the time.

 

[Bern]

After Effects is an effects system, not a general editing tool. You can do everything you mention with Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express, and much of it could be done in iMovie. I'd recommend you consider Final Cut Express. After you have the basic editing down and really know how much further you want to go, ask about effects. A huge number of things can be done in FCE, and if you need more, I'll pontificate on Boris RED, it makes After Effects look like iMovie.

Final Cut can accept many graphical formats, I use Pshop and Illustrator in conjunction with FCP all the time.

iMovie doesn't really fulfill my needs eg: if I want to mask a sky background to get rid of clouds.

Effects is what I am after that why I was thinking of After Effects. I'm not quite sure what you mean regarding the differences between the Final Cut and After Effects, I thought they were actually similar applications?

 

[benwa02]

Right now I am taking a class on digital video and we are using iMacs with Adobe Premiere 6.5 (last Mac version made) and Adobe After Effects 6 (I think). Premiere is your basic video editing program and to use AE... well for your effects. I have used AE before this class and you can do some really cool effects. I have done the masking thing you have talked about. Its very similar to other Adobe products so its easy to pick up.

I cannot really talk much about Final Cut because I havent really done anything in it besides just open it up to see what it looks like. We arent using Final Cut for some reason I cant remember but my Prof said its very easy to cross over from one editing suite to the other, they are very similar. I have heard good things about Final Cut though so you should possibly consider it. It is becoming a standard and has taken over the Mac world, which I think is the main reason Adobe dropped Premiere for the Mac at 6.5.

Do you plan on using AE to exclusively edit the video? Not talking about any effects just making cuts.

 

[daleremote]

Know this about After Effects:
If you want to play your video it will have to render every frame into RAM, which can take a while depending on the size of the video and how many effects + layers of video you've got, and then it will go back and play the video in real time, assuming you have enough RAM, otherwise it will just play a chuck of your video.

In dedicated video editors, like Final Cut and Premiere, you can just press play (usually, the space bar) and it plays. In these programs, any FX, like dissolves or fades, are rendered once and one at a time (rendered to a file which will appear on your hard drive), as they are created, so realtime playback is instantly available. In After Effects, none of your effects are rendered to disk (only to RAM) until you do a final render, at which time all FX are rendered simultaneously.

After Effects is okay for small, short edits, and I've used it for that on occasion, but by small and short I mean less than 30 seconds.

Also, Final Cut, in addition to editing, does quite a bit of FX (better known as 'compositing,' by the way). It's covered a lot of After Effects' ground but isn't quite as robust.

My current workflow is 1) Edit in FCP, 2) Export clips that need FX work, 3) create FX in AE, 4) Render from AE, 5) import back into FCP.

 

[benwa02]

Know this about After Effects:
If you want to play your video it will have to render every frame into RAM, which can take a while depending on the size of the video and how many effects + layers of video you've got, and then it will go back and play the video in real time, assuming you have enough RAM, otherwise it will just play a chuck of your video.

In dedicated video editors, like Final Cut and Premiere, you can just press play (usually, the space bar) and it plays. In these programs, any FX, like dissolves or fades, are rendered once and one at a time (rendered to a file which will appear on your hard drive), as they are created, so realtime playback is instantly available. In After Effects, none of your effects are rendered to disk (only to RAM) until you do a final render, at which time all FX are rendered simultaneously.

After Effects is okay for small, short edits, and I've used it for that on occasion, but by small and short I mean less than 30 seconds.

Also, Final Cut, in addition to editing, does quite a bit of FX (better known as 'compositing,' by the way). It's covered a lot of After Effects' ground but isn't quite as robust.

That is right. Good point and worth being noted to the person asking this question. You will not be able to get the feel for your effect to see if it looks right within AE until EVERYTHING is outputted to a movie file. You do not want to be doing this to an entire film when you only need it done for certain parts.

My current workflow is 1) Edit in FCP, 2) Export clips that need FX work, 3) create FX in AE, 4) Render from AE, 5) import back into FCP.

This is the way I do it and is the way it should be done I believe. No point in bringing the whole movie into AE otherwise whats the point of premiere/FCP. AE is NOT an editing suite.

Good points daleremote.

 

[wrxguy]

Final Cut Express or Pro if you got the cash and some experience.....its the **** man..it rules

 

[mikemodena]

If you're looking for some pro vfx and you have a capable machine.. I would definately look into Apple's Motion. My workflow consists of Final Cut Pro 5, Motion 2, and LiveType 2. (Along with Photoshop if necessary) and it allows me to be insanely creative.

 

[Bern]

Thanks heaps for all your advice everyone. So I'm considering FCE HD the one thing I'm not sure of is if I create a project in FC can I than convert it to Flash for viewing on the net?

 

[Sdashiki]

If you have a flash exporter codec or an app, why not.

But if you mean a program to make something into vector art, I dont know of that filter. I think its called all by hand, rotoscoping. Like "Waking Life"

 

[RatVega]

iMovie doesn't really fulfill my needs eg: if I want to mask a sky background to get rid of clouds.

Effects is what I am after that why I was thinking of After Effects. I'm not quite sure what you mean regarding the differences between the Final Cut and After Effects, I thought they were actually similar applications?

______________
Final Cut Pro is a very powerful video editing system that includes transitions, filters, keyframing, matting and compositing capabilities, titling, (limited) audio processing capabilities, and much much more. Final Cut Express is a subset that excludes a lot of the more esoteric video format support (this is important if you're shooting DVCPro50 with that $30,000 home cam ), a lot of the keyframing, and some filters you probably wouldn't use.

I cut in FCP HD (4.5) and FCP 5. FCP4 was good enough for Walter Murch to cut "Cold Mountain" on, both of these are newer and improved.

Without any other software I've created (as an example) effects like moving video "frames" on both sides of the screen to give "filmstrip" look to a credit sequence (the composite was 13 layers deep and contained 350 short DV clips), made a walking subject do the cha-cha to music, floated 5-6 different video clips across the screen in random directions, done "Ken Burns effects" on stills just to name a few. If I include Photoshop for support, I can also make the ears on your bunny in that still photo wiggle in time... My point is, unless you need to do something really complex, you don't need anything except maybe Pshop and the other apps that come with Final Cut, like LiveType.

On the other hand, trying to produce in AE without a good video editing system is going to be slow and unrewarding.

And as I said before, if you want over-the-edge effects, there's always Boris RED.

 

[Bern]

Thanks for that very concise reply RatVega

I think I'll just grab FCE HD, sounds like it will suit my needs.