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AE DSLR footage

arjen92

arjen92

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 9, 2008
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Hey,

I shot some green screen shots with my canon t3i. I moved the clips into After Effects, removed the green screen, placed a nice background, everything perfect.

However, the guy in the video is talking about stuff that's supposed to be added in After Effects. The playback is horrible though. It plays fine for a few seconds (the stuff which is already in the RAM) and then starts to play choppy. I deactivated all layers and effects (so I only got the original footage) and it still won't play nice.

I opened up a new project, placed the files in there and I tried to play one of the videos. Still, the playback was choppy. Nothing was done with the footage (as I said, it was a new project).

The sound is also missing (which is quite important to know when to add the elements). I guess it's because I don't know AE well enough. Apparently there is sound when you hit the zero button on your numpad.

I'm editing on a 2008 iMac 2.8 ghz, the footage is on 1000GB FW800 drive. OS Lion. I'm puzzled, because premiere pro has no problems playing back the files.

So what am I missing? Settings? Or should I convert the files to something less compressed? If so, what codec? I tried looking up a good codec. I know for final cut ProRes is a good one, but which codec works well with Adobe, while my mac is able to keep up?
 
Last edited:
In After Effects, when you hit play, it will play back every frame without dropping any. If your processor + gfx card + RAM + storage can't handle real time (such as in a full HD composition), you will see lower than real time playback.


When you hit the 0 key on the numerical keypad, After Effects will render to RAM preview. Just let it run and do it's thing; it will start looping playback when RAM is full… speaking of which, how much RAM do you have ? The quantity will affect the length of what you can preview.

Another option is to lower the playback resolution, it's at the bottom of your composition window. Before previewing switch to "quarter" (it should be on "auto" by default), and if you still have performance issues go to "custom" and enter 8x8.
 
Premiere Pro and After Effects play things abck very differently (in my experience). What I'd do, is open that AE composition in Premiere and work from there if you are concerned about hearing the audio while you work without render times.

You could also change your Ram preview settings... dont have it ram preview in full resolution, maybe have it skip every other fram in the ram preview, etc... And it takes a long time for AE to render files for your preview. Depending on what you need to edit in to the video, I'd see if you can open that composition in Premiere and edit it from there (add titles, etc..) Otherwise, you may just have to work around the render times. Once you get past what the RAM will hold in the ram preview, you'll start getting choppy playback. This doesn't necessarily mean there's anything wrong with your video. it just takes AE some time render it to be displayed and it doesn't work well with rendering and playback in realtime.

But, I'd recommend playing with your ram preview settings to find an acceptable balance between quality and time spent waiting. I'd also make sure your preview monitor panel isn't running at full resolution. That can take time too.
 
Thanks guys!

After working for a while with premiere pro, I totally forgot that AE put's everything in it's RAM and just needs to render. The native support to play back DSLR files is really great in premiere. Also, off topic, it runs ten times faster than Final Cut Pro X does on the iMac.

I've got 6 GB or RAM and I downscaled it to 1/4 and skip one frame. But I think I will look up the timing in quicktime and the look for visual hints to put it in AE, so no playing back.

And I'm not sure the 6GB is optimal, since this iMac only supports 4 GB officially.
 
Bring your original file into Premiere. Use the razor tool to slice the track every time you want a new element to come in. When you are done, highlight all the clips in your timeline, right click and select "Replace with After Effects Composition". This will create an after effects comp with each clip you sliced on it's own track giving you visual roadmap to where you need to add elements. It's quicker than going back and forth in quicktime, finding a timecode, advancing to the point in AE, etc.

Also, if you do this all in AE which I do for big comps you can set it up to play the audio when you do a RAM preview. So you don't have to put the whole comp into RAM, go around where you know you need something and adjust the work area start and end so it will only RAM preview a small portion of your timeline. The keyboard shortcuts for those are "B" for beginning and "N" for end. This allows you to select a smaller portion of the timeline to load into RAM at a time.

I recently did a 5 minute motion graphics comp entirely in AE (minus the audio cut in FCP) and this was the only way to possibly do it.
 
If you're just looking for audio cues then use markers. No need to fuss with anything in Premiere.

You can playback audio in real time using the period key on the number pad. You can use the asterisk key to set your markers in real time while the audio plays back or just drag your play head and set markers manually. You can also name the markers if that helps more.
 
handsome pete said:
If you're just looking for audio cues then use markers. No need to fuss with anything in Premiere.

You can playback audio in real time using the period key on the number pad. You can use the asterisk key to set your markers in real time while the audio plays back or just drag your play head and set markers manually. You can also name the markers if that helps more.
Click to expand...

That is helpful for many issues! I was giving the Premiere advice because most of the time people aren't dealing with a single take.
 
If your really have to view it in AE, just use keyboards "b" and "n" to create timeline in/outs. This makes RAM Preview plausible. Just select sections here and there so you can see if your timing is right.
Also careful with the round-trip using Make Movie (rendering). In the past (without the current Adobe round-trip option) Ive ran into projects where the last person used a different codec or settings that caused small to large color matching issues.
 
out of curiosity, did you convert the video files from the t3i to one thats easier to edit? because someone I'm teaching did that mistake, and everything was a nightmare to edit, i also have the t3i.

just asking :) if you didn't convert then in my experience it can cause some problems
 
I have no experience with the Canon t3i, is this basic AVI or MPG?
If so, maybe transcode to something your computer can handle?
 
mBox said:
I have no experience with the Canon t3i, is this basic AVI or MPG?
If so, maybe transcode to something your computer can handle?
Click to expand...

It's h.264 in a .mov container.

But what would you advice to transcode it to, which codec/format? I would transcode it to prores. But premiere pro handles the footage natively, and with AE I need to transcode anyway. Would ProRes be really faster?
 
arjen92 said:
It's h.264 in a .mov container.

But what would you advice to transcode it to, which codec/format? I would transcode it to prores. But premiere pro handles the footage natively, and with AE I need to transcode anyway. Would ProRes be really faster?
Click to expand...

i use prores 422, and it makes a massive difference in my opinion but thats my opinion based on my experiences, i was taught that way too by my previous media company, film -> transcode -> edit -> export
 
My bad since I forgot the op was on Premiere.
To be honest with my AE work, I work with Uncompressed QT only.
I use mostly R3D converted from RCXPro to QT Uncompressed.
Now thats for strict AE work.
The rest are ProRes422 HD or ProRes4444 4K.
Again depending on the footage Im using.


AE - Ooops also Maya rendered sequential files but thats another story.
 
salacious said:
i use prores 422, and it makes a massive difference in my opinion but thats my opinion based on my experiences, i was taught that way too by my previous media company, film -> transcode -> edit -> export
Click to expand...

Ok, I'm transcoding to prores 422 using compressor now. The first file seems to be playing faster (using preview/hitting the spacebar).
 
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