After Effects Basics

Adobe After Effects is a digital visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing application developed by Adobe Systems. It is used in the post-production process of film making and television production.

Examples of what you can do in After Effects includes, visual effects creation such as fire, water, lighting, weather, explosions; editing out objects and editing objects into its place; and logo/text animation.

After Effects is an incredible software, but it isn’t ideal for editing footage. In an editing context, Adobe After Effects is usually used to apply effects after your footage has been roughly edited. We recom-mend you edit the footage beforehand in Premiere, then apply effects afterwards.

What is After Effects?

Setup

Press File > Save As > Save As… > Title and save your file to a location in your computer

Go to Edit > Preferences > Auto-Save > set

Save Every to your desired time.

We recommend auto-saving every 5-10

minutes depending on your editing speed.

Open After-Effects by

double-clicking the icon.

-This window will display

any previous projects

you have worked on.

Select New Project

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We recommend you save your file to multiple locations. One on the hard drive of the computer, one on a

portable hard drive, and one copy online. Hard drives fail quite frequently, so for important projects, having

the three step saving method will be a wise choice.

Importing Media

There are a few different options to import media:

1. Double-click in the Project Panel, navigate to your files,

and select the media you would like to import.

-To select multiple files, hold Ctrl while left-clicking each

item once.

-To select multiple files in a row, click the first item in the

sequence, hold Shift, then click the last item.

2. Right-Click in the Project Panel and select Import

3. Select File in the upper left, select Import

4. Drag-and-drop footage from the folder that contains your

items

NOTE: It is very important that you have your footage organized beforehand, if you change the

location of your footage after you have imported, After Effects will not be able to find it.

There are also a few different options

to placing the selected media, drag-

and-drop the media onto the Timeline

or to the Layers Panel.

You can also drag-and-drop media

directly into the Composition Panel.

This can be very useful for placing

logos directly onto the area of the clip

that you would like it to go.

Placing the Media

Making Adjustments

Your media can be adjusted in a few different ways with Scale, Position, Rotation, and Opacity.

Scale, Position, Rotation, & Opacity

Scale adjusts how large or small the media

is, or how zoomed in it appears. To bring up

Scale, click in the Layers Panel and press S.

Position adjusts where the media appears

on the screen, based on the X (horizontal)

axis and Y (vertical) axis. To bring up Posi-

tion, press P.

Rotation will adjust the angle at which the

media will appear. To bring up Rotation,

press R.

Opacity adjusts how transparent the media appears. To bring up Opacity, press T.

To adjust the these attributes, click and hold the blue numbers next to the attribute and drag the

mouse left and right to adjust it.

You can also double-click the blue numbers and manually type in the number you would like.

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Holding Shift and then pressing S, P, R, or T will allow you to bring up more than one attribute at a time.

Navigating the Timeline

You can click anywhere in the Timeline, and the blue

Timeline Indicator will appear. You can click and hold

the Timeline Indicator and drag it left and right to

“scrub” through the media.

Press the Home key to go to the beginning of the Time-

line.

Press the End key to go to the end of the Timeline.

Press Page Up/Down to move frame by frame

-Hold Shift while pressing Page Up/Down to move ten

frames at a time.

There are a few ways to navigate through your material in the Timeline, mainly by using the blue

Timeline Indicator. Wherever the Timeline Indicator is placed, that exact point of the media will display

on the Composition screen.

Hours Minutes Seconds Frames

These numbers indicate where the Timeline Indicator is placed. Each set of numbers indicates a different

measurement of time:

Keyframes and Animation

Drag-and-Drop the logo onto the Timeline. Ensure that the logo

is the top layer.

Press P to bring up Position.

Place the logo in the upper left hand corner of the Composi-

tion.

Select the Stopwatch Icon next to Position in the Layers Panel.

This creates what is called a Keyframe.

-A Keyframe is a location on a timeline which marks

the beginning or end of a transition. It holds special

information that defines where a transition should

start or stop. The intermediate frames are gradually

adjusted over time between those definitions to

create the illusion of motion.

Move the Timeline Indicator further down the Timeline

Select and drag the Logo to another point on the Composition screen

A new Keyframe should have automatically been created once you let go of

the icon. If not, select the Stopwatch Icon again to do so.

Press Space on the keyboard to play the footage and view your animation

Beginning Keyframe Ending Keyframe

Effects

After Effects comes with many effects that can do everything from correcting color, to distorting, blur-

ring, specialty filters, even audio adjustments. They can be accessed via the Effects and Presents Panel

on the far right of the workspace.

Applying Effects

Drag-and-drop the desired Effect either directly onto the Com-

position Panel, or drag-and-drop the Effect onto the desired

Layer.

Once you have applied an Effect onto a Layer, the

Project Panel in the upper left has changed into the

Effects Panel, displaying the various adjustable

settings.

You can set Keyframes here as well to have the

Effects change over time.

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You can toggle on and off the Effects by selecting the “fx” icon in the Layers Panel

Exporting

Open up Adobe Media Encoder Queue beforehand.

In After Effects, go to Composition at the

top and select Add to Adobe Media Encod-

er Queue or use the keyboard shortcut of

Ctrl+Alt+M

Once Adobe Media Encoder Queue opens, select the

drop down triangle icon to the left of Match Source

This drop-down menu contains all of the

possible ways to export your video.

Navigate to the end of the list and select YouTube

Select the blue text underneath Output File, name it, and

choose a location to save your exported video.

Select the video file and select the green triangle button in

the upper right to export the video

Resources

After Effects Guide:

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/user-guide.html

Effects Information:

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/effect-list.html

Lynda.com

After Effects CC 2017 Essential Training: The Basics

Youtube.com

After Effects Series Tutorials ChanneL

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOi5hBrqjJX0BiK3CqYWXsQ

Book-a-Librarian

http://tx-plano.civicplus.com/FormCenter/Libraries-5/Book-a-Librarian-98