AE video effects vs. PP video effect-CS4

Can someone tell me authoritatively if the AE video effects as a whole are superior to PP? I'm thinking the answer has to be yes, but what about color correction for 720p footage for subjects [faces]?
If you believe AE is superior, what is your opinion about Auto Color/Contrast/Levels, especially vs. PP Fast Color Corrector/Levels/Auto Color, etc.? I'm trying to avoid major expenditures on Magic Bullet products since my projects are only standard studio interviews and do not call for anything high caliber.
Thank you for your feedback.
Paul

Hi Rick.
I really appreciate the link to the free Colorista. I didn't know they had a free version. I'm looking forward to trying it, hopefully later today.
In the meantime, you were very gracious in asking for a screen shot. I'm giving you two, both raw footage shot on an Panasonic HVX-200p at 720p60. The first is what I'd consider shot with good lighting and the second, well, speaks for itself.
As you noted, this is an interview destined for a DVD curriculum (not a movie). I have to chroma key a background in AE anyway, so I was thinking that AE would be the best place to do this. Todd seemed to suggest in this thread that the AE & PP color correction tools are identical or at least work identically (the settings are the same), and that PP was in fact better for "quick color correction to an entire image", which is what I am looking to do since the whole thing was shot poorly with the key light too far away. I did do a quick test in AE using AutoColor and adjusted the White Clip down to .05% and got a pretty good result except that the inner eye sockets still looked very dark. Colorista may change the discussion entirely, however.
I deeply appreciate your willingess to help so actively.
Paul
Update: Just tried Colorista Free. The Highlight Control alone worked wonders. Looking forward to learning how to use it more. A very superior product.
Highlight adjusted only in Colorista Free, applied directly to the clip:

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Video tutorials for After Effects CS4 (and some still relevant from CS3)

I just added a post to my blog about some new video tutorials that we posted (and some old ones that are still relevant):
video tutorials for After Effects CS4 (and some still relevant from CS3)

Thanks Todd!

Adobe After Effects CS4 loads N8 video with 500 fp...

I tried to import HD video captured with Nokia N8 in Adobe After Effects CS4 and it imports it with 500 fps. I also tried to import it to Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 and I got same results.
Video is accelerated, originally 40 seconds, in Adobe 2 seconds. I tried to modify it in Adobe After Effects and after I set it to 25 fps, length is normal, but the sound isn't.
Does anybody know solution for that?

Nobody can't help me?
I have mobile phone with 12MP HD camera and I need to use my old 3.2MP DVD camera because Nokia screwed up something.
Do you know what codecs Nokia N8 is using, so I could check online for them? Maybe that will fix the problem.

*** Adobe Creative Suite 4 Now Shipping! After Effects CS4 New Features ***

Adobe have officially announced the upcoming Creative Suite 4 group of products, including
After Effects CS4,
CS4 Production Premium bundle, and
CS4 Master Collection.
After Effects CS4 Top New Features
b Live Adobe Photoshop 3D layers import
Import Adobe® Photoshop® 3D layers into Adobe After Effects® CS4, move them, animate cameras around them, adjust lighting, and composite them with other elements.
b Searchable timelines and projects and easier nested comp navigation
Locate any element in a comp or project with the new QuickSearch. Quickly navigate between nested comps with the new Mini-Flowchart.
b Compositions exported as layered projects
Export compositions as layered, XFL format projects that can be opened and edited in Adobe Flash® CS4 Professional software. Many After Effects assets such as text and Adobe Illustrator® artwork are preserved as vectors.
b Integrated workflow for mobile device authoring
Select devices in Adobe Device Central and automatically set up an After Effects project that targets those devices, with settings that match the targeted devices and the Render Queue setup to output to the proper codecs and resolutions.
b Numerous interface and workflow tweaks
Work more efficiently with dozens of user-requested changes, including the new Auto Resolution setting that only renders visible pixels when zooming in and out of a comp view, streamlined memory and multicore processing preferences, and more.
b Dynamic Link between Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Soundbooth
Using Adobe Creative Suite® 4 Production Premium software, now link Adobe Premiere® Pro sequences to an After Effects composition and After Effects comps to Adobe Soundbooth® with Adobe Dynamic Link.
b Independent keyframing of x, y, z values, plus 3D compositing improvements
Composite in 3D space more easily: Keyframe x, y, and z position values separately, and use the new unified camera, which makes the After Effects camera tool work more like those in 3D modeling applications.
b Cartoon effect
Instantly give live footage the look of cell animation. Stylize video by reducing the color palette of a clip and by emphasizing edges.
b Mocha for Adobe After Effects from Imagineer Systems
Use this powerful 2.5D planar tracking application from Imagineer Systems to track the motion of elements even in challenging shots where elements move offscreen or where there is motion blur or excessive grain.
b XMP metadata for asset intelligence
Now retain asset metadata while you work in After Effects. Add new project-, comp-, and layer-level metadata to streamline project tracking, and automate asset auditing and many other tasks.
Also note that
Adobe OnLocation, included in the CS4 Master Collection, Production Premium bundle, and with Premiere Pro, now runs natively in Mac OS X as well as Windows.
Adobe is offering some discounted upgrade incentive pricing for a limited time and/or pre-ordering. Some initial U.S. prices are as follows:
i Product___________________CS3 to CS4 Upgrade_______CS4 Full Purchase
After Effects CS3____________$299__________________$999
Production Premium CS3_______$599__________________$1699
Master Collection CS3_________$899__________________$2499
Please visit
www.adobe.com for accurate pricing, eligibility for upgrades and pre-orders in your region.
Click here to be notified when CS4 products are available for purchase and trial.

There's a list of the big new features in the
"New features in After Effects CS4" section of After Effects CS4 Help on the Web, and you can read about every little change to the UI in the
"User interface changes from After Effects CS3 to After Effects CS4" section.
But I thought that all of you who have posted requests to this wishlist might like to get specific responses to some of the items on this list.
First of all, though, I'd like to point out an innovative set of features that I think addresses a request that many of you have made... just not exactly as you asked for it. All of us have wanted a better way to see into and navigate among nested compositions (precompositions). The Composition Mini-Flowchart and Composition Navigator make moving around in a complex project much, much faster and easier. Telling you to see the
"Opening and navigating nested compositions" section isn't going to do this feature set justice. You'll only appreciate how slick this is when you get your hands on it.
Oh, and we reversed the behavior of double-clicking versus Option-double-clicking a precomposition layer: Now double-clicking opens the source composition in the Composition panel, not the precomposition layer in the Layer panel.
Now, on to the specific responses...
David Wigforss:
> I completely agree that the graph editor needs work....
> Position values need to be seperated into 3 distinct values that can
> be adjusted independant of each other.
Done.
See
"Separate dimensions of Position to animate components individually".
Mark Weiss:
> would like to see XDCam EX import capabilities.
Done.
See
"Supported import formats".
AndyClarke:
> all effects in 32 bit or float
Not quite all. But more are, including all of the 3D Channel effects, which is a category that really needed the upgrade.
See
"Effects and animation presets".
AndyClarke
> prob a really simple little thing but a 'centre anchor point' button could be handy?
Move layers so that their anchor points are in the center of the composition or view?
If so, then done. See the first tip on the
"Move layers in space" page.
silversurfer:
> An intra-project search function that displays properties of every layer.
Done.
See
"Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels".
(Plus, you can now use the shortcut FF to show instances of missing effects. See
"About effects".)
Thomas Craul:
> the possibility to expand all of the effects parameters in the effect controls window at once.
> just like when expanding all layer properties or all subfolders with strg+klick (little arrow).
Done.
See
"Shortcuts: showing properties in the Effect Controls panel".
Pietje Bel:
> I'd like to see some features I can use with my tablet (I got it for photoshop, though
> I use AE even more than I use photoshop).
We've had features for using the pen dynamics with the paint tools for a while. See
"Brushes and the Brushes panel".
That said, we've made some improvements under the hood that should make using a pen better (e.g., modifying the sensitivity during certain click and drag operations).
Darren McNeill:
> Simple, I would like After Effects to have the ability to extrude Text in 3d space.
> Nothing complicated, just be able to create 3d Text.
How about the ability to do this in Photoshop and then import the 3D object layer into After Effects?
See
"Using 3D object layers from Photoshop"
invisiblerabbit:
> Being able to specify how many processors to use in the multiprocessing preference pane.
Done. Plus other improvements in this area.
See
"Memory & Multiprocessing preferences".
invisiblerabbit:
> I'd love a setting either in the preferences or the output module to write project
> information (importantly: the name of the project) into the metadata of the rendered file.
Done. And then some. On steroids.
See
"XMP metadata in After Effects".
Navarro Parker:
> I'd love AE projects to be searchable. Having the ability to search for comp names or source footage
> names within projects from the Finder would be fantastic.
Done, as long as you have the means to search within XML files. The new XML project file format opens up a lot of scripting possibilities, too.
See
"About projects".
David Bogie:
> I humbly ask the Adobe After Effects team to concentrate first on fixing anything
> and everything that is broken or buggy before adding any more complexity to this application.
> Make it more elgant, make it easier to use, make it faster... sure, fine. But invest the
> creative energy and geek resources to making it work flawlessly instead of adding more stuff.
Though we did add "more stuff", we also spent a lot of time polishing the application this time. The number of small tweaks to address pain points was very large.
AndyClarke:
> I just don't like the help browser.
Better?
After Effects CS4 Help on the Web
Laurie Hogan:
> I got a simple one. Can AE have Spell Check.
AE Enhancers provides
a spelling checker script.
Laurie Hogan:
> Also Can there be more integration between AE and Apple FCP.
I give a link to a script from Dale Bradshaw on the
"Supported import formats" page (at the bottom of the page).

After Effects CS4 install on Win XP 64bit OS

I am trying to install the After Effects CS4 trial unto a Win XP 64bit OS. There was only one trial download available and figure that if there is a 64-bit trial versions, it would be packaged with this also.
The installer designates installation location as "C:/Program/Adobe" which is correct as this is the 64bit program folder location. However, it actually drops the application in "C:/Program Files/Adobe (x86)". Also when After Effects CS4 is ran, it shows up as a 32-bit app in the Windows Task Manager process list (labeled as "AfterFX.exe *32")
If possible, is there a way to get After Effects CS4 properly recognized as a 64bit app under XP64? I know this OS is not fully support per system requirements, but managed to install Photoshop CS4 as a 64bit app without issues.
Another thing that confuses me also is the After Effects CS4Readme/technote:
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb405854http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb405854#_Toc162848026
Per known issues ...
"When installing on 64-bit editions of Windows Vista, an incorrect default installation location appears. The application will be installed in the correct location: C:\Program Files (x86). (#BG064131)"
Does this mean After Effects CS4 is a 32-bit only app?

Thanks for the quick clarification. I figured since video is so memory intensive, After Effects and Premier Pro would naturally be the first apps in their lineup to receive full 64bit compatability. Seems Photoshop CS4 is the only full 64bit app in their productivity line up.
Sébastien, thanks for breaking down the benefits of still going with a 64bit OS for AE!

After Effects CS4 error during render

The error appearing is as follows...
After Effects: AEGP Plugin Media IO Plugin:
Unknown Error!
MediaIO2 error: 0x4
Not enough memory to complete this encoding
( 5027 :: 12 )
Now, my computer memory is very poor (1.98 GB RAM), however, I do not believe this is the issue as I have tried rendering the exact same file on my other computer with 8.00 GB RAM, but the same error occurs.
I am completely baffled with why this error may be occuring, I have tried many ways to try and stop this. Such as...
Changed the "RAM to leave for other Applications" to 0.25 GB
Enabled Multiprocessing
Enabled Disk Cashe and to a size of 10,000 GB
Installed the latest update of After Effects CS4
Tried changing After Effects CS4's priority and affinity using Task Manager
Tried rendering with only After Effects opened with all other applications closed
Rendering with different output modules rather ".wmv", such as ".avi" etc.
Changed the video size from 856x480 to 428x240 etc.
I have tried rendering different sections of the video to avoid the parts where it has previously failed to render, however, it is continuing to crash and fail regardless of the section
The project I am rendering is rather large (4 Minute File), consisting of atleast 1 GB worth of imported video (.wmv) and images (.png) etc. However, before today, rendering was never problem and my renders would always run smoothly without crashing, so i'm completely unsure on what the possible change is and what could resolve the issue.
Thank you, all help is appreciated!

Any Windows Updates recently? Installed some CoDec pack or alternate media player software? If so, get rid of CoDec packs and reinstall Windows Media Player using the standalone package downloadable from Microsoft...
Mylenium

Quicktime X and After Effects CS4 - Unwanted Color / Gamma shift

Hello,
Upon the import of ANY video footage file into After Effects CS4, there is an immediate color (I am guessing a gamma shift) difference between how the video appears in Quicktime (both X and the older player) and how it appear in the After Effects composition window.
Footage appears to be darker in AE and lighter in quicktime, both before and after export. The gamma/color then appears roughly the same when being compressed via h.264 and uploaded to the web (the same in Safari, much darker via Firefox).
My main concern is simply getting AE's color to match Quicktime's so that I can have as close of a match between the color I think I have created in AE, and the actual color that appears in my final output to the web.
I have tried using all of the fixes to be found relating to gamma shifts via .h264, prores, etc. but nobody seems to have this problem with every codec, even animation. I have tried assigning color profiles in AE, matching quicktime legacy formats, etc. All of the options available in AE to no avail.
My monitor is calibrated fine, I am using Perian, All of the latest software updates. Any advice much appreciated!

Hi, thanks for the link. While helpful I am still having problems!
I tried using the method described with Automator to assign a color profile to a test Animation file, created from scratch in AE and rendered out as an Animation with no color management (previously it made no difference to the quicktime gamma shift as to if I had assigned a working color space or not within AE).
Automator only gives three color profile options, HD, SD, or PAL. I tried using HD as this is the size of video I normally work in (although I am also working in PAL), and ran Automator. I also tried using PAL and got identical results. It took about 30 seconds to finish and the result indeed looked much better in QT, and opened up in AE looking identical to a copy of the same .mov file with no color correction.
However, there is *still some change in the image quality as it appears in QT from how it (and the original) appears in AE*.
Original created / displayed in AE: What I am trying to maintain
Rendered out, Automator color profile HD assigned, and opened in QT: Gamma looks good but colors slightly more saturated than original in AE.
Rendered out with no color profile: Original problem with large gamma shift making everything bleached/washed out.
I have a screen shot I can show you to illustrate this here:
http://www.yousendit.com/download/THE0ek9xa0RxRTNIRGc9PQ
While the difference is subtle you can look at the RGB numbers and see the middle example is indeed more saturated.
Perhaps I need to use another color profile when working with the animation codec for animations created from scratch in AE to avoid this saturation shift, other than HD or PAL? Would you know of how to do this?
Also, would you know of how to change this, and perhaps a way of changing qucktime's interpretation rules for all animation files per se, so that I do not need to go through every .mov with the animation codec and assign profiles to them?
Many thanks for your time and sorry for being so long winded!

After Effects CS4 & Wacom Showstopper bug.

Hi! For more than one year I've being feeling that my machine was the slowest machine on Earth, so I spent a good deal of money on a new HP Z800 with a Quadro FX 5800 and 24GB of RAM with windows 7 64 and a set of SSD raid that gives me over 700MB per second, after install After Effects CS4 and try it, was awesome, such a good response and super fast, but.... after finish installing all the rest, AE was slow like on my previous 4 years old machine..... so something was wrong. To make the story short, was the Wacom driver, if I turn it off, all goes back to normal, turn it on and all goes slow, so far I was able to reproduce it on 7 machines, Win XP, Win XP 64, Vista 64, and Win 7 64, the all show the same problem, and all the machines are different. And the problem can be reproduced very easily. I've made a video showing how to reproduce it. This problem render the Wacom with AE as a non viable option for anyone. I've noticed this since about 12 months ago, but never thought is was a hardware / driver problem. Just thought AE was excruciatingly slow.
Here is the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KwzASwrnC0
Hope Adobe and Wacon recognize this problem and fix it as fast as possible,

Hello,
I'm using the trial of CS6 Production Premium, and After Effects CS6 has a terrible problem with the Wacom. After a video preview with audio or even just an audio preview, the Wacom will become very slow, almost like the computer is under insane processor load, but my CPU monitors don't seem to be doing much. I have a 24-core Dual-Xeon PC with 48GB memory and I am trying to make use of the multi-processor capability (it would be criminal if I couldn't use it).
The Wacom becomes slow with AFX and occasionally unresponsive. It makes it impossbile to work with AFX. I refuse to use a mouse, so that's out of the question. Also, this software should work with a Wacom like everything else does. I don't have this issue in any other program.
I've set AFX to use either 20 or 16 processors with .75GB memory per core. Seems this should work ok but the Wacom is being pummeled into submission, and that's a really bad problem if I can't even move my cursor. Makes me want to close down AFX ASAP, so I hope to find a fix.
I am using the latest Wacom driver and the trial for this software is only days old, so this problems should have been fixed by now according to this thread. I'm not too motivated to spend $1800 for this suite if I can't even use AFX with a Wacom, which is the main reason I'm after the Production Suite.
If I can't get this working I will probably just buy Vegas, even though Vegas is a big old crash monkey. No Wacom problems at all though.
Any ideas?
Also, anyone notice funny cursor behavior when typing in this forum? It seems to jump around on its own and this doesn't happen to me anywhere else. Could be a residual effect of the Wacom weirdness. This fields don't seem to like 'Shift+Enter' either.
Thanks,
Dan

After Effects CS4 Only Renders First 35 Seconds?

Hey guys! I'm having some issues with After Effects CS4. When I try to load a video into the ram, it stop loading after roughly 35 seconds and starts playing what it has finished. I can't seem to get it to load the rest of the video. Help please.
Thanks in advance!

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/424030?tstart=0
Mylenium

After Effects CS4 & WebM/VP8 Compatibility

I'm trying to create animations for web-use and would like to have them work on mobile platforms as well, so I want to export After Effects projects to an HTML5 video format. WebM is the one I'd most like to use, as that is supported by most browsers, but also in H.264 for Safari users and Ogg Theora if that is possible as well. I don't see a way to export to any of those formats with After Effects CS4 and was wondering if anyone knew of a method to add that functionality, perhaps using a plugin or something like that.
If anyone knows of a method, let me know!

You're best bet is to go .mp4 for now and AE does support H.264 encoding. In fact CS4 is rather good at it. If you are using a Flash player then h.264 will cover all of your basic browsers. As far has HTML5 and WebM goes I would say to hold off, this is coming from experiance. HTML5 is not finalized yet and all of the browsers are implementing their own versions of it. So you end up having to make different files\formats for several different browsers anyway. Why not just contiune to use the Flash player and use .mp4s or .flvs for the time being? And to be honest .h264 looks better then WebM with all the tests we have currently done.
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After Effects CS4 and OMF / AAF

My project's sound editor who I recently brought on board asked me for an OMF or AAF file from my film (that I'm editing together using After Effects CS4). I exported the OMF file for a clip that was about 15 seconds and the file was > 1GB!
My questions:
1) Is this typical? Seems like the sound editor shouldn't need anything this massive.
2) I couldn't find any exporting tool for AAF - is there a plugin to do this? Is this a smaller net resultant file?
He said there should be plugins for After Effects to export the kind of thing he needs, so I'm pretty sure these are possible.

Hello, Scireja.
I think there is a very widespread but understandable confusion regarding the nature of two different kinds of OMF files.
From your description, it seems like you want to export an OMF exchange file, which is a common way to translate a video timeline into something you can take to a DAW application like Pro Tools for audio post, while keeping the audio edits as separate clips.
But the OMF export option in After Effects is for OMF essence files. These are video files, in the native wrapper Avid systems use when ingesting or capturing material. It's not a project with embeded clips, but just a video file.
After Effects can't export this kind of OMF exchage files directly. Premiere Pro does export such files, as this feature is more typical of editing applications. Please note that there could be good news: You have the ability to export an AE project as a Premiere Pro project, and once you have this converted project in PPro, you can then export it as an OMF exchange file.

Installing Adobe after effects CS4 \m/

this is my problem when installing adobe after effects Cs4
here's a video that i made..so that u can understand it..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWMDwlmbBQE

Sorry, but you have wasted your time. There is no way to discern anything. Provide higher resolution screenshots along with some system info.
Mylenium

MP4 File in Adobe After Effects CS4 Only Plays Audio

So, I recorded some videos of Just Cause 2 on my PS3, and transfered them over to the videos section, I then put the videos on a USB flash drive, and put them on my computer, where I tried to open them in Adobe After Effects CS4, it didn't work. xD
It pretty much has no video, only audio.
But if you play the actual file with a player like Windows Media Player, it'll play fine.
I've tried changing the file extension to Mov, WMV, AVI, and every other one I could think of. And it'll only give me an error saying it's probably not a supported file type xD.
Oh, and I also have other mp4 files that will open in AE fine.
Any help would be awesome.

Transcode the file using tools like SUPER©, MPEGStreamclip, ffmpeg and so on. There are too many flavors of MPEG 4 out there that AE could handle them all and this seems to be exactly one such case.
Mylenium

Adobe After Effects CS4 post render errors.

I am currently working on Adobe After Effects CS4.
I created a video on Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 mixing 2 sound tracks and a video track + another transparent video track with a logo. I've checked the project many times on Premiere Pro, and it seemed excellent. Then I imported the Premiere Pro Project to After Effects CS4 and checked the sequence again in ae cs4 to confirm it before rendering. After checking the video, I started rendering it.
All went ok.
But after rendering the video I got a huge problem. The video works excellent up to 20mins and suddenly the primary video became green colour, but the sounds and the video track where I set the transparent video, still works fine. The primary video was green colour till the end.
This is a serious problem! Can anyone help me to fix it!! Its Urgent!!

My system properties are as follows.
Processor - Intel Dual Core
Ram - 4GB
O/S - MS Windows 7 Professional 32bit
Video render settings,
Format - H.264
Frame Rate - 25
Profile - High
Level. - 4.0
Output. - 1280X720

Dynamic Link for Premiere and After Effects CS4 with Titles

I've created a Rolling Title in Premiere Pro CS4. I'd like to create a Dynamic Link to bring the title into After Effects CS4 to add effects that will show up in Premiere. I've watched a few video tutorials on Dynamic Link and read the documentation and tried a variety of permutations but can't seem to get this done.
Also saw something in these forums about problems using Dynamic Link with Titles (as opposed to regular clip??)
And something about Premiere and After Effects projects being saved together ??in same folder - is that correct?
So, could someone explain if this can be done and the right way to do it?
Thanks

Thanks Mylenium - appreciate the quick and focused reply.
I would like to keep the benefits of the Premiere Pro Titler (to play with the length of time by stretching or squashing the Title block on the timeline; to type in time to stay on screen at end; ease in and out etc . . .). If I do render out a png / tiff / or psd sequence with alpha, and bring that into AFX to play with. Will I still retain the ability to use the Titler features in Premire Pro, or do I essentially have to convert it to 'regular footage' on reimport as opposed to a 'Title?"
Thanks

Scaling - Premiere or After Effects CS4?

I'm working on a documentary with several still images. When changing the scale and position to add a little motion, is there any difference in quality between using Premiere CS4 or After Effects CS4? I'm using PSD files in Premiere, but should I be doing this in After Effects? If so, how well does the Dynamic Link feature work for this?
Does it make any difference if I'm upscaling video instead of stills?
This project is HDV 720p 30fps. I have the latest Adobe updates.
Thanks,
JB

Absolutely, and "precise" is the right way to describe it. After Effects works with subpixel precision, meaning that it can subdivide a pixel into even smaller increments--specifically, 1/65,536th of a pixel. Any spatial properties, like position or scale, use subpixel precision when transformations are applied. As a result, effects such as scaling a video or a photo will look sharper, and motion will look smoother if animation is created. I'm not positive--as I've found no evidence supporting or to the contrary--but I don't believe that Premiere's scaling and motion "engine" uses subpixel precision. Technically, then, After Effects is more capable, but practically, I'm not sure it always makes a big difference.
Read about subpixel rendering in After Effects here...

AE video effects vs. PP video effect-CS4

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