Pro Editing @ Home

by Kevin P McAuliffe

It's not very often that a member of the editing and/or graphics community gets a chance to talk to one of the people who spearhead the move forward in such an influencial program like Adobe's After Effects CS4, so I have to say that of all the interview's I've done, this was the one I looked forward to the most. I have used After Effects since version 3.1 on the Mac, and I have had some burning questions that I NEEDED answered, and thankfully, Michael Coleman, Product Manager for After Effects CS4 agreed to answer them for me....and you!

 

PE@H: Tell us about your favorite new feature in After Effects CS4.

MC: Wow. It's not easy to pick a favorite feature. We have over 50 significant new features to choose from. Two features stand out for me, and I miss them every time I open an older version. The first one is a feature we call Quick Search. Real world After Effects projects have many layers and that usually translates to a million things in the timeline and project panels. Quick Search lets you type a few characters to instantly reveal the item you're looking for. You don't have to constantly scroll or twirl open a layer to find something buried deep in your timeline. It's particularly handy for opening old projects or projects from other artists. You don't have to waste time rooting around for the text layer or effect that needs to be changed.

Another favorite feature is the Mini Flowchart. Designers often use composition nesting as a way to organize the different parts of the project. The Mini Flowchart is an intuitive way to visually understand and navigate the nesting structure of your compositions. It pops up like a heads-up display right where you need it. It also goes hand-in-hand with the Quick Search feature to help you work faster in After Effects.

New is AECS4: Quick Search & Composition Mini-Flowchart

 

Mini-Flowchart

 

PE@H: Besides obviously being a motion graphics program, how do you think After Effects fits into the Production Premium and the Master Collection?

MC: I really like the way After Effects works with the other products in the Production Premium Suite in an integrated workflow. When you look at how much time you save because of integration, it's easy to see how it improves your bottom line. Features like Dynamic Link, project exchange, consistent format support and user interface are all good examples of this.

This is important because a project can rarely be finished using a single application these days. You need a complete tool set like Adobe Production Premium CS4. We're always looking for ways to break down the barriers between the applications. In After Effects CS4, you can now export layered After Effects compositions directly to Flash Professional. This means you can shorten the time it takes to get your motion graphics, transparent video, and visual effects into online and interactive projects.

 

PE@H: Do you ever see After Effects making a jump to "real" 3D, or do you think it will stay with 3D Space/2D images?

MC: We made some changes in this area for CS4. We added the ability to manipulate 3D cameras in After Effects using a 3-button mouse. We also now have the ability to have separate X, Y, and Z keyframes on layer positions. All of these things enhance using After Effects for 3D content. Sometimes the best 3D features for After Effects are enhancements to the flow between programs. As an example, After Effects CS4 added support for Photoshop's 3D layers. These layers keep their true 3D appearance and you can view them from any angle or fly your camera around them. It's a big step forward in the kind of look you can create with After Effects. Your beautiful Photoshop 3D layers are no longer stuck in Photoshop.

I would like to see even more 3D capabilities in After Effects someday. If we do, I'm sure we will focus on 3D features that make sense for motion graphics and visual effects compositing. After Effects isn't likely to become a full-fledged 3D authoring program. Nor should it. A deep 3D modeling and animation feature set makes more sense for products like Maya or Cinema4D.

PE@H: Of all your third-party developers, who impresses you the most?

MC: We have a great community of 3rd party developers and I've enjoyed working with all of them over the years. There are thousands of creative and productivity products available to use with After Effects. But for the CS4 release, there's one we liked so much we decided to include it with every copy of After Effects CS4. It's called Mocha for Adobe After Effects from Imagineer Systems. Mocha provides 'planar' motion tracking and it makes quick work of challenging tracking tasks like blurry, grainy or shaky footage. It also nails tough corner pinning jobs. The best way to get Mocha is to simply get any new or upgrade version of After Effects, Production Premium, or Master Collection. You can also buy it separately for about $300, but why would you? It's a great deal from Adobe.

I'm also excited about native support for RED camera files. All you have to do is get the plug-in from RED and you can import your R3D files without transcoding. It's very similar to using other types of footage in After Effects.

The RED camera

 

PE@H: If someone is sitting on the fence about purchasing After Effects CS4, what would you say to convince them to get it?

MC: Aside from all the creative features like the Cartoon effect and Photoshop 3D layer import, we made a big effort to help you work smarter and work faster. We're backing this productivity promise by doing research to quantify how much time and money you'll be saving with CS4. We'll be releasing the results of this research shortly, but I can tell you the return on investment for CS4 is nothing short of impressive. I believe a new version of After Effects or Production Premium is one of the best investments you can make this year.

 

PE@H: Looking back at all the version of After Effects (including CS4), what would you say was its biggest leap forward?

MC: This is a hard question. They're all great and we added major milestone features in every release along the way.

We're actually accelerating innovation with the CS4 release, particularly if you look at how all the applications in Production Premium are evolving. With features like Dynamic Link and XMP metadata, you can start to see a whole new territory of innovative and time-saving improvements. I really love the Speech Search feature in Premiere Pro. It converts the dialog in your video to text. Let's say you have an hour long interview and you want to find a particular passage. Before CS4, you had to scrub through the whole thing or have someone painstakingly log the whole clip. After running the transcription in Premiere Pro, you can use a search field to instantly find any point in the interview. What's more, that transcript flows with the asset into After Effects where it can be used to cue animation, and then when you deliver an online video experience using Flash, you can leverage the same transcript to make all the video on your website searchable. Amazing stuff in CS4!

PE@H: Will there be a time in the future that any version of After Effects will be able to open any saved project version? (i.e. - AE7 can open AECS4 saves, but whatever features are not supported in the earlier program would be disabled)

MC: Some customers would find it useful to save back to a previous version of After Effects. When we dive into the details with them, they tend to get a little less enthused because most new features can't go back in time to the old versions. That doesn't mean that we'll never have it, but we have to spend our time wisely. We get many more requests for creativity and productivity enhancements and so we usually focus on those. But the future is a long time, so I'd never say never.

PE@H: After Effects is the "go to" application when it comes to motion graphics. Why do you think that is?

MC: I think this is because we love to stay in touch with our customers. The natural outcome of this relationship is that After Effects can stay relevant to their needs even while the world evolves in unpredictable ways. Look at how media has changed over the past 16 years. It's challenging to make your content stand out in our media-saturated world. That's why you see a trend toward broad, integrated media campaigns. Your content has to flow to numerous screens - film, broadcast, computer and mobile. After Effects can touch every one of these. Where there's change or innovation in media, we'll go there with our customers.

PE@H: What do you think are some great "under rated" features of After Effects CS4?

MC: We're always on the lookout for the small things that make a big difference and we put many of them into CS4. Three 'unsung hero' features stand out for me. First, we now have guides for center cut safe zones which make it easier to see how your widescreen project will look on a 4:3 screen. Second, we now have an "auto resolution" option that sets the viewer resolution to your current zoom level. This prevents you from rendering more pixels than you can see on screen. Lastly, I hope everyone takes note of the new preference panel for memory and multi-core rendering management. It is now very informative and intuitive.

Multi-core Rendering preferences pane

 

PE@H: Why should we, the users, get excited about After Effects CS4

MC: Like anyone else, our customers need to be more efficient and offer something new and something innovative to their clients. When you look at all the creative and productivity enhancements, After Effects CS4 is a must-have release. I'm fond of the notion that an hour saved is an hour of creativity unleashed upon the world. That, or you can just go home from work an hour early. Your choice. Either one is a good thing.

I really want to thank Michael for taking the time to talk to us. If you are looking to purchase the best motion graphics program in the business, head over to www.adobe.com, and download the free 30 day trial of Adobe's After Effects. You won't be disappointed.