Pro Editing @ Home

by Kevin P McAuliffe
January 13, 2009

These days, companies are making big bucks by creating loopable backgrounds, packaging them together, and selling them for a pretty good penny. The problem with them is that you end up seeing them start to pop up in shows all over the place. broadcastGEMs has decided to do things a little differently, and instead of creating, marketing an selling backgrounds, they are creating After Effects projects that you can take and use the way they are, or alter them to create something new and different. Let’s see if this is worth your money.

INSTALLATION

One great feature of broadcastGEMs AEPro Series Volume 2 (BGV2) is that there isn’t an installation at all. Since they are After Effects Projects, you simply download them, open and start using right away. One thing I would suggest is that once you download them, burn them to a CD or DVD, that way you always have a backup of what you started with. The “installation” of BGV2 takes as long as it takes to unzip a 300 mb (HD) file.

WHAT YOU GET & HOW THEY WORK

Depending on the package you choose, you will get twelve After Effects projects in either SD or HD. Technically, it's thirteen projects, as there is one project that they have a regular and an alternate version of (Flyby01). The alternate version uses Trapcode's Particular, so if you have it, it will add a bit of flare to that project. There are two projects that are designed a little differently then the other ten. The first one, "Texture Animator Expresso", is designed for all you motion graphic artists who create texture backgrounds on a regular basis (which is pretty much all of us!) This project, much like all the others, is set-up very simply using expressions. For all you beginners out there, don't worry about not knowing expressions, because with BGV2, you don't need to know them. Any time you need more information, markers have been added to your timeline to help guide you on your way.

The second project that is slightly different from the others is "Text Animating Expresso". This project consists of four compositions that use expressions to animate text appearing on the screen. Both additional comps can come in pretty handy, and I can easily see myself using the Texture Expresso quite a bit! Much like with the Text Animating Expresso, certain other projects like "Logo Setups" actually come with five different compositions in the project for you to choose from. Nice! broadcastGems has also made sure to take care of all of us NTSC as well as PAL users with each standard definition project having both an NTSC and PAL version for you to choose, depending on your geographical location.

Here's a movie of all the different projects that you get:

There is something important that I want to point out, and that is that if you look at these After Effects projects on a large scale, you might think to yourself "I would never use that animation for anything I'm working one!", and that might be very well true. When I first looked at the lineup, I knew that I would use the two "TRANSITION" projects and the "3D MOTION 01" project the way they were created, but you can't look at this collection like that when you are deciding whether or not you want to buy them, or you could be missing out on some great "not-so-hidden" gems. For example, let's take a look at the Curtain 03 project. I can see myself using the curtain element of either composition for a kids series, or even as a great DVD menu element.

I also really like the potential of the "SILHOUETTE" project. I'm not big on the people just standing there not doing anything, so what I would do instead is shoot footage of people walking on a green screen (you could use athletes - i.e. - hockey, baseball and football players), and key them out so that your silhouette's are "moving" around the composition. I can easily see myself using elements from every project in something that I am working on.

Some people might wonder to themselves "Why is there an SD and HD version of these projects?", and the answer is quite simple. When working in HD and moving from the 4x3 frame size, you need to make (sometimes major) adjustments to your composition so that you fill your entire 16x9 frame.

VALUE FOR YOUR DOLLAR

This one for me is a no brainer. If you were to pick up the "SD & HD" bundle, you are looking at spending about $13 US for each project, and remember in many cases, you are getting more than one composition per project, so it actually works out to an even better deal.

PROS

- broadcastGems' projects WILL save you time
- there are elements in every project that you can use for something.
- $13 US per project is a good deal ($158US for SD/HD Bundle)

CONS

- No "a-la-cart" option for the projects
- naming of projects might confuse people into thinking they are missing some of them.
- Instead of a 720p (29.97) comp, a 1080 23.98psf and 720p (59.94) would have been better!

Purchase Recommendation : Buy

In the end, there is no denying that broadcastGEMs AEPro Series Volume 2 will save you time, and add flair to any project you are working on. Whether you are a beginner or advanced After Effects user, the only question you will be asking yourself is do I need the SD, HD or both? You can find out more information about broadcastGEMs AEPro Series Volume 2 by clicking here!