Using After Effects as an Advanced Titler for Premiere Pro

Adobe Premiere Pro has a robust titler built in, including the ability to create title rolls and crawls. However, Adobe After Effects has even more advanced tools, including hundreds of Animation Presets for type, Shape Layers to build additional graphic elements such as lower third bars, and a combination of Layer Styles and Effects to further enhance the final look. If you have either the Production Premium or Master Collection suites, Premiere Pro and After Effects can talk to each other using Adobe Dynamic Link, which makes this process more fluid. In this article below I’ll explain the general process of using After Effects to create refined lower thirds for Premiere Pro, and then on the next page is a series of short videos that walk through the actual process (including some design ideas in After Effects).

Blend Modes in Adobe Premiere Pro

As a motion graphics artist, one of our favorite tricks to enhance an uninspiring clip is not to use effects, but instead to combine it with other clips using Blend Modes (also known as Blending, Composite, or Transfer Modes). Modes provide simple, high-quality ways to drop out the black or white background in a clip, enhance its saturation and contrast, give it a tint, and add lighting effects or a filmic glow in post. I call it our “secret sauce” to create rich, layered imagery you don’t normally see created in an editing program.

Happily, Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 added support for Blend Modes, allowing editors to enjoy these sexy results without having to set them up first in After Effects. In this article, I will show you how to apply Blend Modes in Premiere Pro CS5, what sort of results are typical for different groups of modes, and give you some application ideas.

The Missing Video: Sonicfire Pro + After Effects

A few years ago, SmartSound commissioned us to create video training on how an editor or motion graphics designer could start in their Sonicfire Pro intelligent stock music software to select a soundtrack for a commercial, edit the source clips in After Effects (or any NLE, for that matter) to match the music, and then go back into Sonicfire to massage the music to work better with the now-edited video and voiceover. This video is theoretically still available on SmartSound’s web site, but has become hard to find since they updated their site to tout their latest version (SFP5). As we think it still contains some very useful advice on how one can work more effectively with music and video, we got permission to re-post it here. Although it is specific to Sonicfire and After Effects, the concepts it contains have broad application (especially the middle section “Spotting and Editing to a Soundtrack”). Click the PLAY VIDEO link below to view it.

The content contained in the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.

On Artbeats.com: Intro to Color Finesse

As more of us acquire our own media and import it directly into our computers, the art of color correction becomes more important. However, many - particularly non-editors - shy away from it. Well, if you have a recent copy of After Effects, you have no excuse, as a very powerful color correction tool - Synthetic Aperture’s Color Finesse (CF) - comes bundled free with the program. This article we just wrote for Artbeats.com will give you a quick tour of the CF interface, and then walk you through a sample correction using footage archived with the article so you can compare your results.

Click here to download a .zip file containing a PDF of the “Introduction to Color Finesse” plus associated footage.

By they way, credit where credit is due: Steve Hullfish’s own color correction videos here on PVC are what prompted us to get back into color correction ourselves. His recent video on using Color Finesse is what prompted us to focus more in our piece for Artbeats on using the Waveform Monitor rather than the familiar old Histograms.

The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.

On Artbeats.com: Article on Type Basics

Every month, we write a Tips N Tricks article for our friends at Artbeats.com. This month we wrote a basic introduction to using text - including a few simple rules of typography that many miss, plus a more subjective discussion about choosing the right fonts for a job. (This is obviously a companion for the piece on Font Resources that we just posted here on PVC.)

Click here to download a PDF of “Type Basics” from Artbeats.com.

The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.

On Artbeats.com: Article on Mixing Audio

As some of you know, both of us originally came from the music industry. Chris in particular still composes music and edits dialog for some of CyberMotion’s clients.

Every month, we write a Tips N Tricks article for our friends at Artbeats.com. This month we wrote about how mix audio effectively to ensure the listener can hear the dialog without becoming distracted by the music or sound effects. There’s only a few simple rules you need to learn to make a huge improvement in the quality of your soundtracks. Remember: Bad audio can really distract from good video!

Click here to download a PDF of “Clearly Mixed” from Artbeats.com. (This is an update of our classic 1995 article on mixing, On The Level.)

The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.

On Artbeats.com: Article on Editing to Sound

Every month, we write a Tips N Tricks article for our friends at Artbeats.com. This month we wrote a piece about spotting hit points in music and dialog, plus a series of pointers on how to place edit points, transitions, and animation keyframes based on these hit points. We strongly believe the tight integration between audio and video is a secret weapon that can be used to raise your productions above the rest; we hope you find this introduction worthwhile.

Click here to download a 333 KB PDF of “Editing to Sound” from Artbeats.com.

While we’re talking about Artbeats, Steve Holmes (formerly of Total Training) also just created for Artbeats a new video tutorial that shows you how to “step through time with an innovative look at the evolution of energy.” You can download the 36+ minute tutorial from Artbeats.com by clicking here.

By the way, if you’d like to share one of your own projects with Artbeats and their customers, email them - if they choose yours, you’ll get $1000 worth of free Artbeats footage of your choice!

Artbeats has a monthly email newsletter which contains links to each of our articles for them as they are released, plus a link for registered users to download a free full-size clip every month. Click here to register.

The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.

Brighter Whites; Richer Colors, Part 1: 16-235

Have you ever received washed-out images from a client - or even yourself? Did you just let it slide (“well, that’s the way they shot it”), or cursed them for making you lose more sleep as you tried to make it look better? Well, we have two bits of news for you. One, the fault may not be in the footage, but in the way you’ve been handling it. Two, in Adobe After Effects 7, it’s now easier to handle it the right way. In this column, we’ll talk about video and the infamous luminance range issue; in the next column, we’ll turn our attention to still images and sRGB color space.

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