Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Free 7-day Passes for Lynda.com

Chris Meyer | 01/30- 02:00 PM

We’ve been dipping a toe in the online training world…

Sorry for the blatant plug, but there’s a payoff: A free week of as much online video training as you can watch!

We’ve been getting into creating online video training, focusing on specific topics and techniques rather than creating long-form courses (that’s what our books are for). Our current titles are available either pay-as-you-go through Toolfarm or to subscribers of the Lynda.com Online Training Library.

If you’re not currently a Lynda.com subscriber, and are curious to check them out before signing up, you can try them out for free for seven days by clicking here. Feel free to pass this link around. In addition to After Effects, they offer training on a variety of 3D, DVD authoring, NLE, and business applications - even tutorials on operating systems.

For those who are considering creating their own tutorials that they’d like to make money off of, we’ve been testing the waters for the past year trying out a couple pay-as-you-go services in addition to Lynda.com’s subscription model, and - with all due respect to the excellent folks at Toolfarm and other places - Lynda.com has been the hands-down winner from the content creator side. We’ve found them to be a great company to work with, and we plan to be doing a lot more with them in the future. We’ll keep you apprised as we release more titles, or if our opinion changes.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Working Around QuickTime 7.4 Errors in After Effects

Frank Capria | 01/26- 09:19 AM

As noted nearly everywhere motion graphics artists congregate on the web, QuickTime 7.4 and After Effects don’t play nicely together. Apparently Apple’s movie rental DRM scheme is the culprit. Any QuickTime render from After Effects that requires more than 10 minutes will generate a permissions error.

There are two obvious options to address the issue:

• Downgrade to QuickTime 7.3


• Render an image sequence and then piece that sequence together in either QuickTime Pro or After Effects.

I’m not a huge fan of downgrading because you just never know if you’re going to break something in the process. If 7.4 is working for you aside from this pesky After Effects error, you might want to try this work around. It adds an extra step in After Effects, but it works. Follow these steps:

1. When it comes time to render your After Effects composition, take that composition and nest it in another composition with the same settings by dragging the composition to the New Composition icon in the Project window.


2. Select the original composition in the project window.


3. Go to the Composition menu and select Pre-Render. The original composition has now been added to your Render Queue.


4. In the Render Queue, edit the Output Module settings so that you are creating an image sequence. (I like .psd files for this because the file sizes are reasonable and the files are written quickly.)


5. Now add the new sequence with the original sequence nested in it to your Render Queue. Set its Output Module to the desired QuickTime settings. Since this sequence will render in much less than 10 minutes, you should have no problem getting a valid QT movie out of After Effects without reverting to an earlier version of QuickTime.

This adds just a couple of minutes to your total render time, and you can leave After Effects to do its thing with a long render without having to manually piece the image sequence together in QuickTime Pro.

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Motion 3 = 3D

Chris and Trish Meyer | 07/08- 10:49 AM

This significant update to Apple Motion includes a slick 3D implementation.

Motion 3 - part of Apple’s Final Cut Studio 2 suite - has experienced a major update, including the addition of motion tracking and stabilization, optical flow (smooth slow motion) technology, a gorgeous particle-based paint system, enhancements to their Keyframe Editor, and interesting new Audio Parameter and Retiming behaviors. But the big headliner is the addition of 3D space - including 3D animation for 2D layers, 3D cameras and lights, and 3D enhancements for their particle and text animation systems.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

The Shape of Things to Come: Shape Layers Introduction

Chris and Trish Meyer | 05/01- 11:55 AM

An overview of Shape Layers in Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional.

For motion graphics artists, one of the most significant new features introduced in After Effects CS3 was Shape Layers. This feature brings important components of Adobe Illustrator into After Effects, and allows them to be animated.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Brighter Whites; Richer Colors Part 2: sRGB

Chris and Trish Meyer | 11/02- 01:10 PM

How to best incorporate digital photos into your After Effects projects.

The first image (a digital photo originally saved with an sRGB color profile) has not been corrected; the second image has. Although the difference is subtle, the uncorrected image looks a bit washed out compared to how it should really appear.

In the last column, we discussed the time-honored headache of managing different video luminance ranges, and how After Effects 7 has made this a little easier to deal with. In this column, we cover an even more common problem with color space issues: working with digital photos or scans that have been saved in the sRGB color space. 

Friday, September 01, 2006

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

Chris and Trish Meyer | 09/01- 02:34 PM

Two new features in After Effects 7 ease color-critical format conversion.

Footage that imports into After Effects with its internal “601” luminance levels intact (left) looks washed out compared to how it really should look (right). Footage courtesy Isuzu and Perception Communications.

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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