After Effects-yay or nay

shawndow · Post by **shawndow** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 9:34 am

Ahaha! got ya, seems like your reading this now.

Anyways I'm lookin to start my first AMV useing After Effects seeing how i got it off first hand. But is it an easy enough proogram for just synicing clips with the music. I want to do all that high speed grapics stuff later.

If it is, is there an Adobe After Effects guide that could be useful in just this.

shawndow · Post by **shawndow** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 9:36 am

other than Zarxrax that is

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 11:33 am

http://library.creativecow.net/product/2

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 11:36 am

Damn, I should actually read posts before replying.

No, After Effects SUCKS at just syncing clips to the music. You want to do that in something like Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas.

otbwavelength · Post by **otbwavelength** » Sat Aug 18, 2007 11:13 pm

Zarxrax wrote:Damn, I should actually read posts before replying.

No, After Effects SUCKS at just syncing clips to the music. You want to do that in something like Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas.

Not always true. I just made a music video recently with over 500 syncs to the music, sounds in it, etc.

All you do is this;

1) Get your song
2) Convert it into an WAV file
3) Drop it into AE
4) Open up the properties for it so you can see the waveform, and every time you hear a sound you want to synch, press the * key
5) Then listen to it meticulously for each single sound, to make sure it's dead accurate, scrubbing it and listening to previews and doing visual tests
6) When you're done, you'll have the entire song covered with little white icons telling you where sounds are at; then just synch stuff up.

That's how I make all my music videos, I do that before anything else.

CrackTheSky · Post by **CrackTheSky** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 12:45 am

AE is not meant for straight editing. You can do what wavelength suggests, but that just sounds tedious and full of possible inaccuracies...I'd also imagine that the amount of layers would get insane and realllly hard to keep track of.

Whenever I use AE (which is admittedly rarely), I make a video in Vegas that's just a letter or something that flashes and fades out whenever there's a sound. I export that and then import it into AE, and use it as a syncher for my effects.

If you're new to editing (and I'm assuming you are), I would highly recommend against using AE at all, much less to edit an entire video.

otbwavelength · Post by **otbwavelength** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 1:08 am

CrackTheSky wrote:AE is not meant for straight editing. You can do what wavelength suggests, but that just sounds tedious and full of possible inaccuracies...I'd also imagine that the amount of layers would get insane and realllly hard to keep track of.

Whenever I use AE (which is admittedly rarely), I make a video in Vegas that's just a letter or something that flashes and fades out whenever there's a sound. I export that and then import it into AE, and use it as a syncher for my effects.

If you're new to editing (and I'm assuming you are), I would highly recommend against using AE at all, much less to edit an entire video.

Not meaning to be a jerk or anything I mean, but my method takes only 1 layer. You just use the asterix key to mark the .WAV file that you've layed down in AE. Personally, I can't go back to premiere or anything else; laying down my video and then putting effects on it would be impossible to do, let alone tedious.

If you take your time too, you'll have no inaccuracies, guarenteed.

CodeZTM · Post by **CodeZTM** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 1:17 am

Noo...

AE is just a noooo. I have it, and hate it without end. Premier Pro 2.0 has simliar capabilities with a more user-friendly environment.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 1:33 am

otbwavelength wrote:
CrackTheSky wrote:AE is not meant for straight editing. You can do what wavelength suggests, but that just sounds tedious and full of possible inaccuracies...I'd also imagine that the amount of layers would get insane and realllly hard to keep track of.

Whenever I use AE (which is admittedly rarely), I make a video in Vegas that's just a letter or something that flashes and fades out whenever there's a sound. I export that and then import it into AE, and use it as a syncher for my effects.

If you're new to editing (and I'm assuming you are), I would highly recommend against using AE at all, much less to edit an entire video.

Not meaning to be a jerk or anything I mean, but my method takes only 1 layer. You just use the asterix key to mark the .WAV file that you've layed down in AE.

Uh... how exactly do you have 1 video layer? Each video clip / image / etc. takes up a layer. The OP wanted to use AE as an NLE - meaning more than one clip would be used.

AE isn't an NLE and shouldn't be used or even thought of as one.

otbwavelength · Post by **otbwavelength** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 4:32 am

BasharOfTheAges wrote:
otbwavelength wrote:
CrackTheSky wrote:AE is not meant for straight editing. You can do what wavelength suggests, but that just sounds tedious and full of possible inaccuracies...I'd also imagine that the amount of layers would get insane and realllly hard to keep track of.

Whenever I use AE (which is admittedly rarely), I make a video in Vegas that's just a letter or something that flashes and fades out whenever there's a sound. I export that and then import it into AE, and use it as a syncher for my effects.

If you're new to editing (and I'm assuming you are), I would highly recommend against using AE at all, much less to edit an entire video.

Not meaning to be a jerk or anything I mean, but my method takes only 1 layer. You just use the asterix key to mark the .WAV file that you've layed down in AE.
Uh... how exactly do you have 1 video layer? Each video clip / image / etc. takes up a layer. The OP wanted to use AE as an NLE - meaning more than one clip would be used.

AE isn't an NLE and shouldn't be used or even thought of as one.

No, no. you didn't read my post right.

Ok, again;

In After Effects, you *put the song you want into the program*.

This creates 1 layer for the song itself. On this layer, if you press the * key, the asterix key, it creates a time marker ON that layer, ON the music layer.

If you go through the song meticulously and time up every single sound you want by scrubbing along it and listening, and then using visual markers to make sure you've got it right (having an image appear on every time marker, etc.) then you can set markers for everything you want to line up clips to within 15-20 minutes.

I just did a video for Flight of the Bumblebee; I did over 700 time markers in around an hour, all of them perfectly synched down to the frame the sound starts, using this method, only one, single layer, that never wavers and is never inaccurate.

MANY people I know use AE as an NLE; wasn't Whisper of the Beast made entirely with AE and photoshop?

I would consider it FAR harder to make the entire video in premiere, and then take it into AE, where you'd have to split up clips again to layer them on top of each other and take advantage of all of the things AE can do in regards to masks, filters, plugins, etc.

CodeChrono wrote:Noo...

AE is just a noooo. I have it, and hate it without end. Premier Pro 2.0 has simliar capabilities with a more user-friendly environment.

Premiere Pro 2.0 is the most confusing environment i've ever seen. Premiere 6.5 makes perfect sense, AE 7.0 Pro makes perfect sense, Pro 2.0 confuses the living hell out of me; that and it doesn't have even 10% of the effects that AE can provide you with.