How exactly to do a Big Project in AE?

rook2pawn · Post by **rook2pawn** » Sun Jul 06, 2008 6:29 am

Okay, so I've been dabbling for the last few months in Trish and Chris meyer's AE book and mark christiansens book as well, plus every tutorial on videocopilot,
i have particular, and cycore and well, im alll ready to rip roar into my first all AE video.

But wait a second, EVERY project comp i worked in before in AE was 5-15 seconds long. my song is going to be around 4-5 minutes, so im really going to have just one giant 4-5 minute comp? That seems ridiculously cumbersome in AE as AE is cumbersome enough!

Please, someone with AE history please help me out how to parcel out a giant project into little bits or any advice on working on a giant project in AE.

I dont want to go back and forth with my NLE because every second will be under AE to begin with. If you worked with AE before and can give advice how to attempt this please help!

mirkosp · Post by **mirkosp** » Sun Jul 06, 2008 8:46 am

Well, you can make nesting to fasten your workflow... basically you can import a compositon into another composition and so on... it should save quite some space and time. Still, if AE starts to be too slow, my suggestion would be to render a lossless copy of... say, the first 15/20 seconds, start a new project and make the part after that and continue like that and combining everything in the end. Hope that helps.

-GfN- · Post by **-GfN-** » Sun Jul 06, 2008 9:38 am

if you just started using ae, I wouldn't recommend relying solely on ae.
combining an nle (you can import your project files from premiere to ae by the way) via a syncer thingy or even editing in the nle and adding effects in ae would be your best bet.
however, if you're intent on pulling it off, use compositions no bigger than 20 layers (an estimate, but it's rather useful to limit yourself), nesting as already said and subcompositioning.
sort your project in the window on the upper left by creating new folders for solids, clips, compositions etc (extend as much as needed).
adapt your workspace to your system (e.g. dual monitor) and save that new workspace.
as for the length of the compositions, that mostly depends on the fx you want to create in the part you're working on (e.g. create one for a segment in the music or one for one single effect composition).
as for those videocopilot tutorials, they won't help you to that much of an extent, but mark christiansens book is really useful, especially for improving your workspace/workflow (alas what I said earlier) and finding simple and well-organized solutions for your problem at hand.

feel free to ask me further, even on IMs.

rook2pawn · Post by **rook2pawn** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 7:34 am

thanks mirkso and Gfn for both of your replies on both of my threads.
i probably will have more questions in the future. im finding it that it is slower to work in AE than my NLE for doing simple things like extending the time of my comp but that I can go back and refine my work in AE much easier since I put everything organized into 10-20 second sub-comps. The interface just relies on too many shortcuts but I will suffer it if it means getting to work in AE. I know Im still doing many things the "wrong way" and asking questions is what i will be doing to start doing things the right way

Brad · Post by **Brad** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 7:49 am

It is indeed really important to establish a cohesive workflow if you intend to do an entire video in AE. As others have said, unless you have a concept that is extremely reliant on motion graphics, effects, etc., you're much better off working in Premiere/Vegas/whatever and then doing specific sections in AE. Personally I do find it to be a real pain to switch back and forth like that, but it's still a much easier workflow. But even still, it's certainly possible to edit an entire video in AE, you just need to work in chunks and use a ton of individual comps and then have one or two MAIN comps that your sub-comps go into.

The big thing here though is to LABEL EVERYTHING. Don't just go with "Comp 1, Comp 2, Comp 3, etc." be specific. You want your project bin to be really organized. Keep your PSDs in a PSD folder. Keep your clips sorted out in separate bins (either by episode, by character, whatever). It will prove to be a huge help.

Krisqo · Post by **Krisqo** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 8:01 am

(This applies to Premier)

One thing I find helpful is to create a sequence or two in premiere and use them solely for piecing together clips (usually name them according to what the effect I wanna create like "Sora morning sun") which I will then import in After Effects. That way you are not importing your entire main AMV sequence every time and having to deal with 100+ clips.

leahzero · Post by **leahzero** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 10:21 pm

Assuming you have one of the CS bundles that includes Premiere Pro, you can use After Effects and Premiere Pro in tandem with Dynamic Link to get the best of both.

Here's an example of the workflow:

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video ... id=vid0256

kenzuka · Post by **kenzuka** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 2:29 am

leahzero wrote:Assuming you have one of the CS bundles that includes Premiere Pro, you can use After Effects and Premiere Pro in tandem with Dynamic Link to get the best of both.

Here's an example of the workflow:

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video ... id=vid0256

I think the dynamic link work only if you have the Production Suite. I did have the Master suite, and no dynamic link for this one. Now, with the production suite, yeah.... that's a really useful tool.

For me, I do most of my editing with Premiere, nearly 95% if not more. When I need to use AE for some effects (tracking, mask and such...), I just copy past the needed scenes in a buffer timeline. Generally, my editing is completely or nearly finished before I use AE.
If the scenes need some effects specific to Premiere before I can apply the AE effects, I do an export and my scenes are separated to not have a scene on top of another one. This export go in AE and I redo the editing and add the AE effects. The timing is really easy to redo in AE since I already have it in Premiere in my original Timeline.
If there is no need for specific Premiere effects, It is even more easy. I just copy paste my scenes in a buffer timeline, save my project, and open this specific timeline in AE.

After that, I just need to use the dynamic link to take the composition in premiere. Since I already have the placement of the original scenes, It is really easy to put the composition in the good place.

leahzero · Post by **leahzero** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 2:20 pm

kenzuka wrote:I think the dynamic link work only if you have the Production Suite. I did have the Master suite, and no dynamic link for this one.

http://www.adobe.com/products/creatives ... ollection/

Dynamic Link comes with both Production Premium and Master Collection, the two bundles that included AE and Premiere.

Org Profile · Post by **Vlad G Pohnert** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 6:38 pm

As a person who's made videos with 250-500 layers and tons of compositions, I agree with the notion of well labeling everything. I even color code my layers to mean different things... Also make sure to make a good set of directories to keep the video, audio and effect data nice and sorted... (I'm talkign about directories BOTH in the program and on your hard drive)

If you don't do this, you'll find it leads to a mess and greatly slows progress once you get a ton of layers and compositions going

Vlad