Booklet Adobe After Effects Cs6 Lbv

8/13/2019 Booklet Adobe After Effects Cs6 Lbv

1/48

AdobePhotoshopLightroom4AdobePhotoshopLightroom4AdobePhotoshopLightroom4AdobePhotoshopLightroom4AdobePhotoshopLightroom4AdobeAfer EffectsCS6

LEARNBY VIDEO


2/48

Adobe Ater Eects CS6: Learn by Videovieo2brain GmbH To Kopriva Angie Talor

Copyright 2013 by video2brain GmbH

Peachpit Press

1249 Eighth Street

Berkeley, CA 94710

510/524-2178 510/524-2221 (fax)

Find us on the Web at www.peachpit.como report errors, please send a note to [email protected]

Peachpit Press is a division of Pearson Education.

Adobe Afer Effects CS6: Learn by Videois published in association with Adobe Press.

For the latest on Adobe Press books , go to ww w.adobepress.com

Acquisitions Editor: Victor Gavenda

Project Editor: racey Croom

Media Producer: Eric Geoffroy

Proofreader: Liz WelchPackage design: Charlene Charles-Will

Package imagery: Provided by Adobe Systems Inc.

Book interior design: Danielle Foster

Notice of RightsAll rights reserved. No par t of this video training book may be reproduced or transmied in any form by anymeans, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior wrien permission ofthe publisher. Te sofware and media files on this disc are copyrighted by the authors and Peachpit. You have

the non-exclusive right to use these programs and les. You may use them on one computer at a time. You maynot transfer the les from one computer to another over a network. You may transfer the les onto a single harddisk so long as you can prove ownership of the original disc. For information on geing permission for reprintsand excerpts, contact [email protected].

Notice of Liabilite information in this video training book is distributed on an As Is basis, without warranty. While everyprecaution has been taken in the preparation of the video training book, neither the trainers nor video2brainGmbH nor Peachpit shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused

or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this video training book or by the

computer sofware and hardware products described in it.

TraemarksAdobe Aer Eect s is a trademark or registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United Statesand/or other countries. All rights reser ved. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers todistinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this video training

book, and Peachpit was aware of a trademark claim, the designations appear as requested by the owner of the

trademark. All other product names and services identified throughout this video training book are used ineditorial fashion only and for the benet of such companies with no intention of infringement of the trademark.No such use, or the use of any trade name, is intended to convey endorsement or other aliation with thisvideo training book.

ISBN-13: 978-0-321-84038-7

ISBN10: 0-321-84038-0

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed and bound in the United States of America


3/48

1 Introucing After Effects CS6

1.1 What Is Adobe Afer Effects and

Where Does It Come From?

1.2 Course Introduction

1.3 Whats New in Afer Effects CS6

1.4 Dont Worry, Its Only a Dialog Box

1.5 Basic Workflow and

erminology Overview

2 Interface Tour2.1 Te Project Panel and

Flowchart Panel

2.2 Te Composition Panel and

the Layer Panel

2.3 Te imeline Panel

2.4 Te Preview Panel

2.5 Te Effects & Presets Panel, Bridge,

and the Effect Controls Panel2.6 Colors, Channels, and

Color Bit Depth

2.7 Modifying Preferences and

Keyboard Shortcuts

2.8 Conguring the User Interface

3 Creating Compositions an Laer

3.1 Creating Compositions and

Changing Composition Seings

3.2 Creating Text with the

Character Panel

3.3 Controlling Blocks of Text with

the Paragraph Panel

3.4 Creating Shape Layers

3.5 Working with Solids

4 Importing Footage

4.1 Importing Movies

4.2 Importing Still Images and

Image Sequences

4.3 Importing Photoshop and

Illustrator Files

4.4 Importing Projects

5 Interpreting anManaging Footage

5.1 Interpreting Footage Manually

and Automatically

5.2 Fields and Interlacing

5.3 Pixel Aspect Ratios

5.4 Trimming Footage and Layers

ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS CS6: LEARN BY VIDEO

DVD Contents


4/48

6 Animation Basics

6.1 Animating Transform Properties

6.2 Working with Motion Paths

6.3 Using Motion Sketch to

Record Motion

7 Fine-Tuning Animation

7.1 Working in the Layer Panel

7.2 Anchor Point Animation

7.3 Keyframe Types

7.4 Keyframe Assistants

7.5 Te Graph Editor

8 Animating Text Laers

8.1 Importing Photoshop Text

8.2 Applying Animators

8.3 Combining Animators

8.4 Animation Presets

9 Fun with Shape Laers

9.1 Ways to Create Shapes

9.2 Shape Layers for Text Eects

10 Basic Compositing

10.1 Blending Layers with

Blending Modes

10.2 Alpha Channels and ransparency

10.3 Isolating a Subject with a Mask

10.4 Color Keying

10.5 Motion Tracking and Rotoscoping

10.6 Te 3D Camera racker

11 Eects

11.1 Understanding Eect Categories

11.2 Animating Effect Properties

11.3 Brainstorming

11.4 Using Compound Eects

11.5 Fixer Eects

11.6 Layer Styles

11.7 Effect Presets

11.8 Adjustment Layers

(Force Motion Blur)

12 Time

12.1 Frame Rates

12.2 ime Stretching and

Time Remapping

12.3 Slowing Motion, Freezing a Frame,and Reversing Time

iv DVD CONENS

DVD Contents


5/48

13 Grouping an Linking

13.1 Nesting

13.2 Pre-Composing

13.3 Parenting

13.4 Using Nulls

13.5 Expressions

14 Introduction to 3D

14.1 Working with 3D Layers14.2 Axis Modes

14.3 Bending Layers

14.4 Extruding Shapes

14.5 Cameras

14.6 Lights

14.7 Material Options

(Environment Layers)

14.8 Depth of Field

14.9 Environment Layers

15 Memory and Perormance

15.1 Seing Up Aer Eects for

Optimum Performance with

64-Bit Systems

15.2 RAM and Disk Caching

16 Render Order and

Collapsing Transformations16.1 Standard Render Order and

the Transform Eect

16.2 Collapsing Transformations

17 Output Options

17.1 Rendering and Exporting with

the Render Queue

17.2 Exporting with the

Adobe Media Encoder

17.3 Collecting Files

18 Project Explorations an Recap

18.1 Preparing Cinema 4D Projects

for Aer Eects

18.2 Compositing C4D Multipass

Renders in Aer Eects

18.3 Using a Simple Eect and Duplicat

Layers for Creative Results

18.4 Using Basic Color Correction and

Light Wrap for Compositing

18.5 Closing Toughts



6/48

Introduction vii

Adobe Creative Suite 6

Editors Notes 1

A Personal Perspective . . . . . . . . . 2

Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Premiere Pro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Afer Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Photoshop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Audition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Encore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Glossar 19

vi BOOKLET CONTENTS

Booklet Contents


7/48

Introduction


8/48

follow along and try out new techniques as you

learn them.

About is Book

is booklet is intended to provide food for

thought, giving some personal perspective on

the why as well as the how of navigating

the Adobe Creative Suite and some of the

creative choices involved in choosing work-

ows. Hopefully this text will serve as a helpful

accompaniment to the video training.

How to Use is Course

e video2brain interface is easy to use, but it

also has a large number of options. Weve pro-

vided this brief guide to give you a tour of the

interface and make sure you dont miss out on

any of its features.

is course comes in a few dierent avors. You

can run the Mac application (labeled Start or

Start .app) or the Windows application (.exe)

file, or you can open start.html in your browser.

Most people will use one of the application

versions of the course. If youre working with an

operating system that doesnt support one of

these two options, such as Linux, the browser

version is a great alternativeit works on

any browser with a current version of Adobe

Flash. Te main difference between running

the course as an application versus opening it

in your browser is that the application versions

include an option, discussed in more detail later

in this guide, called Watch-and-Work mode.

Watch-and-Work mode lets you watch the course

Welcome to Aobe Aer Eects CS6Learn by Video

Adobe Afer Effects is an incredibly deep and

rich set of tools for creating motion graphics,

manipulating movies, adding visual effects, and

more. In this Learn by Video course, youll learn

how to make the most of this powerful soware,

including the new features in Aer Eects CS6.

Aer geing an overview of the workow and

the user interface, you will learn how to create

projects and compositions, bring assets intoAer Eects, and congure the soware for

optimum performance. en youll get up to

speed on the fundamentals of animation, learn-

ing how to use keyframes, motion paths, layers,

text, and more.

In the following chapters youll learn a range of

compositing features, such as the new variable-

width masks and 3D camera tracker features, as

well as basic masking and color keying. Youll

get comfortable working with eects , time

stretching and time remapping, layer groups,

3D, and transformations. And of course youll

see how to output your projects using either

the render queue or Adobe Media Encoder.

e lessons are wrapped in a feature-rich

interface that lets you jump to any topic and

bookmark individual sections for later review.Full-Screen mode provides a hi-def, immersive

experience, and Watch-and-Work mode shrinks

the video into a small window so you can play

the videos alongside your application. Tis

course also includes project files so you can

viii INTRODUCTION

Introduction


9/48


10/48

x INTRODUCTION

Navigating Insie a Vieo

While watching a video, you can use the buonsalong the boom right of your screen to toggle

both Full-Screen mode 1 and video smoothing2 on and off. You can adjust the volume 3

from here as well. You can also click and drag

the green line 4 in the timeline at the boomof the screen to move around within the video.

When the video ends, click the Next Video but-

ton at the top right of the window to go directly

to the next lesson. (is will happen automati-cally if you clicked Play All Chapter Videos to

launch the chapter.) At the end of a chapter, this

option will change to Next Chapter. You can

also click raining Content at any time to leave

the player and choose another lesson or click

the navigation bar near the top of the screen to

access the table of contents.

In the Table of Contents or Chapter view, any

time you move your mouse over the name of a

chapter or video, text describing the contents

of that item will appear on the right side of your

screen. Tis area is known as the Sidebar and is

discussed in detail on the next page.

If you click the name of a chapter, youll see a

list of all the videos in that chapter. Choose the

video you want to star t with or click Play All

Chapter Videos to start with the first video in

the chapter and go all the way through.

KEyBOARd SHORTCUTS FOR THE PLAyER

Spacebar:Play/pause

Right Arrow:Jump forward

Le Arrow:Jump backward

Tab:Show/hide Sidebar

B:Add bookmark

M:Show/hide navigation bar

Esc:urn off Full-Screen mode

4 3 2 1

Introduction


11/48


Using Bookmarks

Its easy to create a bookmark in the video tomark where you le o or make note of some-

thing you want to refer back to later. Just click

the Bookmark buon at the boom right or us

the Bkeyboard shortcut. You will see the Creat

Bookmark dialog box.

Enter a name for your bookmark and an optiona

note, then click Save or press Enter/Return. e

bookmark will then be visible as a thin line in

the timeline. You can access your bookmarks by

clicking My Bookmarks at the top of the screen

or via Video Bookmarks in the Sidebar. Just clic

the bookmark to go to your previously marked

point. o delete a bookmark, click the rashcan

icon to the right of the bookmark and conrm

your deletion by clicking Yes.

Resizing your Winow

e player interface gives you a few dierentoptions for resizing your window to t your

needs.

Click the Full-Screen icon 1 to enter Full-Screen mode. You can exit Full-Screen mode

by clicking the icon again or by pressing the

Esc key. You can also dynamically resize your

window while watching simply by grabbing the

lower-right corner of the window and dragging

until the window is the size you want.

In the application versions of the course, you

can also choose Watch-and-Work mode 2 fromthe player. Tis takes you to a smaller screen

that leaves room for you to work in another

application alongside the course. Click the Stan-

dard buon to return to a regular-size screen.

The Siebar

Te Sidebar is an area on

the right side of the player

where additional informa-

tion, such as a description of

the video youre watching, is

displayed. At the boom are

buons that enable you to

access your bookmarks or a

list of videos in the chapter.

o turn the Sidebar on or off, you can press ab

or click the buon in the navigation bar.

1 2


12/48

xii INTRODUCTION

Afer answering any question, click the Submit

Answer buon at the boom le to indicate

that youre nished. A dialog box will pop up

to let you know whether you got the question

right. (If you get a question wrong and want to

see the correct answer, press and hold F, A, and

Non your keyboard at the same time. A check

mark will appear in the box next to the right

answer.) is dialog box also contains a buon

that will take you to the next question.

When youre finished answering all the ques-tions, click raining Content to return to the

table of contents.

Introduction

Test yourself

is course includes a number of Test Your-self sections, each of which contains a series

of questions about the topics covered in that

chapter.

Just click the box for the right answer.


13/48

About video2brain

video2brain (video2brain.com) has beenEuropes premier source for video training

since 2002. We produce high-quality English,

German, French, and Spanish video training

on a variety of soware topics, with a special

emphasis on graphics, web design, photogra-

phy, and programming. Our customers include

people just starting out, professionals, educa-

tional institutions , and global corporations as

well as home enthusiasts.

All of our courses are available in 1280 x 720

Hi-Def video, with a full-screen mode that

creates an immersive learning experience. ey

also include an interactive, easy-to-use inter-

face; custom bookmarks that let you annotate

your course and remember where you le o;

and Watch-and-Work mode, so you can prac-

tice as you learn.

Were passionate about teaching and about

helping you build exceptional skills so you can

create extraordinary work. Our mission is to

provide the best and most affordable video

training possible, and to oer you a feature-rich

learning environment aimed at enhancing the

eectiveness of our training.

video2brain was founded by Gerhard Koren,

a v2b trainer himself. Our home oce isnestled among the mountains of the Austrian

Alps in the city of Graz, a student city with six

universities.

About To Kopriva an Angie Talor

odd Kopriva has ledthe Adobe team that

creates documentation

and training materials

for Aer Eects since

version 7.0. odd

spends much of his

time helping Aer Eects users of all levels on

various online forums, and hes oen the per-

son answering questions at the Ask the Exper

station in the Adobe booth at trade shows.

Todd combines a technical understanding of

sofware and computers with a strong desire to

help people to create art.

Angie aylor is

Creative Director at

GridIron Sofware Inc.

She studied Fine Art

at Edinburgh Collegeof Art (Heriot-Wa

University) and had a

14-year career as a mo

tion graphic artist producing animation, visual

eects , and motion graphics for television, lm

video, and the web. Examples of her work coul

be regularly seen on the BBC and Channel 4 in

the UK and across Europe. Angie delivers so-

ware demonstrations and seminars on digitalfilmmaking and animation processes at inter-

national trade shows and conferences like NAB

IBC, and Macworld. She has provided custom

training and consulting to such companies as

the BBC, Channel 4, Carlton, H V, and MV.

ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS CS6: LEARN BY VIDEO x

About the Authors


14/48


15/48

Adobe Creative Suite Editors Notes

b Maxim Jag


16/48

2 ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE 6 EDITORS NOTES

One of the challenges many editors face is not

so much understanding which buon to click or

which menu to select from as why to do so. e

question of when to use one eect rather than

another, or whether to use a faster workow ora more exible one, is oen answered simply by

experience. e purpose of these Editors Notes

is to oer a personal perspective on many of

the creative choices you will be faced with when

using applications in the Adobe Creative Suite. I

hope understanding my approach will help you

make well-directed, intentional creative choices.

Man PathsYou will frequently nd that there are many

paths up the mountainmultiple ways of

achieving exactly the same resultand this can

be confusing. In Premiere Pro, for example, you

can play back video in at least four ways and get

almost exactly the same result each time: Video

and sound play back so you can watch and listen.

You might believe you have it all worked out,

and then someone comes along and presses

a dierent buon and you think, Oh, I didnt

understand it. But you did! And here is the rst

lesson: Because of the way computers are

designed, it is impossible for you to succeed

A Personal Perspective

Te video, graphics, and audio editing applications included with Adobe Creative

Suite Master Collection and Production Premium provide powerful tools, including

countless automation features, to support you in your creative work. Very oen,

just playing with the tools and options available will open up new avenues as you

try out dierent ways of conveying your message and giving your audience unique

experiences.

in achieving anything and get it wrong. If you

achieved the result you were looking for, you

got it right. Like driving through a city, there are

several ways of geing from A to B; what maers

is that you get there.

Sometimes one way to get there is to randomly

click until you get the result you want. However,

my advice is to never randomly click. I f you are

not sure what you are doing, always watch care-

fully what you click and observe the result. is

way, when you nd yourself successfully achiev-

ing things, you will know why and you will be

able to retrace your steps, learning as you go.

Tis is the path toward technology mastery and

it is a simple maer of self-awareness. Making

random clicks and occasionally being successful

will teach you only that random clicking is some-

times successful.

Reaing On

is text is divided into dierent sections focus-

ing on different applications, so you can read

it in any order, depending on the application

you are interested in. However, concepts will be

built on from one chapter to the next and you

will probably benefit most by reading i t in order

from start to nish.


17/48


Story also has an excellent facility for combin-

ing multiple documents in a single project. I

highly recommend using this feature. You can

always make a folder on your hard drive and

keep peripheral documents together there, but

it helps to be able to use the access anywhere,

cloud-based computing Story offers.

Writing in Waves

When editing a sequence in Premiere Pro, it is

always my advice to go all the way through theedit making incremental adjustments rather

than ne-cuing every clip. e same approach

works for scriptwriting. When you are struggling

to nd a way to communicate a characters feel-

ings, dont get bogged down trying to solve that

one problem; just move on to the next scene,

or the next, or the next. e trick is to get to the

end, so you can go back to the s tart and work

through every scene again. Te difference is

that now you know exactly how things turn out

(at least until you rewrite). e extra knowledge

and understanding can only come through

actually writing scenes in full that might start

out as nothing more than seed ideas.

Story

e message from Hollywood is clear: Everything starts with the story. Adobe has

taken some impressive steps toward developing Story into a front-loading metadata

engine as well as a comprehensive scriptwriting tool.

Fining yourself

When writing, I commonly use a series of

symbols as placeholders for work still to do. Fo

example, if there is some dialogue that needs

work or if I have reached a particular scene and

its time to sleep, Ill type in ###. is is some

thing that will never appear in the regular text ,

so it is super-easy to search for. If you press Ctr

Command+F, Story displays the Search and Re

place panel, so you can locate your placeholde

text with ease.

Or you can select some text and click the NewComment buon that appears on the right of

the page. I commonly use this feature to leave

messages for my future self to nd. e more

you can put reminders into the text and get

your to-do list out of your mind and onto the

page, the more brain power you will have lef t

concentrate on the creative work at hand.

A Clear ViewI nd the tagging features in Story particularly

useful as a pre-production aid. However, once

your script is tagged, you may find it looks

rather messy. Even if you keep all of your

tags color-coded black, you may have trouble


18/48


19/48


Premiere Pro

Premiere Pro is an incredibly exible nonlinear editing system. Its unique open

format support allows you to combine multiple le types, frame rates, and frame

sizes on a single timeline, with many visual eects working in real time thanks to the

CUDA support in the latest versions. is enables you to think less about the logistic

and get on with the editing. I think this is a good thing!

Staing Organize

Dont worry so much about being organized

that it prevents you from geing on with the

edit, but be considerate of your future self.

When you return to your edit tomorrow, next

week, or next month, will you have a clearsense of what is going on in your project?

Imagine that in the middle of an edit, you save

your work, quit out of Premiere Pro, and shut

down your computer. You stand up, pick up

some luggage, and leave for the airport to take

a two-week holiday. While on vacation, you

dance, sing, read books , and relax and dont

think for a moment about your edit . When you

get back and sit down at your editing system,

will you know whats going on with the edit?

If you think being away from your edit for

two weeks might result in not knowing which

sequence you should be working on, which

effect presets relate to this project, what needs

to happen next, and what your deliverables are

you need to make more notes for yourself.

Working with Multiple Meia Sources

When working on a complex project with

multiple media sources, you can sometimes ge

confused about sequence and output seings .

All that really maers is that you focus on your

output deliverables.


20/48


Clients are sometimes a lile vague about

exactly what they want, and it s not a good idea

to wait until the end of the edit to check in with

them and confirm. My advice is to propose very

precisely what you will deliver, with specific

format information and even the medium youll

deliver on (it could be a hard drive, a tape, a

DVD, or an FTP server). Make sure your client

confirms that they are happy with your pro-

posal, then use it to guide your decisions

throughout the edit.

Always focus on your output standard. is

is what you are conforming to. You may have

a mixture of media resolutions, including

standard-definition and high-definition content.If you are supplying a 1280x720 progressive

media le, use that as your sequence seing

and have everything conform to it throughout

the edit.

One of the lovely features of Premiere Pro

is that it conforms only at the point of play-

back. Tis means that you can have higher-resolution media on your timeline and pan and

scan around it without everything going sof.

Consider doing this with high-definition media

when working on a standard-definition project.

Even if your client wants a s tandard-denition

master tape, shooting in high definition allows

you to pan and scan around inside the pic ture in

real time and keep a sharp image.

is eectively allows you to reframe during

the edit. If you are in a hurry when shooting,you can frame your shots very wide to make

sure you cover the action and then either hunt

around the picture to follow events using Pre-

miere Pros motion keyframe controls or simply

scale and reposition the shot.

If you are working with lots of media that have

dierent frame sizes , consider turning on the

Premiere Pro preference that makes all media

scale to frame size when added to a sequence.

Tough this can make it harder to keep track

of what is a natural t and what isnt (because

almost everything will look like a good t), it

can save you quite a few mouse clicks.

Assembl Eits Become Fine Cuts

When checking over your media in the Source

panel, you can add in and out marks that will

be persistent in the bin. Tis means that the

next time you look at that clip, the in and out

marks you added will still be there. You can also

create subclips, which are shorter sections of

your original clip that link to the same original

media file on your hard drive. Subclips help you

stay organized but have no particular eect on

the performance of your editing system, so they

are very handy. Note that you can right-click a

subclip in the Project panel and edit its seings,

meaning you can change the in and out points if

you need to.


21/48


When adding in and out marks, avoid making

really careful selections. In fact, if you can do

without in and out marks altogether, even bet-

ter! Premiere Pro has great shortcuts and tools

for removing unwanted parts of your clips on

the timeline, and its always beer to make your

choices therein the context of all your other

clipsrather than in the separate view of the

Source panel.

As you develop your edit, a pace and flow will

emerge that you will want to sustain. You prob-

ably wont be able to tell what that is until you

actually begin editingso, again, making care-

ful selections in the Source panel can end up

wasting time if you discover you need to adjustthe timing of your edits later.

ere are occasions, of course, where you really

need to check if a clip is long enough or if a

piece of action is usable by accurately mark-

ing it. In this instance, go for it! For example,

imagine you are editing a medieval drama and a

bus drives past in the background of a shot. You

want to use the shot but youre not sure there is

enough of it before the bus arrivesthis would

be a perfect time to use very careful in and out

marks in the Source panel. Otherwise, save it

for the keyboard shortcuts, mouse clicks, and

trimming tools of the timeline.

Eiting in Phases

ink of editing as sanding wood. You start with

the really rough adjustments, then incremen-

tally get finer until you achieve a mirror finish.

Tis leads to consistency in your edit, with an

identifiable pace and rhythm. It also helps you

avoid reediting sections of your timeline when

you discover that clips later in the edit wont

mix with earlier clips and you need to restruc-

ture things.

e keyboard is usually faster than the mouse,but it can be dicult to go through a list of

endless keyboard shortcuts to memorize them

If you can get a dedicated Premiere Pro color-

coded keyboard, youll find you instantly get

faster at editing, as almost every key has a use

ful function. If not, try promising yourself you

will learn just one keyboard shortcut every tim

you sit down to edit. Start with the regular key

without modier keys (like Shi or Ctrl), and

youll notice that learning one shortcut ofen

means learning two or three.


22/48


Very soon, you will know the core keys you use

every day and your work will speed up. Here are

a few I use all the time:

J, K, an L: ese three keys act as a shule

controller. Each time you press L, Premiere

Pro will play clips or your timeline one stepfaster. J plays backwards and K is Stop. I tend

to use these keys instead of the Spacebar as

my default Play controls.

I and O: Prey obvious and the ones you are

most likely to know alreadythey add in

and out marks.

Q and W: Q sends the playhead to your in

mark; W sends it to your out mark.

G: Removes both in and out marks.

\: Adjusts the timeline zoom to display your

entire sequence.

T:Brings up the dedicated rim panel.

- an = (at the top of our keboar, rather

than on the numeric kepa): ese zoom

the timeline in and out. Tis makes more

sense when you look at the keys, because

the = key also has the + symbol on it. + an (on the numeric kepa): Press

one of these and then enter some numbers

followed by the Enter key to have Premiere

Pro incrementally move the playhead. For

example, if you type +1201 and then press

Enter, Premiere Pro will move the playhead

ahead 12 seconds and 1 frame. Try this

outits a really quick way to jump around

the timeline or Source panel. If you usethe numbers without the + or , Premiere

Pro will interpret your entry as an absolute

value. In this example, it would take you to

00:00:12:01. is is very useful if you have

notes from a client based on specic times in

your sequence.

Cuing to the Beat

Your audience will unconsciously relate to the

beat of any music in your sequence. In a way,

as the editor, this means relating to the music

is the same as relating to the viewer. When you

are cuing to music, you can set the tone by

subtly timing your edits before, on, or aer the

beat. If you make your cuts just before the beat,

the feeling will be urgent. Right on the beat

feels steady, almost like a march. Just aer the

beat feels lazy and unhurried.

You can achieve the same eect when cuing

dialogue. Tere is a natural rhythm to speech,

and people who engage in natural dialogue

with positive empathy tend to match breath-

ing paerns and vocal timing. If you want to

suggest this kind of empathy, you can time your

cuts to ensure that dialogue flows consistently.

If you cut dialogue in early, you can imply thatone or both characters are being impatient. Cut

dialogue in late, and they can seem disinter-

ested or distractedperhaps more interested in

their personal, inner dialogue.

Tis means that you can strongly influence how

dialogue appears to ow, regardless of the origi-

nal interaction, though it should always be in

response to the original performance. It is very

rare for wrien dialogue to involve overlappingspeech, partly to allow the editor this kind of

control.


23/48


Final Checks

It is well worth making sure you are fully famil-

iar with the scopes and waveforms in Premiere

Pro. At the last possible moment before you

hand off your work, these will be your best

friends. ey will tell you if your visuals arelegalthat is, if they will display properly

on regular television monitors.

Correct levels for televisions look prey awful

on computer monitors, which have a higher

range and operate in a different color mode.

Compare the two by plugging a television into

your system, even if it is only a consumer telev

sion. You will see that those gray-looking white

on your computer screen look perfect on a

television monitor.


24/48


No maer what kind of work you are doing in

Aer Eects, many parts of the workow are

roughly the same:

Import or create movies and other assets of

a project

Use those assets to create layers

Assemble the layers into a composition

Modify properties of those layers, including

animating some properties

Oen add eects to layers and modify and

animate their properties

Preview your composition

And nally, render or export the composition

to one or more output movies

Lets look at each of these pieces in a bit more

detail.

Te Project

Whenever Afer Effects is running, a project

is open. You can see which project is open by

looking at the top of the Application window.

You will almost always import some files into

a project; these are referred to as source les.

Inside of a project, the source les are used as

the basis for footage items. You can see all ofyour source files in the Project panel, and it

is recommended that you place them into

dierent folders to keep your Project panel

organized.

Afer Effects

If youre a new user, you may nd Aer Eects a bit daunting at rst. Not to worry,

thoughits actually prey easy to learn. In this chapter well cover some of the

basic terms and see what the workflow looks like.

You can open a footage item in its own Footage

panel by double-clicking it in the Project panel.

is allows you to preview the footage item and

trim it. Trimming refers to removing portions

of the item so that you use only the parts that

you like in your composition.

e CompositionA composition is the basic framework of a

movie. You can access your compositions in the

Project panel, and by double-clicking a com-

position, you open it in both a imeline panel

and the Composition panel. Te Composition

panel and imeline panel provide two comple-

mentary ways of seeing and interacting with the

composition and its layers.

Te imeline panel is the best place to see each

of the layers and to make adjustments to them

individually. Te Composition panel, on the

other hand, is the best place to see the com-


25/48

ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS CS6: LEARN BY VIDEO 1

posite: the image that results from stacking all

these layers on top of one another. When layers

are stacked on top of one another, you can use

several dierent features to determine exactly

how the underlying layers will show through

and blend with the layers on top. Tis is called

compositing.

Nesting Compositions

Compositions can be nested one inside the

other, with the nested composition acting in

the same way as any other footage item. I f you

double-click the precomposition layer of a

nested composition, it will open in its own

Composition panel.

e example here is a nested composition that

consists of two layers: a vector graphic logo an

a simple text layer with the number 3.

If you go back to the main composition by

clicking its main timeline panel tab, these itemtogether are what form the vector graphic bug

in the upper-right corner of the screen.

Laer Properties

Each layer has several properties, and you typi

cally interact with these properties in the ime

line panel. If you click one of the small triangle

in the Timeline panel, you expand a property

group. Some examples of properties are Ancho

Point, Position, Scale, Rotation, and Opacity.

At the right of each property, you can see the

numerical value that is currently set for it.


26/48


Animation an Keframes

When you modify a property so that it has a dif-

ferent value at one time than it has at another

time, this is called animation. In Afer Effects,

any property with a stopwatch icon next to it

can be animated.

Te most common way to animate a property

is to use keyframes to specify certain values at

specic times. You enable animation for a prop-

erty by clicking the stopwatch icon. Tis sets a

keyframe, as indicated by a yellow icon on the

timeline that looks like a diamond formed by

two triangles.

You can disable keyframing for a property by

clicking the stopwatch again. You can also use

keyframes to specify the shape and position of

a mask at specific times so the mask roughly

follows the key region of a shot. Masks are mostcommonly placed on adjustment layers, which

are used for eects.

Effects

Aer Eects comes with hundreds of eects.

You can browse through them using either the

Effect menu or the Effects & Presets panel. You

can control effects using the Effect Controls

panel; anytime you select a layer that has ef-fects applied, those eects appear in the Eect

Controls panel.

e Eect Controls panel provides a view of

effect properties very similar to what you see in

the imeline panel, but it is ofen more conve-

nient to access them through the Effect Controls

panel.

Previewing your WorkAs you are working, you will need to preview

your work, and Afer Effects provides many

ways to do this. You can use a manual method

such as dragging the playhead in the imeline

panel back and forth, which is oen referred to

as scrubbing. Or you can use the RAM Preview

feature in the Preview panel, which plays the

entire movie in real time aer the frames have

been rendered into RAM.


27/48


Renering an Exporting your Work

Once you are happy with the way your movie

looks, it is time to render and export it. Ren-

dering is the process that Aer Eects uses

internally to create the frames of a movie f rom

all of the information that you have given itin the composition. Encoding and exporting

are the processes that Afer Effects uses to

then convert these movie frames into output

files that can be played back or used in other

programs. When you are ready to render and

export a movie, you add your composition to

the Render queue, which you can see by click-

ing on the Render Queue panel tab.

e render seings you choose tell Aer Ef-

fects how to create the rendered frames from

the composition. e output module seings

specify what formats, output locations, and

other details Afer Effects should use to output

your movies. When everything is ready to go,

you just click Render and the program takes

care of the rest for you.

So, there is a whirlwind tour of the Aer Eects

workow. To sum up: Projects hold footage

items, compositions hold layers, layers are

based on footage items, layers have proper-

ties that you can modify, keyframes specify

property values at specific times, effects add

additional properties to layers, and you canrender and export your compositions to create

output files.


28/48


e toolbar on the le of the default

workspace houses an enormous range

of features, especially when you

consider that many of the tools will

reveal a menu of several other tools if

you click and hold down the mouse

buon.

Each of the tools you select on the

toolbar will have unique seings that

appear along the top of the Photoshop

interface. Geing to know these seings is an

important step toward Photoshop mastery.

Working with Vieo

Photoshop has an enormous range of lter ef-

fects, but theres a gotcha you need to be aware

of if you want to use them on a video clip. You

can open video clips just like any other kind

of le in Photoshop Extended; if you open the

Animation window, youll be able to play a clip

and step through it, frame by frame.

However, if you apply a lter to a video clip, it

wont be applied to any frames except the one

you happen to be displaying. If you want an

eect to apply to every f rame of video in yourclip, you must first convert the video to a Smart

Object.

Photoshop

Many editors come to video from working with photography, so Photoshop is a

familiar environment for them. If you are new to Photoshop, you may want to spend

a lile time clicking through the menus to get a sense of what it can do for you.

You can do this by selecting the layer in the

Layers panel and then choosing Filter > Convert

for Smart Filters . From now on, any lters you

apply will be added as a list aached to the

video layer that you can turn on and off as you

wish. Unlike traditional result eects work in

Photoshop, where filter effects amend the origi-

nal media, this method is nondestructive in the

same way that nonlinear editing systems are.

Placing Vieo

If you use the File > Place command to add a

video le to an existing Photoshop document,

it will automatically be imported as a Smart

Object. is works very well if you use one of

the document presets in Photoshop to create

a blank document that exactly matches the

output format you need, because you are able

to resize the placed item before commiing the

changes to the Smart Object.

You could do this manually later on, but i t savesa few clicks to deal with scaling the new source

layer as you import it. Because Smart Objects

are only based on the original rasterized media,

you can always rescale safelyadjustments

made to Smart Objects are nondestructive.


29/48


It can be overwhelming when you first interact

with an advanced application like Audition,

even if you have experience with similar tools.

My advice is to begin by looking for the features

you are familiar with and closing panels that

dont make any sense to you. Tis way you

can keep the cluer away while you nd your

bearings.

: Because Soundbooth was based on

Audition, users of Soundbooth will nd Audi-

tion familiar territoryexcept for the many

extra tools and panels that were not present in

Soundbooth.

Cleaning Up Auio

You will nd that Audition has exactly the

same Waveform and Spectral display modes

as Soundbooth and many of the same eects,

though there is more exibility in the ways you

can interact with your media. Even the Spectral

display offers a more advanced way to clean up

unwanted sounds.

Audition

Adobe Audition is a very user-friendly audio post-production tool primarily designe

to support the needs of video editors, who may not have much experience or

training in audio technologies.

In Soundbooth, you can select a sound you

want to remove and press Delete. Soundbooth

will smooth the edges of the selection and

remove exactly the frequencies you selected.

Audition also has a healing option, which will

use surrounding frequencies to ll in the gap

you create. Tis advanced audio restorationfeature is one of the many reasons it is worth

taking the time to learn about Auditionthe

more you know it, the more you will love it.


30/48


With all of that wonderful per formance in mind,

theres just one fundamental rule to observe

when authoring with Encore: Be selective with

your selections.

Encore

Encore is probably one of my favorite applications. It is powerful, exible, and user-

friendly. You can use prebuilt menus to learn about buon and background design,

automatically generate an Aer Eects composition from a menu to create animated

transitions, import a dynamically linked Premiere Pro sequence to begin authoring

before you have even completed the edit, and even generate multiple deliverables

from a single projectincluding a stereoscopic 3D Blu-ray DVD!

Encore uses object-oriented design, which

broadly speaking means that you set up the

interactivity of your DVD by selecting objects

or assets and then making choices for them in

the Properties panel. Tese properties mightinvolve an end action that tells the DVD player

what to do when an item finishes playing, or

they might specify what music to play in the

background of a menu.

Geing to Know Encore

Te first step in understanding Encore is to dis-

cover all of the options available in the Proper-

ties panel when you clickanything! See whathappens when you select a video clip compared

to a timeline. Select buons, then menus in the

Project panel, or select nothing in the Project

panel by clicking on the background. Most of

the functionality Encore has to oer is inside

that one important panel.

Tough you can set up your transcoding very

precisely with Encore, I tend to only set a maxi-

mum bitrate that I know is safe. For me, safe

means it is low enough for all set-top boxes to

be able to play the disc. When you transcode

your media, Encore will automatically use the

maximum bitrate you set, unless the duration


31/48


of your content is such that there is not enough

room on the disc at that bitrate. Encore will

then automatically set the maximum bitrate

for the space available, which means much less

thinking is required! All of the calculations, in-

cluding ensuring that there is enough room for

your menus, are carried out by Encore without

you having to do a thing.

You can use any encoding application, includ-

ing the Adobe Media Encoder, to produce a

compatible le for output (usually an MPEG2 or

H.264 file unless you intend to output to Flash

only). If you do this, Encore will automatically

skip transcoding the media.

Being Flexible with Content

If you want to create multiple versions of a

lm without taking up extra space on the disc

by making multiple copies, check out Chapter

Playlists. Tese allow you to treat individual

chapters as separate timelines that can be

viewed in any order. Tis means that you could

have one menu buon that only plays chapters

1, 3, 7, 10, and 11, then another menu buon

that only plays chapters 2, 4 , 5, 8 and 9, and ye

another buon that plays the whole thing from

beginning to end.

is approach to project organization is incred

ibly ecient and easy to implement. Its also

easy to change your mind about the playbackorder. You can have multiple Chapter Playlists

without adding a single extra clip to your proj-

ect. is feature is perfect for including multipl

endings and allowing your viewer to choose th

ending they want before they start the movie.


32/48


If you use Chapter Playlists, consider dou-

bling your chapter markers: e portion of

your timeline that is played when you add a

chapter to a Chapter Playlist goes from the

chapter marker you select to the next chapter

marker. To avoid playing the beginning of the

next chapter, add one marker for the start of a

chapter and another for the end of that chapter.

Tis means there will be a very short chapter at

the end of each main chapter (the gap between

your chapter end and the next chapter). It will

have no impact on playback if the viewer simply

watches the video from beginning to end and

will allow you to set end points for chapters on

your Chapter Playlists.

Connecting Everthing Together

If all your work is aimed at the nal output, it

makes sense to plan backwards from there.

If you are delivering a Blu-ray DVD, this can

guide your sequence seings in Premiere Pro,

workow for incorporating Aer Eects com-

positions, graphics resolutions, and every other

variable in media acquisition.

If your system is powerful, you may want to

turn on the Maximum Bit Depth and Maximum

Render Quality seings for your sequence in

Premiere Pro before you output. e Maximum

Bit Depth option will allow the 32-bit effects

to operate fully, retaining every possible detail

in your color rendering. If you are mixing and

matching source material of dierent frame

sizes, the Maximum Render Quality seing will

improve the quality of the scaling. Be aware that

you may not notice much of a dierence if you

are working with the monitor window in Pre-

miere Pro at anything other than 100% scale;

but on a larger professional monitor, you should

see an improvement, particularly where there is

movement.

Being dnamic

Te more you can use dynamic linking in your

workow, the more exible and agile you can

be as you develop your project. Many editorsbase their workows on aiming for picture

lock, when the nal decision is made about

exactly which frames will be included in the

video and which will not. As clients become

more familiar with the power of nonlinear edit-

ing, changes at the last moment are becoming

increasingly common.

Dynamic linking helps you keep your sanity

if you need to make retroactive changes and

dont want to have to think about where the

updates should appear. Take time to familiarize

yourself with the best approach for incorporat-

ing dynamic links into your workflow. Tis way,

when your client asks for just one more ver-sion, youll know that everything will update

automatically.


33/48

Glossary


34/48

20 GLOSSARY

Audio Interchange File Format. AIFF is a

cross-platform audio le format.

An artifact or a distortion in the repro-

duction of digital audio or video resulting from a

signal frequency more than twice as high as the

sampling frequency or resolution. In this case,

sucient distinction between alternate reconstruc-

tions of the waveform becomes impossible and

additional noise is introduced that was not present

in the original signal. See also anti-aliasing.

Transparency informa-

tion for bitmap images that is stored in a separate

alpha channel. In addition to its individual color

values, each pixel of the raster graphic has a cer-

tain alpha value or transparency level associated

with it.

o increase a signals strength or

amplitude.

e process of

horizontally compressing a wide picture or videoimage to fit a narrower media standard. When

played back on a widescreen display, the image is

expanded to its full size.

A sequence of gradually changing

images interpreted as a fluid motion by the brain.

- o smooth out or to reduce dis-

turbing picture effects caused by a jagged or stair-

step appearance or motion between neighboring

pixels. See aliasing.

Color faults or line faults that visibly

impact an image. Artifacts are oen caused by

excessive image compression.

e ratio of image width to

image height. Standard video uses an aspect ratio

of 4:3, while widescreen video uses an aspect

ratio of 16:9.

Te graphical representa-

tion of an audio clip, visually depicting the signal

levels over a time axis. Adobe Aer Eects shows

waveform miniatures in the timeline and features a

separate Clip dialog box for editing audio.

Audio Video Interleave. AVI was defined by

Microso and is a common container format for

video les on the Windows platform.

Distribution of the volume of a stereo

clip between the lef and r ight channels.

In the digital world, this refers to

the data rate (amount per unit of time) that can be

processed in real time by a given device or pro-

gram. As an example, a dial-up modem has a very

narrow bandwidth compared to a cable modem or

a LAN connection, so the former is not suitable for

streaming high-bandwidth videos on the Internet.

Originally, the term comes from analog signal

transmission, describing the width of the electro-

magnetic frequency range or band a signal needs

for its transmission. See also data rate.

e automated process of cap-turing an entire group of pictures or video clips.

Glossar


35/48


e smallest unit of informa-

tion in a computer. Bits can have only two values:

0 or 1.

A digital image file that uses spatially

arranged pixels to store the image information.

Sometimes bitmap implies a color depth of one

bit per pixel, resulting in a two-color image.

e le size of digital audio and video

files as measured in kilobits per second. Te higher

the bitrate, the higher the quality of the audio and

video.

An accumulation of data compressed

to a le or transmied between devices, such as in

video or audio streams.

A keying tech-

nique where a blue (or green) background is used

when recording a subject or an object . During

post-production, the blue (or green) background

is removed, allowing the subject or object to easily

be placed into a different scene. Tis technique iscommonly used in television to show a weather

forecaster in front of a weather map and in movies

to produce special effects.

e process of adding fuzziness to or

decreasing the focus of an image or certain parts of

it for a soer appearance or to hide a defect.

Bits per second. A measurement unit for

data rate.

An application that retrieves data from

the Internet and processes and displays it on a

client computer. In addition to text and HTML,

modern browsers can display graphics, movie

clips, and various other types of media, frequently

using plug-ins for these tasks.

A data unit equal to eight bits.

A text overlay that labels a scene,

identifies a location or person, or displays dialogu

onscreen. Captions can be either open or closed.

Open captions are displayed any time the video is

played; closed captions like subtitles for dierent

languages or the hearing-impaired are not shown

unless called up by the receiving equipment.

o record or import and store video

and/or audio in a digital format on a storage

medium such as a computer hard disk or a tape.

For analog sources, a special video capture card

is typically used to convert the signals into a

computer-legible format. Digital data from DV

camcorders can be transferred directly into a

computer over a FireWire/IEEE 1394 interface.

See also import.

A clip can consist of several channels

or components. For example, an alpha channel

might contain mae or mask frames to key

certain regions of the image to be transparent.

A stereo audio clip consists of separate le and

right channels.


36/48

22 GLOSSARY

To translate data from one format

into another one that suits the current needs. For

video, this obviously includes changing a video file

that is in a particular codec to another video codec

(like MPEG to Xvid, DivX to QuickTime, and so on).

Scrolling a single line of title text sideways

across the screen, either from le to right or from

right to le. See also roll.

Title text that identies the people who

contributed to a production, shows song titles, and

gives general acknowledgments. Usually rolled

from boom to top at the end of the production.

o physically trim away one or more edges

of a video stream prior to compression, resulting

in a smaller picture size. is reduces the amount

of video data and therefore reduces the size of the

compressed computer file.

See fade.

A point introduced into the timeline

of a video track where an event is designated to

occur. Cue points are used in online video publish-

ing to trigger custom functionality, like synchro-

nized animations or closed captions.

To instantly switch from one clip to another

without any other kind of transition eect. e cut

is the most basic kind of transition used for chang -

ing scenes and dropping titles onto the screen.

Also see fade, transition.

e speed of data throughput, usually

in bytes per second. Also referred to as bitrate.

When creating a compressed video or audio file,

you can specify the target data rate at which the

le will be played. See also bandwidth.

A short sequence of video and/or audio

material. You can import various clip files into

your Afer Effects project and trim longer clips into

individual scenes. Tese clips are edited together

in the timeline to play in sequential order, with

appropriate transitions between the individual

clips and other effects.

A collection of mostly royalty-free

images and illustrations for use in document and

project design.

Compressor/decompressor. Sofware

that manages compression during recording

and decompression during playback of media.

Compression makes the audio/video files smaller

for more ecient delivery.

Any technique that reduces the

size of still image, audio, or video les. Video com-

pression technologies, or codecs, reduce the data

rate via inter-frame techniques (i.e., by removing

redundant information between frames) and intra-

frame techniques, such as JPEG. Digital video les

are usually very large, so without compression,

video could not be stored on DVDs (which use

the MPEG-2 codec) or streamed over the Internet

(using a variety of codecs, including VP6, H.264,

and the Windows Media Video codec).

An indicator of how much

a le was compressed. A compression rate of 10:1

means that the size of the compressed le is one-

tenth the size of the original.

e relationship and degree of dier-

ence in color and light between parts of an image.

Glossar


37/48


A standard-denition digital format common

used in consumer camcorders. DV was the first

widely used digital video format and accelerated

the demise of analog formats such as VHS and

Hi-8. DV cameras store video at about 25 mega-

bits per second on DV tapes and communicate to

computers using the IEEE 1394 standard, which is

ofen called FireWire.

A format used to store video on DVD

for playback on consumer DVD players. DVD Vide

discs use MPEG-2 for encoding.

Te difference between the

smallest and largest possible values of a change-

able quantity, such as sound or light. You can

decrease the dynamic range to compress it and

reduce audio or video noise, or expand it to em-

phasize volume or color dierences.

e outcome of manipulations to audio

and video clips meant to enhance, modify, or dis-

tort them. See also lter.

e process of changing a data stream

from one form into another following a set of

algorithms specified by a codec. Te data stream

usually contains audio and/or video or still image

information. Encoding is frequently performed to

make a data file compatible with specific playbac

hardware or sofware or to compress the data and

therefore reduce the space required for storage,

the bandwidth for real-time transmission, or the

download time.

See decompression.

Decoding a compressed datastream in order to recover and play back the origi-

nal data (for lossless compression methods) or an

approximation of the original (for lossy compres-

sion methods). See also compression.

e process of creating a single

composite frame from the two separate elds cap -

tured at slightly different times that are present in

an interlaced video frame. Deinterlacing is used to

remove the artifacts that may be visible when dis-

played on a computer monitor. See also interlaced

video, NTSC.

An effect in audio editing that echoes a

sound aer a certain amount of time.

A video transition that crossfades two

subsequent video clips into each other. See also

fade, transition.

To display a full-color graphic image

in a restricted color situation, as in a 256-color GIF

file, the additional colors need to be simulated by

combining pixels from a 256-color palee into pat-

terns. When the image is viewed at a distance, the

human eye merges the pixels into a single color.

o copy or duplicate a production. In analog

recording, this was done from a (master) tape to

another tape.

For a clip, this is the period of time

for which the clip will play. If the clip has been

trimmed, the duration is reduced to the stretch

of time between its in and out points. See also

timecode.


38/48

24 GLOSSARY

An Adobe vector graphic animation toolkit

that allows developers to create animations that

look the same across all browsers, thanks to the

free Flash Player plug-in. Today, Flash has also be-

come a standard for rich media and video playback

on the Web.

A le format used to deliver video over the

Internet. Flash Video (FLV) les contain video

bitstreams that use a variant of the H.263 video

standard. Flash Player 8 and newer revisions sup-

port the playback of On2 TrueMotion VP6 video

bitstreams and Flash Player 9 Update 3 includessupport for the H.264 video standard, which is

even more computationally demanding but offers

a signicantly beer quality/bitrate ratio.

e complete character set (numbers,

uppercase and lowercase leers, and in some

cases, small caps and special characters) of a

particular typeface in a specic style, for example

Verdana Bold.

Frames per second. A measure of the frame

rate of a video or lm. NTSC video has 29.97 fps,

PAL and SECAM videos have 25 fps, and lms that

you watch in a theater have 24 fps.

Video clips, like analog movies, consist

of a sequence of individual images called frames.

Tese still pictures are shown in rapid succession,

tricking the mind into thinking it is seeing motion

if the frame rate is high enough. Video formats are

typically described in terms of their frame size orresolution, as well as the frame rate at which they

are played. See also frame rate, eld.

Balancing out the sonic quality of an

audio clip. An equalizing eect in soware can be

used to boost or damp the original signal within

specic audio frequency ranges. Equalization

may also be helpful in cuing oending noise

such as hum.

Saving a le in a non-native format

that is readable in another application.

A gradual transition f rom no signal to full

signal strength or vice versa. With video, the clip

changes from black, white, or transparent to fully

opaque (or vice versa) to fade in or out. With audio,

the volume changes between silence and the maxi-

mum level. See also transition, dissolve.

In interlaced video, each frame consists of

two elds. One eld contains the odd lines of the

frame and the other eld is made up of the even

lines of the frame. is technique makes video

display more smoothly.

A routine that contains algorithms tomodify digital still images or video or audio

clips by changing the values or arrangement of

specied portions of the image or soundwave.

Common applications for video lters include

resizing, noise reduction, deinterlacing, soening,

and sharpening.

is term refers to the IEEE 1394 inter-

face used to connect compatible DV devices such

as camcorders, video recorders, hard disks, and

computers. Tere are 4-pin and 6-pin plugs.

Glossar


39/48


A recording technique used

for video formats such as NTSC, PAL, and 1080i.

Interlaced video composites each full frame of

video from alternating lines of two separate elds

that were captured at slightly dierent times. If th

frame rate of an interlaced video system is 30 fps,

it has 60 elds per second. e alternating lines of

the two fields are then interleaved or interlaced to

render the full video frame. See also progressive

video.

Computing new frames con-

taining graduated steps between two or morekeyframes, aiming to create smooth transitions fo

motion effects.

A lossy compression method used to reduc

the le size of digital images. Depending on the

amount of compression, more or less image qual-

ity will be sacrificed to obtain smaller files. Com-

mon compression rates of about 10:1 tend to hav

lile eect on image quality.

Kilobytes. A kilobyte is 1024 bytes. See also

byte, GB, MB.

A mask specifying a transparent or semitran

parent region in an image or a video clip that is

to composite parts of a scene with other material

that is superimposed on the track. Te technique

is called color keying if a specic color is used to

determine the masked region. Another masking

option is to include a separate alpha channel or

image mae. See also blue screen/green screen,mae.

e number of frames displayed in

a video each second. Common frame rates are 25

(PAL, SECAM) and 30 (NTSC) frames per second,

though some streaming files are distributed at 15

frames per second or less.

Main audio output volume. You can increase

the gain to amplify a clips volume or decrease it to

make the audio track of a clip quieter.

Gigabytes. A gigabyte is 1024x1024x1024=

1,073,741,824 bytes. See also byte, KB, MB.

A gradual transition from one coloror shade to another. Gradients can use different

shades or color proportions.

Hertz. A measurement unit of frequencies

or oscillations per second (1/s) for audio fre-

quencies and the audio sampling rate, as in the

number of audio samples per second. See also

sampling rate.

o bring media elements into your work-

ing application. Adobe Afer Effects can import

video and audio clips, still images, and animated

sequences in dierent formats. See also capture,

export.

A mark specifying a certain timecode

within a clip as the starting point of a segment.

In and out points can be used to mark a clip to

be captured or copied from a source tape, to

mark a certain part of a clip to be trimmed, or

to select part of the timeline for playback. Seealso marker, out point.


40/48

26 GLOSSARY

Glossar

e brightness level or intensity of

a video signal, usually represented by the leer

Y. Video signals are split into separate luma and

chroma (color) components for beer signal qual-

ity and more ecient transmission and encoding.

A flag used to mark a specific timecode

in a clip or sequence in order to denote changes,

events, or sync points in a longer sequence. In

and out point markers can be used to mark a clip

to be captured or copied from a source tape, to

mark a certain part of a clip to be trimmed, or to

select part of the timeline for playback. See also inpoint, out point.

A technique used to hide certain areas

of an image or design or to prevent them from be-

ing edited.

Te original video or audio source used

for a video production. Digital masters are usually

uncompressed or use a very high-quality compres-

sion scheme. Te master is a high-quality source

to which you should return whenever you want to

make more copies.

An electronically created image mask

used to remove parts of a picture or video frame

in order to superimpose another picture or video

frame. See also key.

Megabytes. A megabyte is 1024x1024=

1,048,576 bytes. See also byte, GB, KB.

Mono, or monophonic, audio is limited toa single channel. See also stereo.

See mae.

Video compression codecs commonlydistinguish between three types of frames. Key-

frames, or I-frames, are completely self-referential.

Usually they are compressed with an intra-frame

compression scheme like JPEG. In contrast, the

reconstruction of B-frames and P-frames partially

depends on information contained in surrounding

frames. B-frames can use redundant information in

frames both before and aer the B-frame, whereas

P-frames can only use redundant information con-

tained in preceding frames.

A piece of nonrecording tape material at

the beginning of the physical tape on an audiotape

or videocassee that mechanically connects the

actual recording tape to the spindle of the cassee.

Also used to describe extra material before the

beginning of a clip.

Any compression tech-

nique that uses a nondestructive method, retaining

all the original information. erefore sound or

video data can be compressed without a reduction

in quality.

Any compression technique, especially for

audio and video data, that strips out some of the

original information in order to signicantly reduce

the size of the compressed data. Lossy video and

audio compression schemes include perceptual

coding techniques meant to limit the data loss to

portions that are least likely to be noticed by hu-man perception. See also perceptual coding.


41/48


-4 Te most recent codec released by the

MPEG commiee. Includes the MPEG-4 video

codec and the AAC audio codecs. Te H.264 code

is a subset of the MPEG-4 standard and is used fo

applications ranging from satellite broadcasting to

Internet streaming.

-3 3 An MPEG audio fi

format that is widely used on the Internet.

A spoken audio track explaining

what is happening or being shown on a video.

Any color without hue or having thesame value in all three RGB channels, such as

white, gray, or black.

National Television Standards Commiee.

e NTSC denes the standards for TV broadcasts

in North America, but these standards are also

used in Japan and other countries. Videos and

broadcasts recorded using the NSC standard can

not be played back or rendered using PAL devices

but require NSC or multi-standard video record-ers and TV sets. See also PAL.

Colors that are inside the

safe region for the NTSC television video standard

Title colors outside of this range might bleed and

not display properly on NSC equipment. See als

safe area.

Solid, non-transparent regions of an

image that will cover an underlying image if

superimposed. See also transparent.

A blur effect that occurs in the

background when you track a speeding object with

the camera. Without tracking, the object itself will

be blurred.

QuickTime content uses the le extensions

.mov and .qt. See also QuickTime.

Acronym for the Motion Pictures Expert

Group of the International Organization for Stan-

dardization (ISO). e MPEG commiee formulates

compression standards, such as MPEG-1 (used

for VideoCD and CDi), MPEG-2 (used for cable,

satellite, and DVD), and MPEG-4 (used for satellite,

Blu-ray, and streaming). e MP3 audio compres-

sion format was also formulated by the MPEG

commiee.

-1 A standard for audio and video com-

pression developed by the Motion Pictures

Expert Group. MPEG-1 was originally designed

to enable single-speed CD-ROM drives to play

back broadcast-quality video. Standard MPEG-1

compression uses the full frame rate (24 to 30 fps

depending on the source) and a quarter of the

frame size (352x240), and the les can be played

back on most modern desktop computers.

- A second and more ecient MPEG

compression standard used for DVDs, cable, TV,

and satellite broadcast systems. MPEG-2 is also

the compression technology used by HDV cam-

corders. MPEG-2 files are typically produced at

full frame rates of 24 to 30 fps in s tandard deni-tion (720x480) and high denition (1280x720 and

higher).


42/48

28 GLOSSARY

Glossar

Picture element. e smallest unit of

information in a digital image. Pixels are usually

arranged in a two-dimensional grid; depending on

the output device, they can be represented using

squares or dots.

o play a timeline sequence in order to

view the appearance of the nal production, com-

plete with eects and transitions. See also scrub.

A technique for

downloading Internet video or audio clips in real

time so they can be viewed while they are still be-

ing transferred to your computer. is comes close

to the benets of streaming media without requir-

ing a special streaming server. However, there is no

bandwidth guarantee and intermediate buffering

may occur. See also streaming media.

In a progressively scanned,

noninterlaced video signal, the lines of each frame

are drawn in sequence. erefore, a progressive

scan video signal sends twice as much data as an

interlaced signal where the odd and even lines of

each field are drawn alternately.

A le format developed by Apple

for compressed video, sound, and 3D media. e

QuickTime framework provides a common set of

APIs for encoding and decoding audio and video,

including the MOV movie format.

A multiplatform le format from

RealNetworks used for streaming audiovisual

Web media. RealMedia les use the extensions

.rm and .ram.

A mark specifying a certain timecode

within a clip as the ending point of a segment.

Out and in points can be used to mark a clip to be

captured or copied from a source tape, to mark a

certain part of a clip to be trimmed, or to select

part of the timeline for playback. See also in

point, marker.

Typically, the outer edges of a video

image are cut off by consumer television equip-

ment to ensure that the image fills the entire dis-

play without any leerboxing. Overscan is the part

of the image that may not be seen by the viewer.See also safe area.

Phase Alternate Line. A television video

standard commonly used in Europe and elsewhere,

PAL delivers 625 lines at 50 elds interlaced per

second (25 frames per second). See also NTSC.

Moving the apparent location of a

mono audio track to position it between the lef

and right audio channels. With stereo clips, you

adjust the balance between the two channels.

Also used to describe horizontal camera pivoting,

similar to looking lef and right when you turn your

head. See also balance.

Lossy compression tech-

niques that take advantage of the study of human

perception, identifying and removing only that

portion of the information that is least likely to

be missed by the average human observer.


43/48


Denes the number of samples

per second taken of a continuous signal, such as

music or a sound, to create a digital representatio

of the original signal. Higher sampling frequencies

create a more accurate representation of the orig

nal sound. eoretically the sampling frequency

must be more than twice the signal frequency in

order to reproduce the signal without aliasing.

See also aliasing, frame rate, Hz.

e intensity or purity of a specic

color; a completely desaturated color is gray.

To resize an image or a video sequence

by squeezing or stretching it to a smaller or larger

image resolution.

A single video sequence, typically shot

in one continuous take and isolated in an indivi-

dual clip that can be edited on the timeline. See

also clip.

o play back a sequence in the Afer

Effects timeline by dragging the playhead.

Te subjective density difference

between two tones at their boundary, interpreted

as neness of detail.

o move rapidly through a timeline

sequence, as with the scan forward or scan revers

controls of a playback device.

wo-channel audio, with lef and right

channels creating a spatial listening experience.

See also mono.

o output a video production in its final

form, including transitions, eects, and superim-

posed tracks. You can either render individual por-

tions of a timeline in order to preview your edits

at full quality, or render the entire production as a

master before exporting it in its nal form.

e detail level of an image de-

scribed as density of graphic information in dots

per inch (dpi) or pixels per inch (ppi).

An audio effect that simulates the ambi-

ence of a room of a specic size and its acoustic

properties.

An additive color model that uses red, green,

and blue as primary colors to describe the RGB

color space, which is a subset of the visual color

spectrum. RGB values consist of three numeric val-

ues (red, green, and blue) representing how much

of each primary color is used to create a specic

color in the RGB color space. Please note: RGB val-

ues do not describe colors device-independently

without color management.

To vertically scroll lines of title text up or

down the screen. See also crawl.

Quickly assembling a collection of

raw clips in the desired order as an approximation

or a storyboard of the nal production.

Margins le around the edge of

the image to prevent important information like

parts of title text from bleeding o the screen ontelevision displays. Also called safe zone. See also

overscan.


44/48

30 GLOSSARY

Glossar

A time-related address for the indi-

vidual frames of a clip. e standard format is

hours:minutes:seconds:frames.

A concept in video editing that enables

you to assemble different clips into a production

using multiple overlapping tracks. Te Afer Effects

timeline allows you to combine multiple sources

over time using separate video and audio tracks, as

well as transitions and effects.

Onscreen text and graphics used to add

information to a production. Examples are the title

screen at the beginning of the production, super-

imposed subtitles, and rolling credits at the end of

a production.

Te separate video and/or audio clips in

the imeline that are combined and superimposed

to generate the final production.

To convert from one compression

or encoding format to another. Transcoding audio

or video material almost always implies a certainloss of quality due to the lossy nature of the codecs

used. To minimize loss of quality, you should avoid

repeated decompression and compression in your

workflow whenever possible.

A visual effect used to bridge the

end of one clip or scene and the beginning of the

next one. A cut can be considered to be the most

basic transition eect, with the last frame of one

clip being directly followed by the rst frame of the

next clip. Smoother transitions include fades, dis-

solves, and wipes between adjacent clips. See also

cut, dissolve, fade, wipe.

A single frame that is part of a

video clip.

In video production, a storyboard

refers to cartoonlike sketches of frames or scenes

used to describe a movie shot by shot.

Internet media clips contain-

ing video and/or audio information that can be

played directly over the Internet without requiring

the complete file to be downloaded onto a com-

puter. Used for live audio and video broadcasts

and to interactively play and seek in stored clips.

See also progressive download.

A text overlay on video materials, typi-

cally used to display dialogue in another language

or to convey information for the hearing-impaired.

Small Web Format. is format is used for

storing multimedia Flash animations or more com-

plex Flash les like entire websites containing in-

teractive forms. Users must have the Adobe Flash

Player plug-in installed to play back SWF files.

A lossless image format that compresses the

image size while preserving all the image quality.

As a result, IFF images are larger than those

stored using lossy compression methods like JPEG.

Te timebase describes the time incre-

ments Afer Effects uses to compute individual cut

points. For editing cinema movies, this value is 24,

for PAL and SECAM videos it is 25, and for NTSC

video i

Documents

Booklet Adobe After Effects Cs6 Lbv