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New to AE, what should my workflow be for adding text to trailer?
I just picked up AE CS4. One of the things I’d like to use it for is for creating more elaborate text sequences in trailers.
Currently I do my editing in Sony Vegas (will likely be moving to Final Cut soon, but I’m assuming the workflow will be the same), and am wondering what the typical workflow is for using After Effects.
Do you complete all the editing in your editor (in my case Vegas) with blank spots where the text would be, and then import the entire thing to AE and add everything there? Or do you just create a bunch of short independent clips in AE, and import those into the Vegas project?
I’m assuming it would be the former (finish in Vegas, then import into AE and render your final version from there), but that seems tricky with all the music and sound effect timing that is involved with trailers.
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3 Replies
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I agree with Dave. I might like the video and audio for reference, but I’d only output your AE bits and import them back into Vegas rather than rendering the whole thing out of AE.
Now, this changes if you decide you want to do compositing or coloring in AE, of course.
Also, while we’re at it, if your project is HD, don’t forget the words of Dave LaRonde:
Dave’s Stock Answer #1:
If the footage you imported into AE is any kind of the following — footage in an HDV acquisition codec, MPEG1, MPEG2, mp4, m2t, H.261 or H.264 — you need to convert it to a different codec.
These kinds of footage use temporal, or interframe compression. They have keyframes at regular intervals, containing complete frame information. However, the frames in between do NOT have complete information. Interframe codecs toss out duplicated information.
In order to maintain peak rendering efficiency, AE needs complete information for each and every frame. But because these kinds of footage contain only partial information, AE freaks out, resulting in a wide variety of problems.
– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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Thanks guys, that makes sense. I’ll probably be doing some other minor affects in AE also that would require me to re-encode the whole thing from there, but in the cases where I just need the text then chopping them back over after using the audio/video as a reference makes sense.
Thanks for the heads up on formats Michael. I’m typically outputting from Vegas in mp4. I’ve been playing around with it in AE a bit and haven’t run into any problems yet, but what should I re-encode it to for AE?
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I’m not sure what options Vegas gives you, because I don’t use Vegas. A lossless image sequence like Targa at high quality works. Or you could go with Quicktime with the PNG codec.
Interframe compression on footage yields unexpected results. Sometimes it works fine; other times it does not. When I first started playing with HD on AE a few years ago; I noticed AE moving a lot faster (and I mean a LOT faster) when I transcoded my footage from HDV (MPEG-2) into a different format.
– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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