• Adobe After Effects

  Trying to create a basic titles sequence. 3 basic questions about workflow and Text layers…

  Posted by Ori Kuper on May 25, 2012 at 5:22 am

  I’m planning on creating a short sequence which will alternate by few video footage shots and few titles. It’ll go title from black, to black > shot from black to black > another title from black to black and so on. Very basic, can be seen on a bunch of TV promos these days. I have few questions per such sequence:

  I want the titles to look as they are getting slowly closer to the camera. Haven’t decided yet if from nothing to close to closer, or just close to closer, but whichever will be the case – I was thinking about 3 ways to do that:

  a. Animating the scale of the title (either from 70/80 to 100 or quickly 0 to 70/80 and then slowly to 100 etc etc). Bottom line only work with the scale and not moving any objects in the 3D environment.

  b. Zooming a camera to the title (titles stays in same place but camera moves in 3D)

  c. Moving the titles towards the camera (camera stays same but titles moves in 3D)

  Question 1. Are these the right ways at all? Any other suggestions? Which one should I use? can all of them be used if I want motion blur to be shown? Any other aspects that I should take into consideration with them (would it look pixel-y if used for titles? What if for a JPG or Video layer)?

  Question 2. Considering the look on all the titles would be the same – title comes closer to camera, background would be the same (either moving or not); how should I build this?

  a. should I create 1 sequence of the background, and then just duplicate it the number of titles (I have 9 or 10 titles), and put a new TEXT layer in each duplicated sequence (of course with renaming the duplicated sequences)?

  b. Or maybe create 1 sequence for the background, and another sequence for the front which will include a different text layer for each title?

  c. Or 1 sequence for the bg, then 1 under it for the front, then each Text would be another sequence inside that sequence?

  I’m trying to find an easy way to create that: If possible – to create only one title as a master, and then to use that master title as a temp for the rest of the titles… this way if I’ll want to change something in all of them – I can change it in the master one and it’ll automatically affect all the others. I know it can be done but I can’t figure out what’s the best, quickest way to do that…
  
  Question 3. Lets just say that I created the titles already (ok… I did create them… not just say). Each title is inside its own sequence. After creating all the 9 of them, I realized that some are popping out of the safe title area (at least the 4:3). Is there a way to change ALL the TEXT LAYERS in ALL the different sequences, to reduce the text size itself (and not play with the Scale of the layer)? If this is not possible per the titels which are already inside sequences, would that be doable somehow if I just had a bunch of titles (not inside sequences)?

  Any info or thoughts would be gratefully appreciated.

  Thanks!
  Ori Kuper.

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  Ori Kuper replied 13 years, 11 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Dan Fredley

  May 25, 2012 at 7:22 am

  A lot of questions there, but I’ll try to address a few:

  All three choices work with motion blur, but I would build it by animating the camera–stay away from scaling it.

  To make it really easy on yourself, you can just build 1 comp with the camera animating all the way through the move with one piece of text. Then render the whole thing with another piece of text.

  Create the text first, then make it 3D. Then create a new camera. Leave the text at the default position–in fact, lock it so it doesn’t move. Go to the end of your comp and set a position keyframe. Go the beginning of your comp and adjust the z-position of the camera until it’s as far back as you want to go. Duplicate the comp and change the text (or option drag your new text to the selected old text). Repeat. Render all 9 comps after your done.

  Then in your video editor you can choose which parts you want to use to make it look like the text is getting closer to camera–which will inevitably change as you see it in sequence.

  As long as you build your text (in Photoshop or something) as big as it will ever appear in camera (ie if your comp is 1920×1080 and you happen to want your text to fill the screen completely then build your text at 1920×1080.) Making the titles in AE and Illustrator will allow you to use the “continuously rasterize” checkbox and you’ll never have to worry about size and pixellation.

  There’s no easy way to fix title safe in a bunch of comps, but if you do it my way with the camera, you can just fix the camera in one comp and paste the same camera into the other comps.

  I would put your background in a pre-comp and then copy that single pre-comp into your 9 main comps–that way you can just change one to ripple through all of them.

  Maybe start here:

  AE Basics
  https://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2010/01/getting-started-with-after-eff.html

  3D basics (Animating a camera):
  https://www.videocopilot.net/basic/#07

  Dan Fredley
• 

  Ori Kuper

  May 25, 2012 at 2:57 pm

  Thanks for your answer Dan. And also thanks for the links. I’ve been browsing around both of them for the last year (Adobe AND VideoCoPilot – awesome resource!)

  At the end you wrote about bringing the rendered animations into my vid editor. That brings up another, very basic yet important workflow question:
  I’m using Premiere Pro and i was thinking about cutting the video itself in premiere and bring the layers from there into AE, then to apply fades (from to black) on the video layers in AE, maybe even some playing with time remapping (just because it’s easier for me to ‘set it by bits’ in AE) then add the TXT animation layers insdie AE.
  All so that at the end i’d just render it all from within AE. Is that a bad way to do that?

  there are things that are easier in each software for me; transitions and fades in PP, while titles, time remap, CC in AE.
  I never know if stuff like that should be done as ‘rendered / sequenced animations from AE imported into PP’ or as ‘clean cut video layers from PP imported into AE’ 🙁
  and no matter which one i’ll import into which one – what file type should i render into, in order to keep the quality high between the 2 programs? the final product should be good for both – full HD screen and HD on the web…

  any way to make a smart decision about that workflow? does such workflow suppose to work for me everytime? when WON’T it?

  thanks again,
  Ori.

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