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What is the correct approach to use AE?
Hey all!
I am learning AE and am in doubt of the best approach to use it together with my editing software.
I have this project that I added several overlapping texts to along the time-line using the editing program (like tags, captions, etc). But it’s quite boring and I would like to take some advantage of the cool features of AE and bring those texts to life. The problem is that from the top of my head I can see two different approaches to do this but cannot spot which one would be the more productive and correct one.
The first approach would be to render my project in my editing program, then import it with AE, make and apply the compositions directly on it and re-render it. In this case the final version of my project would be rendered in AE.
The second approach would be to use AE as a totally separate program only to make the compositions (one for each text entry) and export them with a green-screen. Then import all the compositions from my editing program into my project, put each one in the proper place and apply a chroma-key filter. In this case the final version of my project would be rendered in the EDITING program and the compositions would be treated as elements of the project just like the audio tracks, footages, images, etc. I confess that this approach makes more sense for me but since I am a freshman on this ground I really would like to hear some of your advice.
Thanks!
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4 Replies
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The correct workflow is to render individual shots in After Effects and bring them to Premiere for editing. You don’t need to use a green background and keylight, you can render with transparent background in AVI format and get better quality that way.
Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer -
Thank you very much for your valuable help, Kalleheikki!
I thought on the green screen because I didn’t know that was possible to export footage with transparent background. I am aware about alpha channel but I thought that it was restricted to still images… Good to know that they are available on video too!
Question: does it work only for AVI or MP4 also supports this feature?
Thanks!
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To use AE’s cool text animating features you need those texts to be AE layers. This inevitably brings you to the second approach, as I see it.
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There are a few file formats that support alpha, but MP4 is not one of them.
In general you want to export intermediate files in uncompressed (or minimally compressed) format to avoid (or minimize) progressive lowering of quality at each export stage.
Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer
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