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What is the reasoning behind not playing the audio?
I’m brand new to AE and the first disappointing thing I find out is AE does not play the audio “with” the video unless I Ram preview. This seems to be a huge downside to the program when you are trying to sinc video and graphic movements to audio. Making changes then having to Ram preview, then go back and make changes, then Ram Preview and on and on. What kind of productive work flow is that?
I was wondering if anyone knew what reasoning Adobe uses to mute the audio on space bar playback? I mean, I know its not supposed to be a NLE but somethings just seem to be such a no-brainier.
Thank you all for the great info you post here. It has helped immensely.
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3 Replies
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Space-bar initiated playback isn’t necessarily accurate. You’re not necessarily getting a real framerate (unless your composition is rendering in real time). It’s showing you frames as they render. In more complicated compositions, where each frame takes a second or two to render, spacebar playback isnt really effective for a real preview of the animation (especially with audio – it would have to slow the audio to match the framerate that you get as it renders). So RAM preview is the way to go. I’ve never felt like it was a hinderance, personally. If your RAM previews are taking a long time, try setting your composition view to 1/2, 1/3 or 1/4 quality. Should render faster.
If you’re having trouble syncing animation to audio – try pressing “.” on your numeric pad. This will give you an audio preview. Do an audio preview with that layer selected, and tap the “*” key on the numeric pad on the beats or moments you want things to occur at. This leaves markers on the layer that you can then time your animations to.
Alternatively – you could animate and then sync audio to your animation in an NLE.
-stutts-
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you can also scrub and hear audio by holding down ctrl (windows) or command (mac) while you move the current-time indicator… if you hold the modifier key while holding the indicator in place (with the mouse button still pressed), you will hear a short loop of the audio at that point.
when i work with syncing to audio, i usually start with what simon describes, play the audio preview (decimal on the numbers pad) and hit the * to get visual markers. then i’ll fine tune the markers using command/ctrl-scrub.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Premier solved this issue long ago by “saving” the render file to allow real time playback with the audio. You can accurately scroll back and forth frame by frame to see where you need to make adjustments. Then hit the enter button to re-render any section you changed without re-rendering the entire comp. Its simple and it works great. I am just wondering why AE can’t do the same thing instead of having to RAM preview each time you want to see it play in real time.
Its totally possible that I’m not grasping the whole picture, but I guess being totally new to AE I don’t have any pre-conceived notions about how it has always been done in the past. Actually I was hoping Adobe would have streamlined their various applications to be more similar in form and function to allow users coming from one app to more easily step into any of the other Adobe programs.
What a marketing point that would be.
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