AE Workflow.. Need advice on how it works.

[Al]

You’re right, editing is best done in an editor, not AE. The best workflow is as you’re suggesting; edit your clips, with your speed ups, then bring it over to AE for compositing.

[Alexander Gao]

and after AE, export it and bring it back into vegas.

Alexander Gao

“When the revolution happens, I’ll be leading it.”

[Frank Manno]

Ok let me ask something because I’m trying to visualize the AE workflow from
an edit perspective.

Lets say you do the main edit in an edit package and do the speed ups, slow
downs etc then you need to use AE to do say, transitions between shots.
Would the right thing to do be to render it out and
import it in AE then make a split at each cut point again and from there
have each shot on its own layer and once that’s done, you can do the
transitions? Would this be the way to do it?

-Frankie

[Al]

OK transitions are a bit tougher.

why do you want AE to do your transitions? Firstly I would assess whether you really need AE to do this kind of work, or whether it’s best kept in your editor.

Ideally, you want to be using an editor which intergrates with AE. There’s a lot out there, personally i’ve used Liquid Silver and Premiere. In the latter, you can open your premiere project in AE and everything is ready to go. If you’re regularly bringing edits into AE – this is a worthwhile thing to check out. It’ll save loads of time in the long run.

The problem with the suggestion you’ve made – of using AE for transitions – is if you’re using an editor that doesn’t talk to AE – when you render out your final movie – you won’t have your handles. Now you could render it out with handles, manually remove them, but that’s a pain in the ***.

If you wanted to, say, colour grade each shot individually, then you’d be fine doing it your suggestion (rendering it out, splitting each clip in AE…) But transitions – because of their handles – are a different issue…

Hope that clarifies it for you.

[Frank Manno]

>why do you want AE to do your transitions? Firstly I would assess >whether you really need AE to do this kind of work

I don’t really need to do transitions, I was just asking that as an example to help me better understand the workflow. The handles where my concern but you answered the question in saying that the handles will be a problem. By ‘Handles’ you mean the ‘extra, extended’ in and out points required for transitions to work, right?

>Ideally, you want to be using an editor which intergrates with AE. >There’s a lot out there, personally i’ve used Liquid Silver and >Premiere

I cant seem to work out how other editors other than Premiere integrate with AE, I may need to look into that.. Do you know if Avid Express Pro is one of them?

>If you wanted to say, colour grade each shot individually, then >you’d be fine doing it your suggestion (rendering it out, splitting >each clip in AE…)

Yeah it’s the splitting clips in AE again that will take up time and that’s what I needed to get my head around. Looks like I’m beginning to understand things, thanks.

Here’s something else, I use Sony Vegas for editing which can do some compositing as well. I had to do a 2 minute fast paced promo for a photographer basically showing off his shots. It had to look funky and upbeat as to set an ‘image’ as well.

There was a lot of fast picture in picture moves around the screen, I had random picture in picture shots tumble around to reveal the image etc. I added some fast grungy artbeats clips at edit points as transitions, I used the screen/add modes for this etc. Cut it all up to the beat of the music, animated titles through it. It looked real flashy and I did it all in Vegas because I don’t know how to use AE well enough. This whole project depended a lot on edit timing where everything happens based on music beats and sounds from the soundtrack. I was ‘following’ the soundtrack which was a dance number. Now having said this, would this project have been just as easily done in AE by an experienced AE user? Or would that user have had to use Premiere as the edit package due to the integration needed for the edit timing?

Without Premiere or without an edit package that integrates with AE would my example project above have been difficult to do? Would this have been a case where unless I needed somethign specific to do in AE that overall, the job is better tackled from the edit package?

I think this may answer most of my questions 🙂

I really appreicate your help by the way..

-Frankie

-Frankie

[Al]

>I don’t really need to do transitions, I was just asking that as an example to help me better understand the workflow. The handles where my concern but you answered the question in saying that the handles will be a problem. By ‘Handles’ you mean the ‘extra, extended’ in and out points required for transitions to work, right?

Yes, the handles being the extra bits on yours ins and outs. It’s good that you don’t really need to do transitions in AE; as I think that’s one thing that is best kept to your editor… depending on what you’re doing of course…

I guess the way to think about using AE, the workflow, whatever – is that you should only really be going into AE when you reach a point with your editor that you can’t do something – or want something more than what your editor can offer. For example if you’re keying something, and your editor isn’t pulling a very nice key – then it’s time to go into AE. Or if you want to set up a camera in a 3D comp, wizzing past all your shots which are laid out over the Z space… obviously that’s something your editor won’t be able to handle (unless you’re on an higher end editor/compositor like Avid DS or Smoke)

Unless you want to do something you’re editor can’t do – then keep it in the one program.

> I cant seem to work out how other editors other than Premiere integrate with AE, I may need to look into that.. Do you know if Avid Express Pro is one of them?

I haven’t gone from Avid to AE -> but yes, i’m pretty sure they do integrate. You’d have to do a search on this. I’d assume it won’t integrate as well as premiere (which brings your dissolves across!) but at least you’d have all your cuts there – which is the main thing.

> It looked real flashy and I did it all in Vegas because I don’t know how to use AE well enough. This whole project depended a lot on edit timing where everything happens based on music beats and sounds from the soundtrack. I was ‘following’ the soundtrack which was a dance number.

Firstly, you’ve somewhat answered your own question… if you’re end result looked ‘flashy’ – then you didn’t need to go into AE. I mean, of course you could have done it in AE – but if at the end of the day you and the client are happy with the results – then why take it into AE?

But assuming you’re at the point of wanting to become an AE user, and get more familiar with it – then you need to be aware of it’s capabilities. The more you know what AE is capable of – the easier it will be to make the decisions to take it into AE or leave it in your editor. There’s a host of AE sites dedicated to showing off what AE is capable of.

>Now having said this, would this project have been just as easily done in AE by an experienced AE user? Or would that user have had to use Premiere as the edit package due to the integration needed for the edit timing?

An experienced AE user can edit successfully to beats. Personally, what I would have done was do a rough cut in an editor; just to get a feel of the shot length, and get my shots in somewhat of an order – then take it into AE and start layering. Cutting to beats in AE is easy once you know how. Of course it’s more time consuming than in your editor – so unless you really need AE for the job – then you want to keep it in your editor.

Having said this; if a client came to me and said ‘Fast pace, beat edited, lots of layers etc’ I wouldn’t flinch. I’d recommend we do a little cutting in an editor, to get a sense of what they want, or at least get the shots in some kind of order… but obviously with layers the main bulk of the work would be done in AE.

The main thing for people who are editors making the transition to working in AE – is getting used to working in (what i call); time and space. That means you can do something, say, a bee flying around the screen, and you can animate the whole thing, without pressing the RAM preview button. This is because the more you use AE, the more used to working without needing to see what you’re doing after every keyframe you set. You know that the bee crossing screen in four frames is too short, you know the wings on the bee flapping every two seconds is too slow…

>Without Premiere or without an edit package that integrates with AE would my example project above have been difficult to do?

Definately not. Any AE user could do this. It would take more time, but you could have also added different, more complicated, posssibly more sophisticated effects…

>Would this have been a case where unless I needed somethign specific to do in AE that overall, the job is better tackled from the edit package?

Yes. Unless you need AE, you’ll find it too slow and too confusing as to why you are in there.

That being said; AE is an absolutely amazing tool; and can vastly vastly make anyone’s edits look a squillion dollars. Understanding what the capabilities of AE are is the most important thing. Then you’ll want to go into AE, rather than think you need to…

Hope that helps!

[Frank Manno]

Your last post really answered all my questions! Thanks a lot for taking the time out to help me.

-Frankie

[Al]

not a problem 🙂 best of luck!

[Jim Kanter]

Frankie,

In a nutshell, After Effects is optimized for animating and compositing clips (motion graphics effects), and editors are optimized for editing clips (choosing and timing). Each can do the other’s job, but they’re clumsy at it.

Jim Kanter,
Digital Film Institute
http://www.dfilminst.com

[Frank Manno]

What would be the easiest way to tackle a situation where you wanted to use AE to remap time?

Lets say you’re working on a small project that has a music soundtrack and you wanted to do a lot of speed changes, reverse video etc. The amount of speed change would depend on how the music ‘feels’ with the shots. You really need to watch this in real time to decide on where the changes are to take place, so you need an edit package for this?

I’m taking a guess that the speed changes in AE would be very tedious if all we have to go on is the ‘feel’ of the edit. Is this right?

Would this be a situation where we need some integration, maybe using markers in an edit package where you want things to happen and then import in AE to further work?

How would the workflow be for that one..

I’m starting to wonder why AE can’t play things back faster just like my edit program does. I’m not using a real time card or anything. They are both using the same computer, same resources, what’s the diff? How hard would it be to get AE to play things back quick enough for someone to get a good feel for how a composition is looking?

-Frankie

>In a nutshell, After Effects is optimized for animating and >compositing clips (motion graphics effects), and editors are >optimized for editing clips (choosing and timing). Each can do the >other’s job, but they’re clumsy at it.