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After Effects & Audio: What Does The Future Look Like?
Working with audio in After Effects has been inconvenient since the beginning.
Technology has come a long way. Wouldn’t real-time audio playback be easy to integrate into After Effects by now?
Even with the ability to use massive amounts of RAM along with speedy multi-core processors. Why evolve Dynamic linking between Premiere and After Effects, adding perfectly time syncing. For example allowing the timeline and location in time to be synced. That would allow such a huge step up in efficient workflow.
Is there anyone here who knows anything about what Adobe may be working on for the future?
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10 Replies
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AE was never meant to work with Audio except for basic stuff like animating to the beat. For all of these you have “real time” playback of just the audio (hit “.” key on Numeric Pad for playback) and the possibility to set markers ( hit “*” on the Numeric Pad).
Working with Premiere Pro will give you most of the tools for Audio work. Dynamic link will enable a smooth transition to AE. For heavy duty audio work you can link from Premiere Pro to Audition.Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
I’m aware of what the software was meant for and what it can do since I’ve used it for years. Point is they have limits that I find myself having to work around. Limits can be good, but not when they take your focus off creating. If it makes the creative process faster and easier, adding more functionality is always a plus.
Look at it this way. Adobe Premiere and After Effects are a stick and a stone. When used properly, they both hit the target effectively. But add a rubber band you can combine them to make a slingshot. And now you can hit the target with far more speed, power, and accuracy. Not to mention targets that were once out of range.
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Yeah, it would be nice to handle all things in one package, but then it would become something else and I do not think Adobe will spend it’s resources for that. As it is right now the Creative Suite can do pretty much all you need, the issue comes in when you use AE only or AE with other packages. Since we are talking about a business and not a charity I highly doubt it would be in Adobe’s interest to put all the features in one package when they can make more by selling a Suite of products. And taking in consideration the way Final Cut has changed and Premiere Pro has evolved buying CS makes sense (by the way, I do not hold any Adobe stock, just a happy long time user of their products).
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Sad and true. Business is usually put ahead of everything else. Just the way it has to be I guess.
I have seen what is possible through the open source community for Blender. And it is very impressive and exciting seeing something develop the way the community demands. Blender used to just be for graphics and video games. But now it has become a video editor, physics engine, compositor, and now sound is being integrated. Still has some catching up to do with ease of use, but it’s getting there. So having seen it in action I can’t help but hope for the same with commercial software that I love. It is unfortunate. But at the same time I really cannot complain.
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What are you doing with realtime audio when you can’t view your comp in realtime?
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Not sure I understand the question.
Like I mentioned in the first post. I was thinking since technology is advancing so much and now we can use way more ram, faster processing, we are getting close (if not there already) to be able to have real-time everything. With enough processing power you can have “real-time playback”. Even if it’s technically still being rendered, I consider real-time to be anything that instant.
This would eliminate the need to rely completely on markers when animating to audio in After Effects. I work with audio a lot in After Effects and while it can do what I need it to do, it still is technically a work-around for not having real-time audio playback on the timeline.
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[Dave LaRonde] “Sure, processor speed and power has advanced. But so has people’s desire to keep doing more complicated stuff with AE, and on bigger screens. It’s a vicious circle. Considering that AE is primarily a video effects and compositing application with marginal audio capabilities, you’re more likely to find the Holy Grail than get real time out of AE.”
Indeed. I keep trying to pass this off as Soyka’s Law: “Expectations rise at the same rate as capabilities.”
My render times haven’t changed much since five or ten years ago, but the results are a lot better.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
True. Sooo true!
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
All too true.
So it’s nothing more than meaningless hope for AE. Someone will do it eventually thought. Probably outside of Adobe. More likely from an open-source community. I would do it if I had the passion to develop software and genius brain power.
I think what this is showing me is I really just want something I can physically plug into and create directly from imagination to reality. But that kind of power also sounds terrifying.
Thanks for the discussion anyway.
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I’ve worked with Flame, Smoke and Quantel iQ. They are nice pieces of software because they work pretty well with HD up to 4K projects but you can’t comp in real-time with them. But at least you can hear the audio in real-time… After you’ve rendered the shot.
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