basic AE question

[Mike Clasby]

The spacebar doesn’t play the audio for me, but try a Ram Preview, “0” on the numeric pad (it plays the work area unless you check “From Current Time” in the TimeControls Palette (Ctrl 2 brings it up). Or “.” in the numeric pad again for the audio all by itself, from the time marker forward. The “.” (Numeric Pad) is handy to play the audio when you want to set markers for the music beat by pressing the “*” (asterisk, numeric pad) where you want to drop markers.

[Broken]

NOTHING plays in realtime in AE. AE renders EVERYTHING, audio included.

No, wait, I take that back: if you happen to be running AE on a National Security Agency code-cracking supercomputer, you can probably play back stuff in real time.

But the fine folks at Adobe do cut you some slack concerning audio: there are several ways to play it.
1) RAM preview
2) Hit the period key on the numeric kaypad. AE plays audio for a duration determined in preferences.
3) Scrub the audio: hold down command key (ctl key win) and move the timeline cursor
4) Preview a few frames of audio (set in preferences) by holding down both command key (ctl key win) and timeline cursor.

You have to remember that AE is NOT an editing application. It’s a compositing application with certain audio capabilities; it assumes you’re going to modify the video, and possibly the audio too. So it renders everything. So keep your ingers off the space bar. It’s an exercise in futility.

To paraphrase Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz: “When you’re in AE, you’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”

Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV