Best practices for composition organization, flow?

[Walter Soyka]

[Andy Zou] “This is obviously a very broad, contextual question, but is there a good rule of thumb for how often to pre-compose? Especially when elements are involved that will be used in multiple compositions?”

I’d argue that if you have a common element that will be re-used across multiple comps, you should precompose it and do all your work inside that precomp. That way, you KNOW that any changes you make will correctly ripple across the project.

[Andy Zou] “If in premiere I have dozens of clips from one take being used in different spots, should I replace each clip with its own precomposition in AE? Or, should I make one master comp from the original take so I don’t have to redo the same key/effect on all dozen clips, and especially if I have to change anything?”

Having to keep multiple effects in sync manually across a project sounds like a recipe for errors. This is the perfect case for precomps, or perhaps for property links:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/expression-basics.html#add_disable_or_remove_an_expression

One of my favorite hidden little features in Ae is the ability to precompose an item from the project panel. For example, if you already have a piece of footage used in 19 different comps, you can right-click that footage item in the project panel and choose “Replace with Precomp (used x times).” This will create a simple precomp that contains the item, and replace every single use of the item throughout the project with that precomp. It’s very helpful for making a precomp sometime when you didn’t plan it ahead of time.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Andy Zou]

That pre-compose from the project panel is pretty nifty, I hope I’ll be able to use it sometime.

I guess my issue is that precomps may be useful for keeping things in sync across a project, but then, sometime I might have to do something unique to an instance that I wouldn’t want to ripple across, but then again, maybe that is the point that I should make another precomp…

[Roei Tzoref]

to precomp or not to precomp… that is the question!

you’ll get the hang of it in due time. sometimes you are forced to precomp in order to achieve some effect, other time it’s more of an organizational purpose. of course it really depends on your exact workflow. in the latest Ae, there’s a new feature called Master Properties, which enables you to keep only one precomp and control it’s parameters from a master comp and change those.

Roei Tzoref
2D/VFX Generalist & Instructor
♫ AeBlues Tutorials ♫
http://www.tzoref.com