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I can’t get my head around the workflow. (Bit long, sorry)
I really can’t seem to get my head around the AE workflow..I’ve been tinkering with AE for many years now but never used it enough to be fluent with it. I now want to start using it more and learning how to use it properly. I’m using AE 7.0.
Anyway, I find the playback and general editors ‘feel’ within AE in comparison to an editing package to be a little tedious. I also find it difficult to work with large source files.
Is this because it’s purely a compositing package? Why isn’t the preview on screen ‘real time’ like it is on my editing software? I’m editing with Sony Vegas 6.0
I’ll give an example of a very simple thing I want to do that I find much easier to do in an editing package and I’m hoping can just as easily be done in AE.
I’m starting with 15mins of raw captured footage or people at a party drinking and dancing. I want to lay my audio track down and put markers on every main music beat. Then I want to cut shots in on every beat and to make it interesting, I want to ramp some shots up to around 600% normal speed and quickly back down to 20%. This will give me that sudded speed up and slow down effect. Then I want to sprinkle in some artbeats film clutter here and there. This is all I want to do.
As far as I can see, the above is much easily accomplished in an editing package that can also do a little compositing, rather than doing it in AE am I correct? The reason I say this is because the edit software would better handle the real time on screen playback needed to cut the main shots to the beat and play it back to get a ‘feel’ of where the speed ramps should be etc..
Because I’m trying to understand the workflow, could someone tell me if the above is better done in an editing package or in AE? Or is it best to cut the shots in an edit package then import in AE to do the speed changes? This won’t work because of the speed velocity changes, AE would need the footage in it’s comp for that am I right?
Another example – Say you had to edit a 3 min music video full of composites and effects that needed a lot of AE work. Would you first do the main cut in an edit package where you have better ‘feel’ for the job and then send to AE for the rest? I think that my main complaint is that I can’t get a good ‘feel’ for an edit in AE where the project calls for the footage to be cut in AE as in the speed change example.
I know that the new Adobe production studio takes care of some of my concerns but that isn’t an option for me at the moment. I want to work the way everyone else has been working the last year or so 🙂 Besides, I can’t afford the production studio.
Sorry for the long post and too many questions as well..
-Frankie
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2 Replies
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“I want to ramp some shots up to around 600% normal speed and quickly back down to 20%. This will give me that sudded speed up and slow down effect.”
Time remapping does this very fine in AE as well as in premiere. Very great feature i can tell.
Unfortunatly i can’t go into the click-here-and-there and other the ABCs of AE. I am afraid you will need some readings in AE help to get used to some basics.Generally speaking, AE is is not an editing package, thats what premiere does. AE is a good companion for the editing packages tho. Both work together to achieve larger ideas. Each one is specialized in its tasks even tho they sometimes cover same features.
I am not an expert but i can tell usually in AE you work with short pieces of clips where you apply effects, add non real-life elements, composite, tweak color, bring changes on entire clip or part of it, or even portion of frames. Then back in editing packages you join these small clips together to create a longer movie or sequences and do the timing.
Some 30 secondes TV ads or video spots can be done entirely with AE.
Or you can get the idea of the workflow quicklier if you follow CAREFULLY and apply some turorials like there: https://www.xplorerstudio.com/tutorials.html
There was this good book by Stan Carver “AE and premiere studio secrets”. Date from back to AE 5.5, but the basic worklow can be learned efficiently if you read and practice what this book teaches. It covers differentes cases and situations some pro actually do use AE to achieve amazing effects.
Usually to understand a software’s basics you have advantage reading old books on the first versions.
Good luck
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Stick with Vegas 6 for that, then render to a DV AVI then add effects within Adobe 7. I also advise running magic bullet to give your footage a more film-like quality.
I’m just like you, I suck at Adobe products period but picked up Vegas really fast when it comes to simple things.
If you want to edit to a beat, that’s really easy in Vegas. Just make real time cuts while u hear the music or i guess you can mar things, although I’ve never done it.
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