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I guesss it’s just me
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I’m not all that active in the forum answering questions, but I do read through it almost every day, even on the weekends. I’ve noticed as well the increase in “noob” type questions. I say, hey, if people have questions, let ’em ask!
I would say answer the question and mention that there is a forum for beginners, and that they should direct future questions over there until they know the program well enough that they could actually come in to the main forum and answer other people’s questions.
That being said, maybe there’s a place for an “advanced member” forum for people that have been members here for a year or more, or can be invited in. I’m a member of a message board (sports related) that has a hidden “premium member” board that you have to be invited into, and the motto of the premium board is “The first rule of Premium — is that you don’t talk about Premium —“. Kind of like Fight Club I guess.
I found this board back when I was just a lowly editor. I got into After Effects a couple years ago kicking and screaming when they let our graphics people go. Now I actually enjoy AE thanks mainly to this forum, VideoCopilot, and a lot of practice.
As to the comment about nobody reading the manuals, I remember when I first started editing, many a day taking the Avid (and later Final Cut) manual with me to the facilities for a nice long read. Those were the days!
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Just point noob Qs to the COW’s AE Beginner’s Forum. I’ve been doing this for the past few months, albeit not on a consistent basis for fear of sounding like a ****head.
Let’s not sweat over minor gripes as we were all noobs at one time or another. The good stuff is still here.
We’ve grown from one to three pretty happening AE Forums here at the COW. The new forums came about due to the large traffic and the reason for the traffic is because there is a lot of good stuff here at the COW. While we do get noob Qs here, instead of the Beginner’s Forum, we still get lots of very good posts in this forum.
Also, there is still a student’s version of AE so not everyone should be expected to be professionals. Pros, hobbyists and students make up the forum users. We need more of everyone and not less.
Help others when you can and point them to the Beginner’s Forum is need be. And try to be nice otherwise it defeats the whole purpose of us being here.
Cheers
RoRKbroadcastGEMs – AEPro Volume 02 (Professional Adobe After Effects Project Files – Now Available).
Adobe After Effects Training in South East Asia.
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[Todd Kopriva] “I always wonder why someone like Kevin or Dave or Bogie would type the same few paragraphs time after time “
That’s an easy question to answer: Attitude. It’s taken me ten years to get conversational with the basics of After Effects (another decade for expressions and scripts?). For newbies to presume AE is—or should be—”easy” rankles.
However, I take supreme umbrage at the implication that Kevin, Dave and I (among others) do not often include helpful and gracious advice and assistance in our curt or enjoyably eloquent RTFM-ish responses.
Todd, bless his FAQ-oriented heart, is an Adobe employee and the Adobe logo in one’s sig file carries the imprint of maintaining customer relations. This often is possible only at the expense of access to what seems to be an inexhaustible supply of grace and patience. We are glad he’s here, glad his company pays for his participation, and, if interested, we can learn something from his posting style. Todd, unlike the rest of us, really doesn’t have the flexibility to be an offensive jerk unless, of course, he has established an alias account.
bogiesan
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Why not have a thread called “AE for Professionals” and not allow NOOB’s like us to post there. If we do then ban us.
As a AE student, COW has been such a wealth of information and for kind replies and to call a post ‘Advanced’ or ‘Interesting’ is subjective.
Not all of us are genius I guess, I read most part of the manual and missed a tiny thingy that you can see the individual layer render timings by clicking the small arrow under render queue. (This was cleared by a reply by Bill Kelly.) Not that I missed on purpose while I was reading but it just didn’t strike me. 🙁
For Noob’s, this is such a great place to interact with professionals like you. Please continue your support.
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Hi Todd,
didn’t mean to ding you on the lack of the manual. I have worked at major computer manufacturers and am well aware of the lead time needed for documentation, and how much better it is for the engineers to have those extra months for fixes/updates/clarifications that ultimately help the consumer.
All in all, I prefer the web based help when trying to understand an issue. As you said, it is a lot more real-time and the links are very helpful. Maybe when the ‘Kindle 5’ is out I’ll have something easily portable, readable, and up-to-date. I do think we need to change the acronym from RTFM to RTFWP :).Pauley
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The current situation is that the After Effects default forum is this one. If the default were the “Basics” forum, with a separate link to the “Advanced” forum, we’d see a lot less people posting “noob” questions here. I don’t blame the “noobs”, I blame the current layout of the After Effects forums (or, more precisely, the links configuration).
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I agree with this suggestion, that the naming of the default AE forum is making it seem like the obvious choice for all kinds of questions that may be better suited to the Basics forum.
Another thought I had is this : I don’t visit the basics forum, so i don’t know if it is well supported… if people find that the answers aren’t always provided there, they will be less inclined to use it. So I am thinking for myself as much as anyone, maybe we should be making time to go there and help out the beginners who are doing the right thing in posting there…
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[Stuart Elith] “I don’t visit the basics forum, so i don’t know if it is well supported…”
The basics forum is well supported by a number of the regulars to this forum (and others, also).
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[Tom Scott] “I don’t blame the “noobs”, I blame the current layout of the After Effects forums (or, more precisely, the links configuration).”
Tom,
Do you know anything about human nature or do you just jump to conclusions based on your lack of evidence?
The truth is, we have tried to curtail this by having both entire basics sites (creativecalf.net — that died because no one wanted to use it) and by having basics forums that leaders and admins moved basics posts to, to forcibly get the newb questions there. But human nature being as it is, these people regularly get incensed and take great exception to having their posts moved there. Why? Because they want the “real experts” answering their newb questions.
After all, they are more important than all the other newbs and do not want to have anyone but the advanced leaders answering them. If we were to have an Advanced forum, THAT is the forum they would post in…
We are working on breaking out the forums by TASK rather than level. Rendering in one forum; effects techniques in another; dealing with 3D layers and lighting in yet another, etc., etc. It will likely fail but it may be worth a try. We are kicking around the idea.
In the end, people like it all in one place rather than breaking it out because they don’t have to go through forum after forum, as it is at adobeforums.com, etc.
Over the years, we have learned there is no perfect solution. We have tried many and it almost always comes back to what we have. It’s far from perfect, but with human nature being what it is, to get it perfect would require every post being moderated and placed by admins that worked on it full time.
So, the bottomline is this: most of us look at the posts that interest us and avoid the ones that don’t.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry -
[Stuart Elith] “I agree with this suggestion, that the naming of the default AE forum is making it seem like the obvious choice for all kinds of questions that may be better suited to the Basics forum.”
While this may make sense, it would ignore the fact that 80% of the COW’s user base work with these tools for a living. There are less than 11% that are both students and educators. The balance are hobbyists.
But as I said in my other post in this thread, human nature is such that the noobs for the most part do not think that the leaders in the Basics forum are real pros — we know, we have written many and asked why they won’t post there.
The leaders in the Basics forum ARE real pros and many know an INCREDIBLE amount about After Effects. They are the people that tend to be “pre-wired” to be able to handle newbie questions and have a disposition that allows them to walk newer users through repetitive explanations until they get it.
But unfortunately, were we to set that basics forum as the starting place, the preponderance of newbies would search out the Advanced forum — were we to add one — and THAT is where they would post.
It’s that human nature thingie, again.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry
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