Opening a project from After Effects 7.0 in After Effects 6.5

[Mylenium]

Nope, no way. Like in the past, projects of newer versions are not backward compatible to older version.

Mylenium

[Sami Syrjä]

I wonder why it has to be this way. The same thing can be done in other Adobe programs, so why not in After Effects? The advances between versions don’t seem that big, that you couldn’t make the project files compatible at least with the previous one or two versions of the program.

With the way it is now, we have to update all AE licences at the same time to be able to exchange projects between workstations. As an example, I teach AE part time in a design college, and I can’t open my project files there if they haven’t updated the software.

Maybe AE 7.5 could add this feature. I have sent a feature request to Adobe.

Sami

[Mike Clasby]

You can export layers as mov or avi, you can copy and paste keyframes, with a little fore thought you can transfer a project down to you earlier AE, it’s just not nearly as convenient as being able to open an aep, but maybe better than nothing.

I presume you trying AE& and want to put a project back in you lower AE.

Or maybe this is a pretty stupid solution.

[Mylenium]

[Sami Syrj

[Kcdesigner75]

Luckily, it’s an easy project so I can just recreate it in 6.5

Thanks for the thoughts though.

[Stone Reader]

With the way it is now, we have to update all AE licences at the same time…

Exactly what they want. More $$ for them.

[Matthew Daday]

I wonder what the legalities would be for having old versions of the software installed. Once you use your serial to upgrade, it becomes part of the newest version of the software. Thats why it is cheaper to upgrade. Keeping several old copies of software may be a workaround, but you can’t honestly sit there and say that being able to reverse save to any version wouldn’t be an asset to your workflow. Photoshop, and Illustrator do it, After Effects should be no different.
Matt

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

This is standard with most animation packages. Opening anything from a later version of maya in an older one is pretty difficult, adn you oftyen lose data.

With AE, every version of AE has new features, and if those are utilized, then how could an older version of AE open them?

Not that I’m not saying it wouldn’t be nice, but It wouldn’t work the way you expect it to.

Who knows, maybe someone will come out with a script that could remove all references to new features and then convert it for an older version – I think someone did that with Maya. That would be cool, but again, probably not what you’d expect when you opened it.

On the other hand, if you need to copy position data or any other data from 7 to 6.5, you can, you just have to have a text program (like notepad) and be willing to make minor chages to the code.

For example AE 6.5 code is written like this:

Adobe After Effects 6.5 Keyframe Data

Units Per Second 30
Source Width 320
Source Height 240
Source Pixel Aspect Ratio 1
Comp Pixel Aspect Ratio 1

Position
Frame X pixels Y pixels Z pixels
0 160 120 0
8 226 186 0
15 297 111 0

End of Keyframe Data

Whereas 7 has some other data (in bold) that needs to be changed or removed:

Adobe After Effects 7.0 Keyframe Data

Units Per Second 29.97
Source Width 720
Source Height 480
Source Pixel Aspect Ratio 1.2
Comp Pixel Aspect Ratio 1

Transform Position
Frame X pixels Y pixels Z pixels
0 160 120 0
8 226 186 0
15 297 111 0

End of Keyframe Data

Change 7.0 to read as 6.5, and delete the word transform, so that Position (or rotation or whatever) is all the way to the left.

Then copy and paste the whole thing into AE 6.5

—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com

[Sami Syrjä]

Maybe it is only a tiny minority who would find this feature useful, I don’t know. However I’ve encountered the issue several times by now, for myself as well as others.

In my opinion it would be more convenient to be able to transfer projects from version to version, as I always prefer to work in the latest version available. I’m not going to start a project in an old version ‘just in case I’ll need it later on’, and the need may arise much later so I wouldn’t know it in advance. Having older versions on the same computer is therefore useless to me. And of course I’m not going to recreate a large project all over again in an old version of AE, that would take ages. Maybe having all the old versions of AE works for you (do you ever use them?), but I don’t see the point in that. I do admit that I only need to move projects around a few times per year, so it’s not such a big problem that I’d lose sleep over it.

I’m in no way familiar with programming so I may be completely wrong, but allowing the project file to open in another version of the program, as long as it supports the features used in the project, doesn’t seem like a big deal. How much overhead would that add? Photoshop and Illustrator do it.

all the best
Sami

[Steve Roberts]

I think the AE team is well aware of this, since it has probably been a feature request since 4.0 or earlier.

My assumption is that it is possible, but the team naturally has to balance and set priorities, and the addition of a backwards-compatibility feature may require much more reprogramming than the addition of multiple new features or the improvement of multiple existing features.

Backwards compatibility isn’t an issue for me, but then again I don’t have to share AEPs with many people outside. Nevertheless, I keep 5.5 and 6.0 around just in case.

… and I wouldn’t really compare AE with PS or AI, since they’re not nearly as complex as AE. Comparing AE with animation apps seems to make more sense.

my 2 cents,
Steve