[Ben G unguren]

In addition to the ‘u’ key, you can select a layer and press:

‘a’ to show the anchor point attribute
‘p’ to show the position attribute
s: scale
r: rotation
t: opacity (pressing the intuitive ‘o’ will take you to the out point of the selected layer)
e: reveals any effects
m: reveals the mask shape attribute of any masks
mm (the letter ‘m’ pressed twice quickly): reveals all mask attributes of any masks
tt: time remapping (if you have it applied)
l: audio levels
ll: audio waveform (this will slow things down a lot)
f: mask feather attribute of any masks(I think?)

If you want to see more than one, hold down the shift key while pressing the desired key. (This will also hide an attribute.) So if you have your rotation, scale, position, and an effect keyframed, but don’t want to see the position keyframes, select the layer, press ‘u’ (shows all the keyframed attributes) then press shift+p to hide the position attributes. (You can also select multiple layers and do this to all of them at the same time.)
ben

[Ben G unguren]

After Effects is not a real-time editor, which means (in your case) pressing the space bar doesn’t play the sound, because pressing the space bar doesn’t play in real time — rather, it takes as long as it needs to calculate / composite each frame. When I have had to do a lot of sync work, I have either used the asterisk trick suggested by rob, or else work in an editing program and place some kind of “marker” (like a few frames of text) to tell me where one part starts and another one ends. Or just write down the timecode in QT player where each thing is supposed to happen.

In AE you can generally move stuff around in time pretty easily. So if you know you need a title to come in over 2 seconds, you can make the 2-second move first, in the general area where it will go, and then slide it around in time until you have it at the right spot with the sound. (In case you didn’t know, press the zero key on your numeric keypad to RAM preview, which plays video and audio in real time.)

ben

[Ben G unguren]

I still do things the old-fashioned way (I think it’s old-fashioned, at any rate — but makes the most sense to me). I build everything with square pixels, and then resize my animation (by nesting it in a non-square, properly sized composition, and pressing command+opt+f to fit it to the comp’s size) before rendering. The only thing you have to know is the numbers. Here’s a few:

NTSC DV:
Build it with square pixels: 640×480 OR 720×534
Render it with non-square (D1/DV 0.9) pixels: 720×480

NTSC D1:
Build it with square pixels: 648×486 OR 720×540
Render it with non-square (D1/DV 0.9) pixels: 720×486

Widescreen (16:9)
Build it with square pixels: 864×486 (or anything else with a 16:9 ratio!)
Render it with non-square (D1/DV 0.9) pixels: 720×486 (for D1) OR 720×480 (for DV)

Where there are two options in the build section, the first one should be used if you are using footage with fields, because you won’t have to do any vertical stretching to resize things, which can cause nasty problems.

If you build a 16:9 animation at 864×486 and then render it out in a DV or D1 comp (make sure you do the comand+option+f thing) you can be pretty dang confident that the squished footage has the proper dimensions.

For me, building with square pixels makes sense because my computer DISPLAYS square pixels. It also helps me to remember that there is some aspect ratio converting going on. Keeps my brain working. Sort of.

-ben

[Ben G unguren]

Select the text layer (or the nested layer with the text) and press command+u. That should anti-alias. And fix the problem. If that was the problem.

[Ben G unguren]

I believe that wiggle seeds itself from the layer number. So make a solid, turn off the visibility, place it ABOVE the wiggling layer (which ups the layer number of the wiggle layer by one) and you’ll get a new dance.
-ben

[Ben G unguren]

I believe that wiggle seeds itself from the layer number. So make a solid, turn off the visibility, place it ABOVE the wiggling layer (which ups the layer number of the wiggle layer by one) and you’ll get a new dance.
-ben

[Ben G unguren]

You could try using the “Drop Shadow” filter, distance set to ZERO, softness set to more than zero, opacity at 100%, and color set to WHITE (or some other light color). If it isn’t bright enough on the first application, apply the filter again, and so on until it looks good.

-ben

[Ben G unguren]

Work your project in 16 bits instead of 8. Or, if that doesn’t work (it probably will, however, as long as any effects you are using are 16-bit-able), add some noise to your comp, which will break up the banding (though it usually won’t entirely fix the problem).

[Ben G unguren]

Jay,

Can you provide the exact message that AE is giving you? What is the text of the error message?

After Effects can render up to 30,000 x 30,000 pixels. So the error as you describe it doesn’t make much sense. However, though AE can take it, your own computer may not be able to handle it. That is, you may need more memory. How much do you have installed at present? Memory is cheap, and if you only have, say, 512MB, then you may want to get another Gig and see if that helps, which it will. But whether or not it solves the problem….

If you can’t just up and get some memory (or borrow some from a friend, assuming you use the same kind), you could also try upstream rendering. That is, render our your large comps one at a time, then reimport them and replace the comps with the new movies (there’s a shortcut for this in the Output Module; I think it’s called “Import & Replace Footage” as a “post-render action”). In other words, After Effects is probably having a hard time calculating ALL your big comps at the same time. So give it to AE one piece at a time and hope it doesn’t choke. (And save a copy before you start).

ben

[Ben G unguren]

You need to “flatten” or “bake” your effects in Photoshop before coming into AE. Make a new layer in PS, link it to the layer with the styles, “Merge Linked” (Command + e / control + e). Your styles are no longer “Editable” in PS, but will at least look correct in AE.