[Erik Lindahl]

Adobe Anywhere has the potential to be a game changer for groups of editors that need to collaborate on fast amounts of media. It also requires you to invest in an infrastructure and expensive servers. For some this is an golden state they are entering (such as CNN), but for the vast majority of editors I’d imagine its not even something they care about.

For us – a small, relatively high-end post shop in Sweden, I don’t see the need for it at all. I understand it might be great for some but certainly not a game-changer for editors in all fields. What we could use is a shared project / storage solution for 2-4 editors but the infrastructure problems makes us not go that route.

[Erik Lindahl]

Yeah, effect aliases are also high on my list of requests.

[Erik Lindahl]

I guess one issue is the fact that you in the time line keep everything connected to that sequence. This makes sense but can get messy as described here.

1. Mattes
These can double the amount of layers even if one matte is used for multiple layers. To remedy this one should be able to able to use an arbitrary layer as a matte instead of just the one above the current layer.

2. Multiple instances of the same layer
This can be for example creating a light or glow effect on top of a logo with the video footage. You duplicate it, tweak it with effects, add a matte (probably based on the alpha of the graphic). Here I’d say a “clone layer” feature would be brilliant. The clone layer would be identical to its rendered and rastered source. Changes to the source reflect to the clone layer. One would be able to add effects / transforms to the clone layer as well, these would be applied after their source layers processing of.

3. “Extra stuff needing grouping”
This includes things like nulls with track-data, an excessive amount of video or audio layers. I don’t do a lot of work with 3D and lights but I could imagine one can end up with heaps of “crap” you’d like to group up like cameras, nulls and lights. Never the less, from my point of view sometimes I end up with:

– a of of tracking nulls. Would be great to have group-collect these layers feature for that.
– a lot of layers from a video-source I’ve done frame-by-frame fixes to. I know I can use a pre-comp but I hate losing having instant access to all the “bits”. Here a group or expand pre-comp feature would be needed.

There is probably more but I’m completely zonked after a 14 hour day.

[Erik Lindahl]

[Walter Soyka] “Go get Zorro [link], and you can pretty much have this today.”
Looking at the demo on their site, no. It’s a show / hide function based on keywords. Not a bad thing to have but not a grouping feature really. Sure I could add the tag “MATTE” to all my mattes and hide them with Zorro but it’s quite a clumsy / ugly workflow I’d say personally. Zorro has it’s place for some for sure but it’s not a clever grouping function from what I can see.

[Erik Lindahl]

I could live with such a grouping feature. It would remove all “issues” with über-nudles and what not.

[Erik Lindahl]

I do see issue can arise for sure but some kind of grouping / folding out of pre-comps is needed. But as you state it could potentially be a feature with a bunch of limitations connected to it.

I’m not exactly sure how Motions “Clone layer” works but if it’s like idéa of an “alias” or “clone” of another layer and these are always exact copies of one another – yes please.

[Erik Lindahl]

Ah, well ETLAT has it’s place yes, but that’s one really complicated thing to deal with if we’re talking “keeping things simple”: Grouping solves other problems as well, such as non-editable layers / data you want to hide but have available.

[Erik Lindahl]

But the grouping of items in the timeline IMO is a very basic needed feature. Both Photoshop and Illustrator have them. Apple Motion has it. Why couldn’t After Effects have it?

[Erik Lindahl]

[Walter Soyka] “I’d like to see arbitrary track matte layer selection, not just fixed “layer above” use.”
Agree! This with a “grouping” or “nesting” feature would make organsing the comp so much easier.

Group: Mattes
Group: Depth Maps
Group: Tracking

Instead of like some comps end up now – 100 layers+

There are also some funky limitations to how effects, mattes and layer masks correlate. I guess that’s what you’re getting at with “render order for dependencies of compound effects”. Again, having the ability to group layers would be such a huge boost.

I’ve said this to Adobe the past 5-7 years when I go to IBC. They are well aware of it – I think the problem is one of those “easy great ideas” that sadly hare terribad for the programmers to implement.

[Erik Lindahl]

Not sure what “ETLAT” is.

Not sure why time-remapping would change from how it works today. You can time-remap elements in a pre-comp, this would be done in the same way inside a “pre-comp group”.