[John Cuevas]

In theory, I can’t think of any reason why those would produce any different results. Unless Todd Kopriva stops by and can confirm/educate us, I’d suggest if you have some time, try a few tests(try one with gradients, those can be tough on compression).

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

That is some text and graphics precomped, layered and moves into place with a couple of keyframes. Pretty simple animation, which leads me to believe you are probably quite new to AE. Take a look at this set of TUTORIALS from VideoCopilot. They will quickly run you through the basics of text, keyframing, transformations, everything you would need to make that effect.

That being said, to create that, drag your footage on to the create new Comp button and in the projects panel rename it “Final”.

Press “Cntl + N” to create a new comp and call it “Message 1”, use the text tool, shape layers, graphics…to design your phone message.

Go to “Final” and move the Current Time Indicator(CTI) to where the first message should appear and drop “Message 1” into the comp. Press “S” to change the scale of the message. If you would like it to move a little like the first message does(In example video), press “P”, move the CTI to when the movement should finish and press the little stop watch icon(this sets your ending keyframe). Now press “I” to move to the beginning of your “Message 1” layer and either physically grab the layer and move it slightly, or use the X coordinates and slide them up or down to get the layer to move to it’s starting location. A new keyframe will automatically be generated.

Press “0” on the number keypad and your frames will be cached to RAM(you will see a green progress bar) and when the RAM cache is full it will play back your animation. You can change the starting and ending points of your RAM preview by pressing “B” and “N”. Repeat these steps for all the messages.

Finally I would suggest after you watch the tutorials, add some motion tracking to your messages so they move with the camera or the phone. Motion tracking is covered in those tutorials. Finally here is an excellent resource for Getting started with After Effects (CS4, CS5, CS5.5, & CS6)

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

You could use the Luma Key effect and set it to key out darker and set the threshold to a low number 16.

Knoll also has a free plugin called Unmult that does a pretty good job of keying out black. Sometimes I might have to throw a levels effect on and adjust the black/white in the alpha channel to make it a little crisper.

Unmult Link

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

You could use the Rounded Rectangle Mask tool.

(Optional) If drawing a rounded rectangle or rounded square, do the following before releasing the mouse button:

•To increase or decrease the corner roundness, press the Up Arrow key or the Down Arrow key, or roll the mouse wheel forward or backward.

•To set corner roundness to the minimum or maximum, press the Left Arrow key or the Right Arrow key.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Hate to throw another wrench into the works, but I’m partial to VideoCopilots Optical Flares

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

This can be accomplished using Particle Playground. Be warned though, PP is one of the toughest effects to master in AE. Generally I think most people spend the 200 bucks and buy Trapcodes Particular.

Particle Playground Help with links to tutorials

Made a very simple example project bouncing some particles off a floor: 4368_particleplayground.aep.zip

Good luck,

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

What you are talking about is the collapse transformations function. It’s the button that looks like a little sunburst. What it does is allow you to precompose assets, but it preserves the assets original settings.

Here’s a tutorial about Collapse Transformation

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

From Adobe’s site(good question though, cause I didn’t know I could move the workspace files):

Workspaces are stored in XML files in the preferences folder. With some caveats regarding monitor size and layout, these workspaces can be moved to another computer and used there.

(Windows) [drive]:Users[user_name]AppDataRoamingAdobeAfter Effects10.5ModifiedWorkspaces

(Mac OS) [drive]/Users/[user_name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects/10.5/ModifiedWorkspaces

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

I work a PC and haven’t ever noticed my render times decrease significantly rendering to a lossless codee(Animation, .AVI) vs. a compressed codec. I’m sure there is a difference but not enough for me to change my work flow.

What I see most people suggest here is to render the lossless, then take that file into Media Encoder and render your final formats. One extra benefit of this is you have an uncompressed HD quality file for your archives…you can make anything from it later if you so desire.

My general workflow is from AE to Avid, then to the web, so this is a little unfamiliar ground for me, but on occassion I’ll go directly to the web from AE and I think it looks okay. If you want to take the shortcut and go directly to the web, you can render directly to H.264 from AE. For webfiles, I don’t even think you need to change a thing, but if you really wanted to be safe, raise the bit rate up to about 5Mbps.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Read this first: Why is my output file huge, and why doesn’t it play back smoothly in a media player?

Next: What is the best format for rendering and exporting from After Effects?

For the web, I generally use Quicktime H.264, good quality, fairly small, hinted streaming. FLV’s also provide a nice blend of size/quality, some mobile devices won’t play them though, so there is that drawback.

What’s the destination of these video’s, your own website, client, youtube?

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.