[Todd Kopriva]

some other getting-started resources:
“Getting started with After Effects”

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

> It only gives you the option to generate them, but does not specify where it places them.

Did you already do a render? Are you looking under the Render Settings heading?

“When a log file has been written, the path to the log file appears under the Render Settings heading and Log menu.”

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

If you read the response that I gave to the earlier question, you’ll see this:
“When a log file has been written, the path to the log file appears under the Render Settings heading and Log menu.”

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

Have you updated to After Effects CS4 (9.0.2)?

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

Render and export using a codec that can encode an alpha channel. In the Output Module Settings dialog box, make sure that Channels is set to RGB+Alpha. (When you see Millions Of Colors+ in the format options for some codecs, the plus sign indicates that an alpha channel is included.)

See this section about output module settings and this section about alpha channels.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

You’ve asked this question on two other forums and gotten answers on both.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

Information about how this feature works is here.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

I second Wieger’s question/suggestion. There’s a reason that this is the first sentence of the “Vector paint effect” section of After Effects Help:

“For most drawing and painting tasks, use shape tools and paint tools, not the Vector Paint effect.”

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

Don’t use the commands in the File > Export menu to create final output movies. Use the render queue. (There are minor exceptions to this, but overall, this is the general rule.)

See “Rendering and exporting overview”.

Now, to the question of encoding for streaming media: Have a look at this section of After Effects Help about FLV and F4V (and H.264).

You might find that you’re better off creating a high-quality intermediate file from After Effects and then encoding and compressing that using something like Adobe Media Encoder or another dedicated compression and encoding tool.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

> OpenGL is useless? Even with $2600 Quadro card? I really hope not. I have heard this before though, so please explain.

Don’t use OpenGL for final renders.

Do use it for accelerating rendering during interactions.

Maybe use it for rendering previews. (I don’t, unless I’m working with a lot of 3D layers.)

See “Render with OpenGL” for information about enabling and disabling OpenGL rendering for final renders and previews, and for information about what things the OpenGL renderer can and can’t handle.

See “Preview modes” for information about OpenGL acceleration of rendering during interactions. That is what I leave on.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.