[Todd Kopriva]

MXF is just a container format. You’ll need to tell us a lot more about what’s in those MXF files.

Given that you’re referring to After Effects 8.0.2, I’ll guess that you’re talking about some form of P2 media, which you have to import in a specific way.

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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]

Can you post a screenshot of where you’re looking?

I see the Twist path operation for a shape layer in the Add menu in both places: in the Tools panel (when a shape group is selected) and next to the word Contents for the shape group in the Timeline panel.

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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]

> The only question I still have is how to create new brushes and save them in the brush pallette? I want to create one that has more of a paint brush feel.

The brushes in After Effects are quite limited compared to those in Photoshop. In After Effects, all brushes are ellipses. You can change hardness, diameter, and such, but you can’t make the custom fancy brushes like in Photoshop.

See “Brushes and the Brushes panel”.

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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]

> how about creating the brush and animating the brush strokes?

“Animate and edit brush strokes”

“Paint tools and paint strokes”

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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]

If I were doing this, I’d create a black solid-color layer and use it as a track matte (luma matte) for the picture. Then I’d paint on the track matte layer with white. The picture will show through in the places where you’ve painted on the track matte layer with white.

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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]

Thanks, Roland. I just added that tidbit to the Help section on Particle Playground; this change will appear the next time that I publish a revised version of the Help document (which I do about once per month).

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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]

> What do you mean by assigning and output profile is this the “color management settings” ?

The output color profile tells After Effects what sort of device/format the output file is intended for, which determines how the color values are transformed to ensure consistent appearance. This is explained in “Assign an output color profile”.

> Is there a diagram of different color management skill to use for various inputs and out puts

There are diagrams and illustrations in this document that I pointed to and asked you to read. That document gives step-by-step instructions for several workflows, including a Flash animation workflow.

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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]

As Dave says, it’s not quite a one-click operation. There are some tips and techniques in the “Converting movies” section of After Effects Help.

(BTW, when you post a question to multiple forums, please do everyone else a favor and make sure that you cross-post the resolutions, too. Otherwise, the people trying to help you in one place might not realize that you’ve already got an answer elsewhere.)

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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]

> Does color management in AE only effect the colors of your footage the way you see them on the computer monitor and does not effects the render output when you are going into an video editing application, this is what I am getting. Is this correct?

Assigning an output color profile changes the R, G, and B color values of the pixels that are rendered for output. Therefore, this affects the appearance of the image when used in any context.

Please read through the materials that I linked to. Since I wrote those, any answers that I give are just going to be quoting from those documents, anyway.

> Do I use color management only if I am doing color correction in AE?

You use color management any time that you want to maintain consistent color across various input media and output media. This is not specific to color correction.

Just to head off a somehwat common confusion: Color management and color correction don’t have much to do with each other. You don’t use color management to achieve artistic looks. Color management is for the boring but highly useful purpose of making sure that your images look the same as you intended across various outputs—and to make sure that you’re using input colors the way that the creator of the input assets intended.

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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]

If you don’t use color management, then you’re essentially rolling the dice and just hoping that your colors are consistent across your various output types and that you’re using assets with the colors that the creators intended. For some work, you may decide that your results are good enough to not bother using color management. I wouldn’t make that decision, but it is a somewhat common one.

There’s an overview of color management here. The second section on that page explains why you might want to use color management.

It’s not hard, actually. People end up making it far more complicated than it actually is by overthinking it. There are step-by-step examples for several kinds of media and output types in this document.

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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.