[Todd Kopriva]

After Effects looks in a couple of places for fonts, including (on Mac OS) Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts .

Be sure that no applications are running when you install your fonts.

(See the “Fonts” section of After Effects Help for more information.)

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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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[Todd Kopriva]

If you read the After Effects Help document, you’ll see that it contains links to various resources (including video tutorials) about each of the new features in After Effects CS4. For example, the “Tracking and stabilizing motion” section contains a link (in the comments) to a video tutorial here on the Creative COW website by Carl Larsen that shows how to use mocha for After Effects, which is included with After Effects CS4.

There’s a complete list of new and changed features in After Effects CS4 on my blog. This post points to the relevant sections from which you can learn more about each feature.

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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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[Todd Kopriva]

I think that you have Live Update mode turned off.

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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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[Todd Kopriva]

It seems that you have Live Update mode off.

For details about preview modes, see the “Preview modes” section of After Effects Help.

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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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[Todd Kopriva]

It is almost always easier to use a stock footage element for flame or explosions than to try to simulate one. There’s a lot of free fire and explosion footage at Detonation Films.

There’s some information on creating and compositing flames in some pages linked to from After Effects Help.

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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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[Todd Kopriva]

Dean’s tutorial was created before shape layers existed in After Effects, so the instructions are a bit different, now that the various tools for drawing paths can be used for either masks or shapes.

Now, to draw a mask on a layer, you have to make sure that the layer is selected first.

You can also copy and paste a shape path to a mask path. The easiest way to do this is to create a dummy mask (for example, by selecting the layer and just clicking once in it with the Pen tool), select the Path property of the shape layer, press Ctrl+C, select the Path property of the mask, and press Ctrl+V.

There’s detailed information about creating shapes and masks and transferring paths from one to the other in the “Creating shapes and masks” section of After Effects Help.

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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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[Todd Kopriva]

No, there is no keyboard shortcut for converting Photoshop text to editable text.

If you want to request such a shortcut, just fill out the feature request form.

All (and I mean all) of the keyboard shortcuts for After Effects CS4 and After Effects CS3 are listed in the respective Help documents on the Web. These documents also include instructions on modifying the keyboard shortcuts.

Sorry, but the Help document for After Effects 7.0 doesn’t have quite all of the keyboard shortcuts, but you can use the After Effects CS4 or CS3 documents as a reference for most of them. Very few have changed.

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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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[Todd Kopriva]

If you’re bumping into the issue that I suspect you’re bumping into, this article in the Adobe Technical Support Knowledgebase might help:

QuickTime movies exported from After Effects CS3 are darker or lighter than expected

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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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[Todd Kopriva]

We’ll have an easier time helping you if you give more details about exactly what you’ve tried and exactly what happens. What format are you exporting to? Are you using the render queue? What are your render settings and output module settings?

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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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[Todd Kopriva]

When I searched for ‘source name’ in After Effects Help, the second search result gave me the answer that I think that you’re looking for.

Click this to do the search that I did for ‘source name’.

Here’s the sentence in After Effects Help that I think that you’re looking for, from the “View and change layer information” page:

“To alternate between viewing the names of source footage items and the names of layers in the Timeline panel, click the Layer Name/Source Name column heading 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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