[Todd Kopriva]

Yes, you should be able to just open the precomposition, make whatever tweaks you want to the component layers, and retain the changes that you made to the precomposition layer (as long as you didn’t change timing in the precomposition or something like that).

To open a precompositon, Alt+double-click (Windows) or Option+double-click (Mac OS) the precomposition layer.

For this and more information on working with precompositions, see the “About nesting and precomposing” section of After Effects Help.

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Todd Kopriva, technical editor, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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How about taking a survey about After Effects documentation? Please?
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[Todd Kopriva]

Are you trying to preview using standard preview (pressing the spacebar)? That doesn’t play audio. You can use RAM preview to preview video with audio.

Also, you can press the period key (.) on the numeric keypad to preview only audio from the current-time indicator, or you can press Alt+. (Windows) or Option+. on the numeric keypad to preview audio in the work area.

Furthermore, you can Ctrl+drag (Windows) or Command+drag (Mac OS) the current-time indicator to scrub audio and video. To scrub only audio, Ctrl+Alt+drag (Windows) or Command+Option+drag (Mac OS).

For more information, see the “Preview video and audio” and “Move the current-time indicator” sections of After Effects Help.

If the Help document doesn’t contain the information that you need, or if you’d like to add a tip of your own, leave a comment using the link at the bottom of any Help page.

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Todd Kopriva, technical editor, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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How about taking a survey about After Effects documentation? Please?
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[Todd Kopriva]

If I understand correctly what you want, you should consider precomposing the layers together into a precomposition. This would create a single precomposition layer that contains all of the individual layers; then you can apply effects (or whatever) to the precomposition layer.

For information on precomposing, see the “About nesting and precomposing” and “Precompose layers” sections of After Effects Help.

If the Help document doesn’t contain the information that you need, or if you’d like to add a tip of your own, leave a comment using the link at the bottom of any Help page.

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Todd Kopriva, technical editor, Adobe Systems Incorporated

putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
————————————————————————————————–
How about taking a survey about After Effects documentation? Please?
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[Todd Kopriva]

I recommend reading through the (short) “Motion tracking” chapter in After Effects Help. You asked about After Effects 7, but the instructions are the same for CS3, so the Help document on the Web should help. As Dave says, the tracking and stabilizing features are only in the Professional version of After Effects 7. (There is no Pro versus Standard distinction in CS3, by the way; it’s all Pro.)

If the Help document doesn’t contain the information that you need, or if you’d like to add a tip of your own, leave a comment using the link at the bottom of any Help page.

While you’re at it, how about taking a survey about After Effects documentation?

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Todd Kopriva, technical editor, Adobe Systems Incorporated

putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

[palacehotel] “Hi folks. I’m having trouble in the After Effects CS. When I click on the “Fast Previews” button below the comp window, the option “FREEZE LAYER CONTENTS” does not appear.”

Do you mean After Effects CS3? The Freeze Layer Contents command has been removed from After Effects CS3. Here’s a description of what this command did in After Effects 7:

“When OpenGL is enabled, layers that consist of moving images require significantly more memory on your OpenGL card to preview than do still-image layers. Freeze Layer Contents speeds playback by showing only the first frame encountered in each layer.”

It turned out that very few people were using this command, and it wasn’t helping much with performance. Most folks would just turn OpenGL off for previews instead of using this halfway feature.

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Todd Kopriva, technical editor, Adobe Systems Incorporated

putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

[Sejjr] “I have been having the same problem with the “Zoom Forward” preset. The animation is almost exactly what I want, but the characters are animating from right to left, instead of left to right. The word GRACE, for example, should start with teh “G” dropping in first; instead the “E” drops in. I have messed with everything including offest, and can’t get it right.”

Did you modify the Shape property in the Advanced animator group of the range selector? The default value is Ramp Down; this means that the animated scale values “ramp up” (increase from left to right) within a selected set of characters. Changing the Shape value to Ramp Down makes the values decrease from left to right within a selected set of characters. The result with the Zoom Forward animation preset is that the characters in ‘GRACE’ fly in from behind the camera with the ‘E’ coming in first instead of the default behavior of the characters flying away past the camera with the ‘G’ leaving first.

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Todd Kopriva, technical editor, Adobe Systems Incorporated

putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

[Rajarshi] “And in future shall we have 16bpc mode in the NLE’s ?”

I’m not a Premiere Pro expert, but it seems that Premiere Pro does support higher color bit depths. See the “Video Rendering settings” section of Premiere Pro Help.

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Todd Kopriva, technical editor, Adobe Systems Incorporated

putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

The current-time indicator (CTI) is shown at the beginning of a frame. If you’re zoomed way in in the Timeline panel, you can see a bluish-gray (at least that’s the color with my UI settings) shading for one frame after the CTI. That shading is showing you the duration of the frame that the CTI is sitting “on”—i.e., the one shown in the Composition panel.

If you really, really want to move the CTI to the very end of the timeline (i.e., to the beginning of the first frame that isn’t in your composition), then you can press Page Down to step frame by frame beyond the last frame. Of course, you’re not going to have content in your Composition panel for this frame.

For information on moving the current-time indicator, see the “Move the current-time indicator” section of After Effects Help on the Web.

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Todd Kopriva, technical editor, Adobe Systems Incorporated

putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

Steve’s answer gives a good start regarding 8bpc, 10bpc, and 16bpc color.

32bpc color does give some additional smoothness compared to 16bpc, but the difference is perceptible only under rare circumstances. The big difference is that 32bpc color values are floating-point numbers and can go under 0 (black) and over 1 (white). This is what is meant by ‘high dynamic range color’. This means that you retain over-range values when applying effects and such. The canonical example is applying a glow and then a blur; the result looks much better and more realistic when you work in 32bpc color. You can still render for output in 8bpc color and get this benefit.

For more information, see the “Set the color depth” and “High dynamic range color” sections of After Effects Help

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Todd Kopriva, technical editor, Adobe Systems Incorporated

putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

Jeff Almasol has posted a script that converts paths on a shape layer to masks.

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Todd Kopriva, technical editor, Adobe Systems Incorporated

putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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