December 31, 2013

After Effects 2013: features & requests

                          ...and the AE team's thoughts on the future.

With 3 actual updates to After Effects in 2013, it's become difficult for many users to keep track of all the new features. Reading through today's post by Todd Kopriva is a good way to do a reality check of what's happened this year.

Read the rest at PVC... Top After Effects feature requests of 2013.

Circles in After Effects

Making circles in After Effects seems like a trivial exercise, but there are a ton of approaches to their various forms in design.

Circles come in movement and repetition, from expressions & scripts, as Shapes, masks, particle effects like Particle World, Bubbles, Ball Action, from the Circle effect, CC Sphere, Polar Coordinates, Wave World, Radio Waves, halftone effects (Card Dance, Particular, effects), and so on.

A few of the many circle-related tutorials and resources for After Effects are sampled in Circles in After Effects on PVC.

December 30, 2013

Spirographs in After Effects

Spirographs in After Effects had it's 15-minutes of fame years ago and were lost in the mists of time (around here anyway), except for a few tutorial/project posts. Revisiting the topic reveals a variety of approaches and directions.

Read the article at PVC...

December 29, 2013

Spirals in After Effects


Spirals are used as design guides and elements or paths for text, shapes, particles, and layers. Here's a few resources for using and creating spirals in After Effects and other Adobe applications.

Think outside the box —  and inside the sphere — with A 5-Part Exploration Of After Effects Spiral Filters by Brian Maffitt, the grand daddy of spiral tutorials (pictured). This is from an era before the Path Text plug-in and the Textacy text engine!

... see the rest at PVC, Spirals in After Effects.

The Ray-traced 3D renderer in After Effects

                          A big addition to After Effects CS6 was the introduction of a Ray-traced 3D composition renderer that handles reflections, transparency, index of refraction, environment maps, in addition to the existing material options. Today in Creative Cloud CC, the chief limitation is still render time, but there's set-up advice for those willing to overcome the obstacles to get the lovely renders.

November 24, 2013

How YouTube Works + YouTube Comment Reconstruction

How YouTube Works, posted at PVC, still has me wondering about caching, but they say more is in the works.

Not surfing the biggest swell, here's YouTube Comment Reconstruction #1, a Dead Parrot reading of music video comments, that's slightly derivative but still unexpected and funny. It's hard to see yet what effects the new YT comments system will have.

November 19, 2013

Brainstorming After Effects

A new roundup was posted on PVC, Brainstorm in After Effects.

Given a cool reception by some on its initial release, some may have wondered if Brainstorm in After Effects was more useful than the now defunct Variations feature in Photoshop. As shown in various tutorials, Brainstorm might be useful to help stir creative juices, even if it can bog down rendering previews of something as straightforward as the Radio Waves effect.

November 18, 2013

Music: Philip Glass and Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté

Revisiting some the heuristics of the mystics, without Brian Eno:



October 16, 2013

Creative Dojo’s free After Effects resources

blackmagic cameras canon video Creative Dojo’s free After Effects resources: Light leaks, glitches, ink, and more is at PVC.

VinhSon Nguyen has a number of free products hidden away on his Creative Dojo site, including the Dojo Toolkit and Dojo Glitch scripts for After Effects, and as well as Free Ink Mattes, Free Light Leaks, and Dojo Color Preset packs.

October 15, 2013

Features in the forthcoming Premiere Pro 7.1 update

Announced at IBC last month, the update should be coming  in the next 2 weeks, barring any difficulties (speculative or not). See also the previous note, Creative Cloud October update - over 150 new video features.

CuteDCP for Premiere Pro

with workflow for After Effects too posted on PVC.

Fandev has released CuteDCP for Premiere (Mac / Windows), a DCP (Digital Cinema Package; explained) render tool for Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder. It allows users to export DCPs from any file imported into Premiere Pro or Adobe Media Encoder, and has been tested on most major play-out servers for digital cinema theaters.

This export format plug-in does not work inside After Effects – there's already a Fandev plug-in for that – but there's a workflow path for After Effects too. 

October 14, 2013

Split, cut, join without recompression

Sometimes even crude jumpcuts are better than trying to gather nearly forgotten source files or recompressing an old madly-compressed live stream archive. Split, cut, join without recompression at PVC  shares a few apps that can make quick work for those looking for a low-cost way to provide free content for social media.

October 11, 2013

Fox News Deck: the future of news?


Fox News Deck: the future of news? is new at PVC. Techcrunch:

"The screens measure 55 inches, run Windows 8 ...Microsoft’s PPI business comes from its acquisition of Perceptive Pixel in July 2012."

TechCrunch later added: "If the new studio at Fox News, with its big-ass touchscreens, looks a little bit like Minority Report, that’s because it’s just like Minority Report." Fox leveraged Mezzanine from Oblong, the same company that helped create that movie UI.

October 3, 2013

User interfaces in the movies and beyond


About a year ago, interface designers Nathan Shedroff and Christopher Noessel published their book 'Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction', on how sci-fi and real world interfaces influence each other. User interfaces and human-computer interaction is a vast topic. 

Mostly we're interested in creating graphics that visualize what might be possible, or perhaps prototyping actual interfaces, so it's nice to peek at what others imagine and who's involved, especially if they use After Effects and Creative Cloud.
  

September 30, 2013

Felina of El Paso: the Breaking Bad finale

Update: more can be found in the BB insider podcasts.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I guess there's something in cowboy songs after all, though perhaps not so much in this blog post, as I noticed later.

The Breaking Bad finale had several songs that emphasize themes, including Marty Robbins’ song El Paso, which some claim reveals secrets behind the 'Felina' title (both recombinant wordplay with the title and lyric meanings). It probably wasn't a disguised plea for fans to now watch FX’s ‘The Bridge’, which takes on immigration reform, violence in Juarez, and El Paso politics.

Coincidentally, the Grateful Dead recently released a famous concert video, Sunshine Daydream (Amazon), which has an odd segue of the ambience of Dark Star to El Paso (after 1:12:00):



Guess the show got what it deserved, a stronger exit than Dexter and a Baby Blue more uplifting than Dylan's. Here's Badfinger, and the Marx Brothers with "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" (a ringtone in the finale):



September 25, 2013

Audio standards and Adobe Loudness Radar

Audio standards and Adobe Loudness Radar at PVC follows up on a recent PVC article with additional background and tutorial links on a new tool in Adobe Creative Cloud.


September 8, 2013

Creative Cloud October update: over 150 new video features


...summarizes and collects information on the impressive update (PDF), from Adobe mainly. Check out the Motionworks video too. Read the rest at PVC in Creative Cloud October update - over 150 new video features.

Almost lost in the hoopla by me: the update to Photoshop CC to version 14.1, which includes Adobe Generator to extract image assets out of a Photoshop document.


September 4, 2013

Premiere Pro News Notes #6-7 (Audio Editions)

...collects news on noise removal, normalize, EQ, Editing and Animating to Sound, control audio in Clip Mixer and Timeline, voice overs, Adobe Audition and other of assorted audio-related tutorials and tips on Adobe Premiere Pro.

Premiere Pro News Notes #06 (Audio Edition)

Premiere Pro News Notes #07 (more Audio)

Thumbnail by Satya Meka.

August 30, 2013

Animating After Effects to Sound with Chris Meyer


Although video/film types sometimes say that "sound is half the experience," sound and music are often an afterthought in After Effects. Music industry people who crossed over are exceptions, like Chris and Trish Meyer of Crish Design, who have provided guidance on audio matters in After Effects since the days of InterActivity magazine.

Chris, who was involved in the development of the MIDI spec (see the Sonikmatter interview), posted related articles on PVC for years, and now has an updated comprehensive tutorial series...

Read the rest on Pro Video Coalition!

August 24, 2013

TypeMonkey: a kinetic type tool

at PVC is a quick look at TypeMonkey, a new AE script that generates complex kinetic type animations. TypeMonkey takes away some of the drudgery to organizing and animating text, which should let designers have more time to sketch out ideas.

The special 45% off intro price is ending soon -- it lasts until Aug 26, 2013 at aescripts + aeplugins. If you want to give a spin, the trial version has a 7-day limit and allows for a maximum of 10 words.

August 21, 2013

Fractal + Turbulent Noise in After Effects


fractal noise noise noise New on PVC... Motion backgrounds, transitions, clouds, fog, fire, water, paper texture, metal and other textures, ink and watercolor effects, etc. are all effects that can be generated by Fractal Noise filters built into After Effects.

Highlights of Fractal Noise in After Effects, plus the newer Turbulent Noise effect, include a good description of it and some nice performance tips in AE Help, and in-depth looks by Chris Zwar and Harry Frank.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Note: Harry Frank's Medical Fund... Harry's family is trying to raise money to help cover the costs related to surgery and recovery. Even after insurance, the surgery is quite expensive and requires more than the Frank family can afford, ever.

August 14, 2013

Typewriter effects in After Effects

Typewriter effects in After Effects at PVC crashes the "typewriter week" party of Video Copilot unfashionably early with a few tidbits on typewriter or type-on effects in After Effects. Highlights include 2 Red Giant plug-ins, 2 built-in presets, other free presets, and tutorials of various levels of intricacy. The status of Right-to-Left writing systems like Arabic and Hebrew is also mentioned.

August 13, 2013

The Innovation of Loneliness: a mograph piece

The Innovation of Loneliness from Shimi Cohen is a mograph that explores social networks and loneliness. Mentored by Eran Stern, it's inspired by Sherry Turkle's Alone Together and an article in Hebrew.

July 30, 2013

How to shoot car videos inside & out


How to shoot car videos inside & out at PVC shares resources on inexpensive cameras, mounts, and post. Smaller setups often won't invite unnecessary concern.

July 27, 2013

The Shatter Effect in AE: updated

...at PVC rounds up resources on Shatter, an older 8-bit plug-in that ships with After Effects. Originally developed by Brian Maffitt under the Atomic Power banner, Shatter is mostly used for shattering glass, brick walls, puzzles, and so forth (they're presets), but also used to generate 3D text or shape blocks. Brian moved on to form Total Training, but he released his original training video for this effect.

Of course, you can shatter objects with combinations of other built-in tools, and with the Voronoi Shatter script and with Video Copilot Element 3D.

...read the rest at The Shatter Effect in After Effects.

July 23, 2013

Premiere Pro News Notes #05 (Color Edition)

A series of as-they-come notes on news of assorted Premiere Pro tutorials, tips, and related tools continues with Premiere Pro News Notes #05 (Color Edition).

July 11, 2013

Premiere Pro CC: 25 new features + bug fixes


Adobe announced 25 new updates to Premiere Pro CC, update 7.01, available less than a month after the initial release. These updates were developed in response to customer feedback and include new features that are designed around making repeated tasks easier and faster in timeline editing, viewing, navigation and media management. The update is recommended for all users and includes a number of bug fixes (including a multi-cam bug).

It's available as a download, if the Adobe CC app isn't updating. There's links and more at PVC: Premiere Pro CC: 25 new features + bug fixes.


July 10, 2013

Adobe Anywhere released

Early today announced the immediate availability of Adobe Anywhere for video, which was previewed in April at NAB. There's more at PVC in Adobe Anywhere released.
Headphones: a few resources was posted recently on PVC.

While audio monitors are important for video, you might find sound isolation and higher quality easier to afford with headphones. If you're tired of standard issue headphones like the Sony MDR-V6 or MDR-7506, but still want to avoid frequency manipulations of popular lifestyle headphones like Beats Audio. Accurate reproduction and flat frequency response isn't just a matter of more money, but an adventure in trial and error. While there are a ton of places to get advice and reviews of headphones, dedicated websites provide the best access to information and experience.

June 15, 2013

Premiere Pro News Notes #03


Creative Cloud, a new Mac Pro, color, scaling, codecs, audio and more is featured in Premiere Pro News Notes #03, the latest in the Pro Video Coalition series of as-they-come notes on news of assorted Premiere Pro tutorials, tips, and related tools.

May 22, 2013

Whip (swish) pans in After Effects & Premiere


A whip or swish pan describes the motion of a fast camera move, as in following a passing train or spaceship. Because of motion blur, it's most often used to smooth transitions between abrupt cuts of shots or scenes. While this is often done in post, Adobe doesn't include dedicated tools for this effect, so here are some 3rd-party filters and tutorials you can use to construct whip pan transitions in After Effects and Premiere Pro.

Read the rest in Whip (swish) pans in After Effects & Premiere at Pro Video Coalition.

May 20, 2013

Premiere Pro News Notes #02

adobe after effects create comps create folders create null create solid create text david torno extendscript javascript Creative Cloud, the Timeline, aspect ratios, Encore DVD, color, and more are noted in Premiere Pro News Notes #02
at Pro Video Coalition.

May 3, 2013

Premiere Pro News Notes #01

premiere pro ...is the beginning of a PVC series of as-they-come notes on news of assorted Premiere Pro tutorials, tips, and related tools.

After Effects News Notes #01

...is the beginning of a series of as-they-come notes on news of assorted After Effects tutorials, tips, and scripts & plug-ins.

Does the small text say "To punish and enslave"?

April 29, 2013

HUD and GUI graphics in 'Oblivion'

...is new at Pro Video Coalition.

Oblivion, a new movie directed by Joseph Kosinski and starring Tom Cruise, features a unique mix of practical and digital effects. The HUD and GUI graphics seem to have been mostly shot in-camera after being created by a team lead by Bradley G. Munkowitz, aka GMUNK.



April 16, 2013

Slideshows in After Effects

is another roundup at ProVideo Coalition.

Despite the clunkiness of Adobe features for creating slideshows (or because of it), there still a steady stream of interest. Traditional slideshows can be easily built with audio in Lightroom and Encore DVD, and with only a little more work you can pull them off in After Effects and Premiere, and go beyond into creative motion graphics. There's a few resources to help in Slideshows in After Effects.

April 14, 2013

The Story of an Egg: pastured v. cage free

...just what is cage free or free range eggs? PBS shares the work of The Lexicon of Sustainability in The Story of an Egg.

 


April 12, 2013

Charts and graphs in After Effects

is another roundup at ProVideo Coalition.

On one level creating and animating charts and graphs in After Effects is easy, but it can get tricky quick if you go much beyond transformed shapes or the Write-On filter. Here's a few tools and tutorials that may help get you through and beyond the basics.

April 7, 2013

A roundup of After Effects roundups

Over on PVC, there's a roundup of AE Portal roundups on topics like fire, scripts, lens flares, light wrap, 3D text, character animation, the Shatter effect, volumetric lighting, muzzle flashes, sky replacements, lens wacking & light leaks, and so forth.

It's really just a list, but easier to keep updated at PVC.

April 4, 2013

Siskel and Ebert Outtake + Annette

The balcony is closed.



Here's Head, with (part), Victor Mature as The Architect, and Ronald Reagan as The Messiah.

April 3, 2013

CS Next sneak peeks from Adobe and others

Adobe has started to reveal the features of the next versions of their video post production software, which will be demoed at NAB!

AE Portal at PVC will attempt to track the early looks and intros of CS Next.


There's no shipping date or official name, or information about the rest of the Creative Suite, though ProDesignTools says "Adobe CS7? Next Release of Creative Suite to Be Revealed May 6th", the date the Adobe Max conference opens.

Here's Greyscale Gorilla with a taste of AE Next:



March 1, 2013

Book Note: ‘Adobe After Effects CS6 Visual Effects and Compositing Studio Techniques’

The latest edition of Mark Christiansen's 450-page whirlwind tour of the art of compositing and VFX using After Effects is discussed at PVC.


February 26, 2013

After Effects Lately 2013.02.26

Newton physics engine, VFX malaise, charts & graphs, Plexus in Skyfall, LUTs + more ... is part of news at PVC of the last 3 weeks or so of assorted After Effects tutorials, tips, and scripts & plug-ins new and old.


Here's a peek at James Bond Visualized with Plexus:

February 23, 2013

After Effects Lately 2013.02.23

Blending modes, trigger with markers, ShapeShifter, Element 3D, Premiere + more ... is part of news at PVC of the last few weeks or so of assorted After Effects tutorials, tips, and scripts & plug-ins new and old.


Here's a preview of a tutorial by Mikel Calvo Abarzuza: 

February 21, 2013

After Effects Lately 2013.02.21

After Effects Lately 2013.02.21

VFX's "no success like failure," Apprentice videos complete, crowd simulation, + much more in recent AE news at Pro Video Coalition:

January 31, 2013

After Effects Lately 2013.01.31

AE team webinar 10 AM PST, compositing, keying, slideshows, and more ...is part of the recent news of in assorted After Effects tutorials, tips, and scripts & plug-ins new and old on PVC: After Effects Lately 2013.01.31.


The webinar is a History of After Effects, with the creators of After Effects, Thursday, January 31st, 2013 at 10:00am Pacific Time.


January 28, 2013

'If I Am Your Mirror': a short movie

Garrett DeHart, a film maker in Atlanta, recently finished If I Am Your Mirror, an animated horror short (< 20 minutes) inspired by romantic painting and Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell Tale Heart." It stars Larry Holden (Batman Begins, Insomnia, Memento) and is screening online. Here's the scoop:
In a post-Civil War jail, a psychologically scarred veteran awaits his death by hanging at dawn. Mourning the death of his wife and struggling with post-traumatic nightmares, he seeks revenge on the mysterious street preacher with an evil eye. Trapped between madness and a reality that is insane, he recollects what led him to the gallows.
There's a little interview at Peripheral Visions, and more elsewhere.

January 25, 2013

After Effects Lately 2013.Jan.25

Element 3D steps it up, a new character animation tutorial series, $4600 in prizes waits more winners, animation assistance, slit-scan & the Time Displacement effect, Conduit for DYI Mac plug-ins, + more ...is part of the recent news of in assorted After Effects tutorials, tips, and scripts & plug-ins new and old on PVC:


Please note that one "After Effects Portal Facebook group" hijacked the name on Facebook and Twitter and sat on the domain. Long ago, inquiries went unanswered and it's uncertain what caused the hostility. It's not the first time intellectually small potatoes were hijacked, so guard your work minimally at least, if you share it.

Ok, here's what the new Element 3D and Video Copilot model pack can do inside AE:

January 17, 2013

After Effects at 20: A Trip Down Memory Lane

Adobe is celebrating the 20th year of After Effects.

After Effects at 20: A Trip Down Memory Lane on PVC shares a few tidbits picked up along the way. Here's a screenshot of the 1.0 beta:

January 15, 2013

After Effects Lately 2013.Jan.15

AE is 20 years old -- part of the news of last few weeks of assorted After Effects tutorials, tips, and scripts & plug-ins new and old:

After Effects Lately 2013.Jan.15