300+ After Effects Tutorials

DNM has collected its own old & new After Effects tutorials, mostly by Ko Maruyama, in 300+ Free After Effects Tutorials.

Last week in History: Malcolm X

The YouTube Blog noted the assassination of Malcolm X last week along with a video review of Spike Lee's biopic from The New York Times:



Democracy Now has had several programs on Malcolm, including an interview with Oakland Japanese activist Yuri Kochiyama and this one with Manning Marable:

Think 64-bit

Adobe seems to be advocating for 64-bit OS installs, and watching to see if there's any push back. Michael Coleman is asking for comments on what’s holding people back from 64-bit in his PVC post, in addition to explaining the performance benefits already built into CS4 Production Premium.

Windows users seem to be the ones lagging behind since the big cutoff for the Mac was Intel-only CS4 (OS X 10.5 is about a year and a half old). After Effects plug-ins could be an issue for some people. While rumor is that 64-bit XP works nicely, only Vista is supported by Adobe and by 3rd party hardware solutions like AJA. Based on a small sample of past releases, CS5 could be another year away so there's no rush. If you're looking in retails stores, the 64-bit Windows boxes are the ones with 4+ GB of RAM (except the next-gen Intel Core i7) -- and there are some not expensive portables with DDR3 RAM or 1GB nVidia graphics.

Update: Jan Ozer did some tests comparing 32- and 64-bit OS performance for EventDV a few months ago:
"After correcting for the 18% difference in processor speed, the 64-bit system was 67% faster on my standard DV test file, up to 63% faster on HDV-related tests, up to 50% faster on AVCHD tests, and up to 227% faster on tests using footage from the RED camera. The only format that didn’t seem to improve on the 64-bit system was DVCPRO HD, which showed only a 13% speed boost."

Tutorial fix

Just a reminder that you might get a tutorial fix by scanning VisualFXtuts.

I didn't know about the Scott Frizzle presets and projects for Trapcode Particular that include impacts, splatters, novas (shockwave), and sperm.

By the way, Andrew Kramer uses 2D displacement along with AE's built-in Particle World since there's no Turbulent Field as in Particular; see Particle Turbulence.

Makings of 'Watchmen'

Wired has a bunch of "making of" videos for the movie Watchmen. Go to Wired to see the collection; first up is Making Rorschach's Mask: 'Watchmen' visual effects supervisor John 'D.J.' Des Jardin explains the process that puts a very high-tech 'face' on the costumed crime-fighter.

Latenite Final Cut Studio 3 Predictions

Chris Hocking has some Final Cut Studio 3 Predictions that are similar to those the ideas of Stu Maschwitz for After Effects in What Should Adobe Do With Premiere Pro?

It would be good if AE at least had better previewing, disk caching, and rendering (make feature request at Adobe). After all Apple is looking for a Video Editor Product Designer, Pro Apps with "Expert-level knowledge of editing, motion graphics, and finishing suites like FCP, Avid, Smoke, Luster, etc."

Hopefully higher-end tools will continue to filter down to the desktop (see Flame & Smoke in action). A lot of these ideas were in the air after the Apple acquisitions of Shake & Tremor and then Final Touch/Color, but especially since a Think Secret article before NAB in 2006. Here's a flavor of Chris Hocking's wish for FCP & pro apps:

"So what will make this new FCX so different? Well, it’s our prediction that most of the Final Cut Studio (i.e. Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro, Color, LiveType, etc.) will be merged into the one application. We predict a MAsSIVE interface and workflow overhaul. No longer will you need to Send to Soundtrack Pro, or use XML workarounds to get your timeline into Color. Everything will be in the one “box”. In typical Apple style - we predict they’ll make things better, by making them substantially simpler.

So how the hell will this actually work? We believe the key is a new Universal Timeline and a set of different Rooms.

The Project Room will be the “hub” of your project. Taking media management to a new extreme, this will be were you can manage different versions of your project, keep track of scripts, storyboards, and other pre-production information. Taking on board features find in other packages such as Celtx, we predict that FCX will have a big focus on ALL stages of the film-making process, including Pre-Production."

Coleman and Ebberts videos on expressions & Flash

The Motion Graphics Dream Team videos -- geared for Flash designers -- from the Adobe MAX conference a few months ago are on Adobe.TV and on Videospider.tv.

After Effects & Flash CS4: Michael Coleman (fullscreen) shows techniques (Mocha, etc.) and shortcuts that can be used with After Effects CS4 and Flash CS4 Professional. 

 


Programmatic Animations in AE with Expressions & Scripting: Michael Coleman and Dan Ebberts (fullscreen) show tips and tricks with Scripting and Expressions in CS4. The parts on the video metadata pipeline were covered more full by Dan Ebberts in an article posted this week at Adobe, XMP metadata in Creative Suite 4 Production Premium.