Basic AE Tutorial

This is a little tutorial about how to Import, Export, use basic effects and mask in After Effects. Premiere has a different layout but in terms of tools it is quite similar.












Setting Up

So when you open up After Effects the first thing you need to do is start a new composition.

So in the composition settings window that pops up, there are a few things you need to change. 

Firstly, name your composition something relevant to the project, i.e. DSDN101_pj3

Then choose a preset:

 

With the stop-motion project, the size of your composition will depend on the size of the photos you are taking. If you have large photos (e.g. 1920x1080px) then I recommend using HDTV 1080 25 or 24. This means you are creating a widescreen High Definition composition at 25 or 24 Frames Per Second. 

The frame rate can be changed at any time!

If you have smaller photos (720x576px etc.) then you may not want to use a widescreen composition, as this will stretch and blur your images. You could use HDTV 720 25 or 24.

If neither of these work for you, then a good go-to preset is PAL D1/DV or  PAL D1/DV Widescreen.

The last thing you need to change for your composition is the duration of the video you are creating. If you do not know how long you need it to be, it is a good idea to start with a long composition as you can always change this at any time. 

Remember that the timecode here is  Hours:Minutes:Seconds:Milliseconds, so the example here shows 10 seconds.

If you need to change the frame rate or duration or any other aspects of the composition after you have started, you can find this window here:

Importing a sequence of images (and other files)

This is what your scene will look like after opening a new composition. 

Just as we saw in Flash, you have a timeline at the bottom, the stage in the middle and a library (this time on the left-hand side). On the right of the stage there is an effects panel which we will use later.

So, to import a sequence of photos for your stop-motion animation, you select the file tab on the top toolbar.

Hovering over 'Import' will let you select 'File...'

When this window opens you need to navigate to the folder that your images are in.
Select ONLY the first image in the sequence.
Make sure that where it says 'Import As' you have selected 'Footage'.
Check the 'JPEG Sequence' Option.
Open!

After Effects has turned all your photos into one video file!
It will play at the frame rate you have set your composition to.
To watch your video you need to click and drag this file onto your timeline.

To play, you can press Spacebar.
If you have a very long video or your photos are quite large, the playback speed may be slower than your video will play when you export. To see it play at the proper speed, you need to RAM preview your footage.
This is not difficult!
On the right-hand side of the stage, just above the effects panel you will find the preview panel.

The arrow on the right with the three lines behind it is your RAM preview button. 

If you click this, a thin green bar will start loading just above the footage on your timeline.

When all the footage has loaded, the playback will begin automatically at real speed.

This RAM Preview is the ONLY TIME you will hear Audio in After Effects. 

If you want to hear Audio all the time, You should use Premiere Pro.

Transforms and Effects

So just like in Flash, we can keyframe things on the timeline.

You need to click the little arrow by your footage, and again by the Transform bar.
You can control every element listed here.

So if I wanted to change the position and scale/size of my footage over time, then I would click on the little stopwatches that are next to the position and scale bars.
You can see that there is a yellow diamond on the left-hand side of the stopwatch.
This is the symbol of a keyframe in After Effects.

 Whereever your Playhead (Red Line with Yellow Handle) is, this is where the first keyframes will appear on your timeline. They will be set to whatever the yellow numbers by position/scale are.

 If you move the playhead to where you want your next keyframe to be, and then change the yellow numbers, new keyframe diamonds will appear on the time line.

After Effects creates a tween between the two keyframes automatically.

If you want to Fade In or Fade Out, then you need to keyframe the Opacity option. 
100% Opacity is Completely Visible, and 0% Opacity is Completely Invisible.


You may want to add effects to your footage.
As After Effects has turned all your photos into one video, each effect will affect the entire video and not just one photo at a time. If you want to single out sections of your film, then you either import sections separately into AE, or you manipulate the photos in Photoshop.

There are three basic effects that will help lift your video.
Levels, Hue and Saturation, and Brightness and Contrast.

Brightness and Contrast will add a bit of vibrance and definition to the footage, and hue and saturation is useful for changing any yellow lighting into a cooler blue tone (Or you can play with 'photo filter'), or desaturating your colours.

Levels is a very useful effect  - it will make your whites white and your blacks black so you don't get stuck with muddy footage. Be careful when using this because if you get too extreme then you will lose texture/definition in your images and will end up with a highly stylised video. Unless that is what you want!

So, you can search for the effect you want to use, and then either drag it on to the footage on your scene, or onto the footage layer in the timeline.

The controls will appear on the left of the stage, in the Effect Controls tab.

With levels, The left arrow controls the blacks and the right arrow controls the whites. You can slide these around to change your image.

The Effects will appear on the timeline just like the Transforms, so you can keyframe them in the same way.


Masking is something that you may want to use for your video. This effect lets you cut out parts of your animation and put different backgrounds behind them.

To mask, you need to select your pen tool in the top toolbar.

You can click around the part of your footage that you want to keep (or remove, if you check the invert option later). If you click and drag, you can create curves with handles.

 When you complete the mask by clicking on your first point, the area outside the yellow path will disappear.
In this example image you can see the black background of my stage.

We can import a file to put in the background.
I am importing a still image file called Penguins!

 I have dragged that picture onto the timeline and it has appeared beneath my masked layer.
As you can see, the masked layer has been very roughly cut out. If you want a smooth outline, you can Feather your mask.
You can find the controls for this in the timeline, just like Effects and Transforms.

 So at the moment, the Mask Feather is set to 0.0,0.0 pixels, and it is a very straight hard line.

If you change that to a higher number, the mask outline will soften and spread out.
You can keyframe this too, in the same way. If you want to mask something that moves in your video, you will unfortunately need to keyframe the Mask Path and change the yellow outline every single frame, it takes quite a while. There is a built-in auto-mask function for this but it is not that great yet - You might need to YouTube some tutorials for this.


 Audio


As I mentioned before, After Effects will not play your audio unless you RAM Preview it. But importing it is very very easy, you just import it as you would a movie or image file - File/Import/File...
Then you drag it to your timeline.

If you click on the drop-down arrows, you can see the waveform which will help you match up parts of your Audio to what is on the stage.

You can keyframe the Audio Levels  to Fade In or Fade out.

Exporting

So to export you will use the same settings you used to export from Flash. 

Before you begin to export, you should check your timeline for the following things:

 - The grey bar with yellow handles above the footage layers needs to be lengthened or shortened to exactly the part of your composition that you want to render/export out. 

If you have changed your composition settings to the exact duration of your video, then you can lengthen it out as far as it will go. In other situations you may have more audio than you need, so if you shorten it to the end of your video footage, the rest of the composition will be cut off.

 - The tiny Eye (visual) and Speaker (audio) icons on the very left of your timeline need to be ON for that layer to be rendered. 

If there is a layer you do not want to render, then you can click off the icon or delete the layer.

This is helpful if your video layer has sound that you do not want to hear, and you have an Audio layer that you want to render instead.

So when you have double checked your composition, the head up to the Composition tab and click "Add to Render Queue"
 

This will change your timeline to the Render Queue tab.

 You will need to change two of these settings.

First, Click on the yellow text next to "Output Module".
Here you need to change the
 - format
 - format options (compression/codec)
 - check the Audio Output box if you have Audio.

This is where you change your Format to Quicktime Movie:

Just below that you can click on "Format Options" and change the Compression/Video Codec to H.264

 

Then after you Okay your changes here, check the Audio Output box.

Okay all of this, and then in the Render Queue tab, click the yellow text next to "Output To:"

 This is a straightforward naming of the video and choosing where to save it.

Then click Render!


Awesome. So that was a very long, extremely basic step-by-step for After Effects.
If you have any specific questions, you can email me ebeeden[at]gmail.com and we can arrange some office hours.

Good Luck!