Adobe Digital Video How-Tos. 100 Essential Techniques with Adobe Production Studio
Authors: Ozer J
 Published year: 2006
 Pages: 76-77/148
Buy this book on amazon.com >>

#63 Producing Title Backgrounds in After Effects

The next two techniques describe how to use two key features of After Effects to spice up your titles in nothing flat. You'll also learn how to use Adobe Bridge to browse for and mine After Effects' capacious stores of content.

The Rest of the Story

Once you save the composition, Premiere Pro updates it in the Project panel. From there, you can use it like any other clip; just drag it to the timeline and trim or otherwise edit as desired.


Let's assume that you're creating a video in Premiere Pro and will use Dynamic Link to import the titles you create in After Effects. Here's how to find, import, and modify a moving background to give your title a compelling, dynamic look.

1.

In Premiere Pro, choose File > Adobe Dynamic Link > New After Effects Composition. This creates the After Effects composition and runs After Effects.

Changing the Duration

After Effects defaults to a 30-second duration for new compositions, including those created from Premiere Pro. If you need a background with a longer duration, change the Composition duration in the Composition Settings dialog (Composition > Composition Settings) before inserting the background.


2.

Press Alt+Tab to access After Effects.

3.

On the extreme-right side of the After Effects interface, click the fly-out menu in the Effects & Presets panel and choose Browse Presets ( Figure 63a ) to open Adobe Bridge. If the panel isn't open, choose Window > Effects & Presets to open it.

Figure 63a. One of Adobe Bridge's most useful roles is helping you find After Effects content. Of course, first you have to find Adobe Bridge.


4.

Click the Backgrounds folder to view the background presets. Click a background to play it in the Preview window ( Figure 63b ).

Figure 63b. Here are Adobe Bridge's and After Effects' motion background presets. I like the feel of silk!


Motion Menu Backgrounds

You can use the same workflow from within Adobe Encore DVD to create motion backgrounds for your DVD menus .


5.

After selecting a background, double-click it to insert it into the composition timeline ( Figure 63c ). You don't need to create a layer to accept the background; After Effects will do that for you, creating a layer that extends for the entire duration of the composition.



Figure 63c. After you've selected and inserted a motion background into After Effects' composition timeline, you can adjust the effect parameters to customize your background to your heart's desire .


6.

Click the Effect Controls tab to expose the effect parameters. As you can see, After Effects creates the background using three effects: Fractal Noise, Find Edges, and CC toner. To customize the background, you can change any parameter in any effect, including Fractal Type, which will change the look and motion. You can also change the colors of the Highlights, Midtones, and Shadows.



#64 Creating Simple Text Animations in After Effects

One of After Effects' strongest features is its ability to animate text, which you'll learn how to access here. This technique uses the background created in #63, but this is not a prerequisite. If you're starting from scratch, just remember to create your After Effects composition from within Premiere Pro using Dynamic Link (#63).

Dynamic Link Only

You can't copy and paste text animated in this fashion from After Effects into Premiere Pro, since Premiere Pro doesn't have this animated text effect. Instead, you'll need to render the animated text file or use Dynamic Link to import it into Premiere Pro.


1.

Click the Horizontal Type tool on the Adobe After Effects toolbar and type the desired text in the Composition window. You don't need to create a separate layer for text; After Effects will create it for you ( Figure 64a ).

Figure 64a. Here's After Effects' text-creation toolset. No need to create a layer; just start typing.


2.

To access text font, color , or size options in the Character and Paragraph panels (if they're not open already), choose Window > Character or choose Window > Paragraph. Modify these elements of your title as desired.

3.

Click the text layer in the composition to select it. Otherwise, After Effects may apply the selected animation to another layer.

4.

On the extreme-right side of the After Effects interface, click the fly-out menu in the Effects & Presets panel and choose Browse Presets (see Figure 63a). If the panel isn't open, choose Window > Effects & Presets to open it.

5.

In the Effects and Presets panel, click the Text folder to view the text-animation categories, then click a subfolder to view the animations. The example uses the Animate In folder. Click an animation preset to view it in the Preview window on the left ( Figure 64b ).

Figure 64b. I struggled with the mixed metaphor inherent to using a stenciled font with a typewriter-style animation, but ultimately decided to go with it. I hope the critics take it easy on me.


6.

Double-click the selected animation preset to add it to the text layer.

7.

To customize duration for your composition so it matches your chosen animation, twirl the text layer, then the Animator 1 properties, then Range Selector 1 ( Figure 64c ). To make the animation shorter and faster, drag the keyframes closer together; to make it slower and longer, drag the keyframes further apart.

Figure 64c. You have to dig deep in the text layer to edit the Animator 1 keyframes, but that's the only way to change effect duration.


8.

Once you've completed your composition, save it and return to Premiere Pro where you should be able to deploy it immediately.


Adobe Digital Video How-Tos. 100 Essential Techniques with Adobe Production Studio
Authors: Ozer J
 Published year: 2006
 Pages: 76-77/148
Buy this book on amazon.com >>

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