This is huge and I love that it’s awesome transcription feature is being expanded out of for captions into actual editing.
I will have to see automatic tone mapping in action, I always get footage from different cameras, but I don’t think this will be what I need (I tend to throw the clips in DaVinci and make a LUT that will match them perfectly).
Background Auto Save is exciting, and I might turn it up so it saves more often.
Dragging to select track targets should have been there from the start! I will use that literally every day!
And bulk editing titles in the Timeline is huge, and has been needed since you could see all the Text of titles with the text tool.
And After Effects Properties panel could be a huge game changer, as on a daily basis i get frustrated when duplicating sequences how it doesn’t show the same properties that I was manipulating on the copied layer, but with a properties panel this should be faster, and anything faster I will adopt immediately.
And I really need to do a deep dive in to ACES and OpenColorIO workflows so I can try it out in After Effects.
And select able track mattes usable for multiple layers is pretty awesome, though you could do it by doing it on a matte layer and using it as the matte.
And defaulting colorama to the default color picker to save clicks is another time saver, and I always want time savers.
Another interesting article on using Adobe on the Amazon Prime Video TV show, Somebody I Used To Know. I always use love seeing Adobe used on a project that would normally be AVID.
MagicNodes for After Effects. A license is $89 for a basic license and only corrective updates, or $149 with Premium with 1 year free maintenance, learning center, and $69 a year maintenance after the first year.
I have not given this a try but would like to. I really loved node based compositing in Shake, and then in DaVinci Resolve, so the ability to have it in after effects is amazing.
I have to admit I have always respected Title Safe, and hated when After Effects switched from 80% for Title Safe and 90% for Action Safe to 90% for Title Safe and 93% for action safe. I switched back to the original safer settings and this article is why you should to.
Thanks for reporting this problem. We are aware of this issue and currently investigating a fix. It is unfortunately affecting After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Media Encoder, so all three will need an update to fix this issue. Any fix will become available in the Beta builds, and then the next public release.
John, After Effects Engineering Team
You can currently use the mouse to get around this, but it is fiddly, so lets hope they fix it fast.
I have been editing not for 22 years, since I started on The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring Special Edition Behind the Scenes in 1999 or 2000. And even that far back I was also working with Assistant Editors and figuring out best practices to work in a company and with multiple editors and graphics people. And on Lord of the Rings in between the editing gigs, I oversaw the Assistant Department who were logging the thousands of hours of footage to make it searchable.
The pandemic and remote editing has made it more important, and I have helped the company I am working with develop some methodologies, though they didn’t follow all of my ideas (some of which I think are a big mistake). And example is that I break each project into 3 major categories, the project, renders and exports and this is for Backup purposes, as it is easier to back up the project and exports separately from renders, but they have combined all into a single folder making backups more difficult, especially when using software to do it (which you should always do so that you can have Checksum’s checked on copy).
Another huge issue is graphics files. We have managed to get sequences to include dates and editors initials so you can track files back to their creators, but the graphics guys have not done that at all. And it is one thing to be given graphics files and use them, but most of them have a name and maybe a version number at best, and the problem is that while we use an after effects project that has a basic look, each of us are doing variations on graphics, but there is almost no set nomenclature for anything, So there is basically no way to track anything!
I am being given a timeline like above in after effects, for a completely spot, which each graphic pre-composed in it’s own sequence, and while I have blurred the project so you can’t see it, the individual graphics projects are named text 1 and so forth, WTF!
And we have even been given footage lately straight from the set, without an assistant conforming anything so even project names are up to editors.
This could so easily be fixed with job numbers, even if they aren’t final job numbers, but just within the post department, Or even client_jobnumber_Initials. So say a 2 letter abbreviation of product name and 4 digit job number then 2 or 3 letter initials of the person working on it. And you name your project this, or at least the start of it, I think it should also have a year for the After Effects version number in there (so 2022 or 2023). And every graphic file should start the same, so client_jobnumber_initlals, I would then add a description, and a date and version number.
So for example, a FedEx commercial, job one with my initals JLW would have a project name of FE_0001_JLW_2023.aep, and my main logo animation would be called FE_0001_JLW_MainLogo_22-11-03-V01. And at the end of every job the projects should be uploaded to a central repository, so if anyone needs to modify one of those graphics you know exactly which project it is, and who did it.
If you don’t implement something like this, it is going to be such a mess finding stuff, even without freelance editors who might not be available to make changes.
And I know graphics people might complain at first, but everything will be so much easier in the future that it doesn’t matter. They are easy changes to make and implement and it will quickly so many future problems.
I know I was busy working yesterday as I didn’t see about this release until last night, but for Adobe Max they have updated After Effects, and already the Select Track Matte Layers is included! WOOHOO!!!
Select Track Matte Layers is the signature feature that will help clean up every timeline. Instead of having to have a track matte in the layer above every layer, you can use a single Track Matte layer and pick whip it to layer you need. And you can change it from alpha to luma with a button and invert the matte with a second button.
The only thing that could make this better would be sticky folders, so you could put all your track mattes in a folder and stick it to the top or bottom (and even better if you could have 2 timelines showing, so you could keep some of them locked to the top of your tracks, but that is all wishful thinking.
Anyway, Select Track Matte Layers is going to be just a huge time saver and organization saver.
Native H.264 Encoding has returned, it used to work through quicktime, but now it is back and native.
Composition Presets have been revamped and include social media platform sizes (though why is their only a 24p 1080 instead of 23.976?).
New Animation Presets, they have added 50 new presets, with a lot of changeable controls and new text animation controls.
Faster Timeline Navigation, is a simple thing that should have been in there years ago! Thank you adobe. Basically if you select a layer, the J and K keys just move along it if you hold down shift, or you can select a single property.
I hadn’t noticed this features introduction to the After Effects Beta till I saw this video from Creative Dojo.
This will clean up After Effect Timelines to now end, as you can basically add Track Mattes nodally, so you can add just one to a comp and use it for as many layers as you want, and if you save to an older version it will automatically add to all of the layers it is attached to.
This makes Track mattes the best of both world! OMG, need this for adjustment layers too, so they can be added selectively.
