After Effects - Grunge Rust

After Effects - Lesson 2

In this lesson we were to continue working on the after effects project from the previous lesson.
The steps that are to follow cover cross-fading imagery, adding special effects such as video textures and altering the colour grading of a film.

Keyboard shortcuts

• I for inpoint = sends the playback head to the beginning of the selected layer
• O for outpoint = reverse of the above.
• Left arrow key sends you to the beginning of the composition and the right arrow key sends you to the end.
• You can cut a frame by using the keyboard – to do this first select a point on one of the layers and then on the keyboard press one of the bracket keys. Dependant on which bracket key you press this will remove one side of the layer, enabling you to quickly cut and mix audio and/or imagery. As expected the right hand side bracket removes the area of a layer from the right hand side of the playback head and vice versa for the left bracket.
• Holding down cmd while pressing on an arrow key navigates you through each layer.

Cross-fades

Open up the layer’s properties group by selecting its triangular icon and open up the transform properties. Now select the frame you want the fading to start from and then select the opacity icon (this activates the function) and set the opacity to 0% then proceed to where you want this to end and change it to 100%. In order to achieve best results you need a fair length of frames overlapping each over between the two layers. 

Playback head seen set halfway between fading out to in.

Tip – Be careful not to accidentally select the opacity icon again unless you really mean to, as this will wipe your effects as well as deactivate the function.

Grading footage –

Grading using effects in after effects or using stock footage. Typically the effects are seen on TV are built up, when you start working within after effects you will typically create and build up your own stock library.

One good source of stock videos for use within grading and/or general video affects is http://www.cutestockfootage.com - However if you cant afford to pay for any extra material then first make sure its free and that the copyright license covers your needs. Choose something that will suit the track and feel of your video.

How to use –

In properties you can select to loop the stock footage, enabling you to use textured film for a prolonged period of time.

Select the film’s footage within the project window and then go to file>Interpret footage>main.. and change the frame rate to match that of the existing video files, in this case 25 Fps. It is from this window that you can loop the film. Also verify that you have it set at the right pixel aspect ratio, in this and most cases at square pixels.

In order to see the blend mode properties to the layers look at the bottom of the timeline and click on “Toggle Switches / Modes” this brings the layers further options into view within the columns. Within these blend modes are the following, which are most commonly used:

Multiply – this knocks out white within an image.

Screen – knocks out black areas of an image.

Overlay - knocks out greys-makes whites whiter and blacks blacker.

Rendering Out

Select the composition window.

On the toolbar select composition>add to render queue

This brings up your render queue where your timeline would normally appear.

Render settings set for a draft render of the film.

Notes –

Don’t use drop downs – (for this task) use the yellow writing to access appropriate boxes.

We don’t usually use these settings unless we are going to render our video. For quick low quality output go to render settings > custom> select low quality and resolution quarter.

Output module: Lossless for master copy of video we need to output it with codex – format >lossless> QuickTime – Video Output> Format Options> Video Codecs: Apple pro res 4444, this maintains information but compresses it slightly. Industry Standard codec>creates large file size. No other options need selecting, as the codec will sort these options for you.

Format Options - Video Codec -
Drop Down Menu

It won’t render the file until you press the render button. 

When you have started the render the composition window will display the frames as it processes them.

If doing work at home on a windows pc the windows version doesn’t have the said codec.

H.264 is a good codec to use as a test video sizing as it provides a quick small sized, good quality render.

Manageable file size output:

Open the earlier render in QuickTime player> select file-export-720p, this file size is more manageable in pixel size and file size than that of the 1080p.

Colour Correction – using layers

Firstly go to Adobe After Effects - File import – and open the master movie file.

Drag the video file across to the “create a new composition” icon within the project window.

Select the movie within the video timeline then select effect>colour correction> or right click and select or select the effects and presets tab in the sidebar.

For now we going to effect>colour correction>Levels

This brings up the levels filter and as you scroll through you can see a graph of the different colour levels and this is called a histogram. This shows the different levels of light within the video.

Levels - good way of adding contrast

If you take the image too far-ie to the extreme of dark or light then this can create “artefacts” i.e. blocky pixels within the colours and general poor image.

Tick the FX icon next to the levels name within the effect controls to preview how the image looked before and after applying the effects.

Curves –

On its own its basically the same as levels but the difference is you can change the channel setting to such as red or blue and alter these just slightly to create a atmospheric warmth or just generally correct colour problems. There are two main instances for using this tool, the first being to make corrections to the image’s colour and secondly to create an emotional response through the use of colour.

Hue/Saturation -

The master hue dial just changes the colour ranges position, this affects all aspects of the image. If you want to see just how many artefacts lie within your imagery then set the master saturation to full and this will drastically reveal the amount there is hidden.

If you select the colourize option then you can set the image to one hue range.

Creating effects within a new layer

With the composition selected go to layer>new>add adjustment layer> this is an empty layer to start with and we then go to effect>colour correction>levels and also hue/saturation – this gives an easy destructive free solution to changing your video to black n white while preserving the original footage. It is worth keeping in mind that the effects on this layer effect all those below it.

This concludes the start of my After Effects lessons and you should now have a general basic knowledge of creating creative videos within such.