Questions from a first time After Effects user

[IAmAndre]

Hi,

 

I'm more of a developer than a video editor, so I have limited video editing skills. For the past few years I've been adding subtitles and voiceovers to videos, and Kdenlive / FFMPEG were all I needed for that. I'm now working with a big network, and they use After Effects. Therefore I have to work with AE, and yesterday was my first time using it. Of course it was a very traumatizing experience since that was a very advanced project and I didn't know anything about the interface. I was able to complete the work though since my task was quite easy : removing the original voices, adding new ones, then adding subtitles. Now I have a few questions about AE in general:

• Is my PC powerful enough? Here are my specs:
  • i3 4130
  • GTX 750 2GB
  • 8GB of 1666Mhz DDR3 RAM
  • 240GB SAMSUNG EVO SSD
  • 128GB SAMSUNG RBX SSD
  • 1TB Seagate Barracuda HDD

I don't know if that's because of the project, but I was having RAM issues. AE would use at least 5GB of RAM, but the CPU usage was around 50% with Chrome and a few other apps running. Then I would get over 90% of RAM usage when rendering the video. There was another problem: real time rendering/previewing was extremely slow. Is it normal? The original video was in full HD. I tried to render at 480p, but it would still get over 10 minutes (the video was 3 and a half minute long) and the final size would be over 2.5GB (the original 1080p file was around 300MB). So do I have enough RAM. Do you think I have driver issues or anything that could cause that?

 

• Is there any way to avoid using AE? As I said, my tasks are pretty simple. I only need AE to remove the original voices, while keeping the music and the other effects. Is there any way to do it without AE? I'm not really a video editor, even though I could learn how to use AE, but I'd like to avoid spending $20 a month just to remove a line in the timeline every once in a while. Is there a cheaper alternative?
• Any other tip to share?

Thanks

 

 

[Hawk9970]

umm, I think u do need more ram but you also need a better CPU more than the ram in your case

if u get urself a fairly good CPU u would notice a faster rendering etc...

about the ram, it does not really affect that much as the CPU so if anything focus on getting a better one

now about the Rendering that has been done by AE...It's fairly known that AE rendering tend to a really Over-sized files considering what the actual content in 'em... so I think you should consider trying Adobe Premiere as it is much better in nearly everything (now I'm not an expert but my brother is, and he used to work with AE all the time and he switched to Premiere for a lot of reasons)Premiere's render size is fairly reasonable and much easier and smooth-er in doing stuff...anyway, I'm sorry if what i had said so far made no sense as I'm not an expert myself in that regard but I'm certain that you getting a better CPU would really get u a reasonable boost in performance, hopes this helps

[AkiraDaarkst]

1 hour ago, IAmAndre said:

 

You may want to head over to Puget Systems website and check out their FAQs and articles about Premiere, AE, etc. and figure out whether your system is up to the task or not.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-After-Effects-144

 

1 hour ago, IAmAndre said:

removing the original voices, adding new ones, then adding subtitles.

You can easily remove audio tracks and add new ones in Premiere, which is less of a systems resource hog than AE.  However the question is, are you adding simple text layers to be subtitles or doing anything fancy?  Premiere has a built in close captions tool (which I dislike) and a titler tool, but if you want to do any fancy text animations and motion graphics, AE is better.

 

As for rendering the timeline, AE and Premiere are different because AE is usually used to render out less lossy files (AE is a compositing software, Premiere is the video editor) that people will then import into another video editing NLE (i.e. Premiere), while Premiere and Media Encoder uses very similar if not the same engine because people usually use it to render the final output.  That's why files rendered in AE (if using AE's rendering engine and not Media Encoder) might produce larger files.

 

Other alternative software you can use might be DaVinci Resolve Free.  The removal of audio tracks and adding new ones is easy, the question will always be "how fancy or simple" are the subtitles you are trying to add?

[IAmAndre]

1 hour ago, AkiraDaarkst said:

You may want to head over to Puget Systems website and check out their FAQs and articles about Premiere, AE, etc. and figure out whether your system is up to the task or not.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-After-Effects-144

Thanks for the link. Here's what I found : " In general, we recommend 64GB of RAM as a starting point for moderate After Effects usage or those just learning to use After Effects. If you work with very complex projects, however, you may need 128GB or even more RAM."

OK....

 

1 hour ago, AkiraDaarkst said:

You can easily remove audio tracks and add new ones in Premiere,

 

1 hour ago, AkiraDaarkst said:

Other alternative software you can use might be DaVinci Resolve Free. 

The company uses After Effects to render their videos. I only have access to their project files (and the video components). Would Premiere or Resolve be able to open .aep files?

 

1 hour ago, AkiraDaarkst said:

You can easily remove audio tracks and add new ones in Premiere, which is less of a systems resource hog than AE. 

(...)

The removal of audio tracks and adding new ones is easy,

I don't want to remove the whole audio part, but just the voices. There is a lot of music and sound effects on the timeline, and only the voices should be removed.

[AkiraDaarkst]

7 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

Thanks for the link. Here's what I found : " In general, we recommend 64GB of RAM as a starting point for moderate After Effects usage or those just learning to use After Effects. If you work with very complex projects, however, you may need 128GB or even more RAM."

OK....

Yep, AE requires quite a bit of RAM. Not that you need it, your current workstation might be able to handle the task but will have performance issues (as you are already facing) because it's not powerful enough.  If you're really interested and need to build/buy a workstation for AE, we can discuss that in another topic.  And in my opinion, having a better workstation is a good idea if you are earning an income using these applications on a regular basis.

 

9 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

The company uses After Effects to render their videos. I only have access to their project files (and the video components). Would Premiere or Resolve be able to open .aep files?

 

I don't want to remove the whole audio part, but just the voices. There is a lot of music and sound effects on the timeline, and only the voices should be removed.

So regarding the AE project files:

• Premiere should be able to import AEP files, but not DaVinci Resolve directly.
• However when you import an AEP project in Premiere, you won't see the same timeline as you would see if the file was opened in AE.  AE and Premiere are two different types of tools.

When you say you want to remove only the voices and not the whole audio, my question is: are the voices (dialog) and any other audio (such as music or sound effects) in different audio tracks or embedded in the same track (another way to ask would be are the dialog audio and any other audio in separate files)?  If they are in separate tracks or files, removing what you don't want is easy.  If they are embedded together in the same track or file, it's very hard to almost impossible.

 

I'm beginning to form the opinion that you cannot avoid using AE, because of how the company may be producing videos.  Personally if I were the company, I'd be using Premiere, AE and Audition (if I was limited to using only Adobe products), where I primarily edit the video in Premiere and use AE for creating compositions and Audition to edit audio, but use Adobe Dynamic Link to keep the entire project focused in Premiere.

[AkiraDaarkst]

Here's a screen cap of what a project timeline in Premiere could look like.  As you can see, in Premiere, for each video clip the video and audio tracks are in separate layers.  If a single video file contains multiple audio tracks, each audio track would appear as a separate layer.

 

 

 

You can see how different it is compared to AE.  If you import a video file contain multiple audio tracks into AE, it won't show all of the audio tracks.

[IAmAndre]

20 minutes ago, AkiraDaarkst said:

When you say you want to remove only the voices and not the whole audio, my question is: are the voices (dialog) and any other audio (such as music or sound effects) in different audio tracks or embedded in the same track (another way to ask would be are the dialog audio and any other audio in separate files)?  If they are in separate tracks or files, removing what you don't want is easy.  If they are embedded together in the same track or file, it's very hard to almost impossible.

They are in different files. Every effect has its own, and every voice is also in a separate file/track. What I did was removing all the tracks containing voices, extract the other elements as a .wav audio file, then mix everything with Kdenlive. Do you think Resolve would be able to do that? Or do you confirm Premiere would?

[AkiraDaarkst]

2 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

They are in different files. Every effect has its own, and every voice is also in a separate file/track. What I did was removing all the tracks containing voices, extract the other elements as a .wav audio file, then mix everything with Kdenlive. Do you think Resolve would be able to do that? Or do you confirm Premiere would?

If all you are getting is the AE project files, with everything already being sequenced in the timeline as the company wants, you won't be able to import those project files into Premiere or Resolve to remove/mute individual audio tracks.

 

If you want to work in Premiere or Resolve, you would have to recreate the edited sequences and timelines.  Importing an AE project into Premiere, each composition in AE appears as a clip in Premiere.  You will still need to open AE in order to modify the individual layers in the composition.

[IAmAndre]

2 minutes ago, AkiraDaarkst said:

If all you are getting is the AE project files, with everything already being sequenced in the timeline as the company wants, you won't be able to import those project files into Premiere or Resolve to remove/mute individual audio tracks.

 

If you want to work in Premiere or Resolve, you would have to recreate the edited sequences and timelines.  Importing an AE project into Premiere, each composition in AE appears as a clip in Premiere.  You will still need to open AE in order to modify the individual layers in the composition.

Then I'm stuck with my current hack. Is there a cheaper alternative to Adobe CC? I'd like to avoid to pay $20 a month just for removing audio tracks every once in a while.

[AkiraDaarkst]

1 minute ago, IAmAndre said:

Then I'm stuck with my current hack. Is there a cheaper alternative to Adobe CC? I'd like to avoid to pay $20 a month just for removing audio tracks every once in a while.

Using legal methods, the answer is NO.  And while Adobe has released some older versions of their software for free (much older versions), you will likely not be able to open the project files with those older versions of AE.

[IAmAndre]

3 minutes ago, AkiraDaarkst said:

Using legal methods, the answer is NO.  And while Adobe has released some older versions of their software for free (much older versions), you will likely not be able to open the project files with those older versions of AE.

Let me give it a try. Do you have any link please?

[AkiraDaarkst]

@IAmAndre there is however a semi-legal way, which really borders on the grey area, of getting access to AE without having to pay.

 

Do you have any friends who are paying the monthly subscription but only have the applications installed on one computer?  When you subscribe to Adobe applications, you are allowed to install and activate the software on TWO computers.  Perhaps your friend might be willing to share his/her subscription with you.

 

Well technically you can install the software on any number of computers, but only TWO computers can have the software activated at any one time.  Sometimes in an emergency I need to modify a project and I am at home away from my studio and my MBP is not available, I simply go to Adobe website and deactivate one of the computers and activate the software on my home gaming machine.  There is no limit to the number of deactivations and activations you can perform, so far as I am aware.

 

Another option: ask the company if they have a team subscription to the software and will be willing to add you as a team member.  Which means they will have to cover the cost of adding an additional "employee/team".

[AkiraDaarkst]

4 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

Let me give it a try. Do you have any link please?

I unfortunately don't have the links, search for Adobe Creative Suite 2 free download.  However I am 100% certain you will not be able to open the project files with that old version.

[IAmAndre]

1 minute ago, AkiraDaarkst said:

@IAmAndre there is however a semi-legal way, which really borders on the grey area, of getting access to AE without having to pay.

 

Do you have any friends who are paying the monthly subscription but only have the applications installed on one computer?  When you subscribe to Adobe applications, you are allowed to install and activate the software on TWO computers.  Perhaps your friend might be willing to share his/her subscription with you.

 

Well technically you can install the software on any number of computers, but only TWO computers can have the software activated at any one time.  Sometimes in an emergency I need to modify a project and I am at home away from my studio and my MBP is not available, I simply go to Adobe website and deactivate one of the computers and activate the software on my home gaming machine.  There is no limit to the number of deactivations and activations you can perform, so far as I am aware.

 

Another option: ask the company if they have a team subscription to the software and will be willing to add you as a team member.  Which means they will have to cover the cost of adding an additional "employee/team".

I do like the 2nd option. 

[AkiraDaarkst]

1 minute ago, IAmAndre said:

I do like the 2nd option. 

Well even if they don't have a team subscription with Adobe, if they have multiple individual subscriptions (i.e. 2 computers can be activated with each individual subscription), ask them if they have a spare activation left that you can use.  One of the production houses I sometimes work with, instead of having a team subscription (against my better advice because you have better collaborative features with team subscriptions) they decided to opt for 5 individual subscriptions instead. But the software is installed on only 7 computers, meaning they have 3 activations to spare.

[IAmAndre]

1 minute ago, AkiraDaarkst said:

Well even if they don't have a team subscription with Adobe, if they have multiple individual subscriptions (i.e. 2 computers can be activated with each individual subscription), ask them if they have a spare activation left that you can use.  One of the production houses I sometimes work with, instead of having a team subscription (against my better advice because you have better collaborative features with team subscriptions) they decided to opt for 5 individual subscriptions instead. But the software is installed on only 7 computers, meaning they have 3 activations to spare.

OK I'll get in touch with them and see what happens. It seems like CS2 is no longer available on their website, but I can see that it was released in 2005 !

[IAmAndre]

@AkiraDaarkst or another option would be to get my licence and become a good video editor once and for all, and work on other projects. Seeing what can be done with it makes me want to to learn how to make special effects. Since you need to know your stuff tell me, is it something that takes a while to learn. I've been programming for over 5 years and this has been my specialty so I assume it does take quite some time because I'm still not a senior programmer. Also, do you think that AE only is enough for most editing tasks?

[AkiraDaarkst]

7 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

@AkiraDaarkst or another option would be to get my licence and become a good video editor once and for all, and work on other projects. Seeing what can be done with it makes me want to to learn how to make special effects. Since you need to know your stuff tell me, is it something that takes a while to learn. I've been programming for over 5 years and this has been my specialty so I assume it does take quite some time because I'm still not a senior programmer. Also, do you think that AE only is enough for most editing tasks?

It does indeed take a while to learn, but you can find resources and tutorials online.  Like the site I am linking below.

http://www.videocopilot.net/

 

No, in my opinion AE is not enough.  If you want to edit videos, Premiere is better than AE.  AE is for creating 3D graphics and compositions, special effects (to a certain degree), animations.  Premiere is the video editor.  This is why Adobe has improved the capability of what they call Dynamic Link that lets creative people work on projects where tools such as Premiere, AE and Audition can be used together in a single project.

 

I also started out in IT, I have degrees in Software Engineering and Business Applications.  But after about 10 years sitting in front of a computer from 8-5, staring at the screen I got fed up.  But I'm more of a cinematographer, DOP, then a 3D special effects editor.  I prefer operating the camera and making creative decisions in the field than behind a desk.

[IAmAndre]

3 hours ago, AkiraDaarkst said:

It does indeed take a while to learn, but you can find resources and tutorials online.  Like the site I am linking below.

http://www.videocopilot.net/

 

No, in my opinion AE is not enough.  If you want to edit videos, Premiere is better than AE.  AE is for creating 3D graphics and compositions, special effects (to a certain degree), animations.  Premiere is the video editor.  This is why Adobe has improved the capability of what they call Dynamic Link that lets creative people work on projects where tools such as Premiere, AE and Audition can be used together in a single project.

OK it seems like I'll have to do more "advanced" video editing tasks anyway so I need to upgrade my workstation. I'll also get a CC membership since I'll charge more for these tasks. Should I open a new topic or send you a private message?

[AkiraDaarkst]

8 hours ago, IAmAndre said:

OK it seems like I'll have to do more "advanced" video editing tasks anyway so I need to upgrade my workstation. I'll also get a CC membership since I'll charge more for these tasks. Should I open a new topic or send you a private message?

We can continue here or start a new topic.  Here's my recommended baseline for a workstation:

 

CPU: 6C/12T or 8C/16T or 10C/20T

Memory: 32GB or 64GB, get 128GB if you can afford it but if you can't, at least get a logicboard that supports 128GB but only fill half the memory slots (ie 64GB) so that you can add more later

GPU: Something like a 1080 or equivalent as the minimum, or get a workstation GPU (Quadro, Radeon Pro) if you plan to be working with 10-bit workflows (in which case you also need a 10-bit capable monitor)

 

Storage:

1. dedicated SSD around 500GB or 1TB for OS and applications
2. separate SSD, at least 1TB or 2TB for active project files
3. high capacity HDD for storage and archive in system, you can also have a set of external storage (USB Hard Drives, NAS, etc.) for external archiving

In my workstation, I have a single SATA SSD as my OS and Applications storage.

I have a M.2 SSD for active projects  If you don't want to use a M.2 SSD, you can also use 2 SATA SSDs in RAID 0.

I have a pair of 4TB HDDS in RAID 0, for keeping resources such as templates, stock footage, audio, images, etc. that can be used with any project.  I also use this storage to save projects that are recently finished (but may need to be opened again) or stuff that I haven't gotten to yet.

 

All archiving and backup goes to external storage systems.

 

Most of the time, Premiere, AE, etc. utilize the CPU more than the GPU.  The GPU is utilized, for example, in these cases:

1. when previewing the timeline in the application, scrubbing
2. when rendering projects that have GPU supported effects or when the video resolution in the project is being rescaled in size (e.g. 4K footage being downscaled to 1080p or vice versa)

Otherwise the CPU is utilized more.

 

Also for the CPU, I recommend buying a CPU that has a good balance of Clock Speed vs Core Count.  Additionally, Premiere, AE, etc. having more CPU cores does not necessarily mean the performance gain increases accordingly, after a certain number of cores the performance gain becomes less and less.  So unless you have money to spend, be reasonable with the parts you pick.

 

You can find articles on Puget Systems where they've done tests.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CC-Multi-Core-Performance-698/

 

Theoretically, with a decent workstation you will be able to even edit 8K RED camera footage albeit with a reduced resolution in Premiere.

[IAmAndre]

@AkiraDaarkst Well I can't afford any of these for now as I'm just starting, and I don't even know how long I'll be doing that. Here's what I can offer for now, and the order in which I will do it (probably one new component every month). Let me know your thoughts:

• i3 4130 = > i5 4460 (2)
• GTX 750 2GB => GTX 1050Ti 4GB (3)
• 8GB of 1666Mhz DDR3 RAM => 24GB of 1666Mhz DDR3 RAM (1)
• 240GB SAMSUNG EVO SSD
• 128GB SAMSUNG RBX SSD
• 1TB Seagate Barracuda HDD => extra 1 or 2TB HDD

Also I'm not sure about the GPU part. As you and the AE documentation mentioned, not all effects are supported by the GPU. So why is it worth investing on a Quadro?

[AkiraDaarkst]

1 hour ago, IAmAndre said:

So why is it worth investing on a Quadro?

For the 10-bt workflow.

[IAmAndre]

@AkiraDaarkst So I'm going a little off-topic : I've been taken, and I really am enjoying my job. I've been a very amateur video editor so far and I'm learning new things every day. However, is there any way to become certified or something?

BTW, I'm finally doing a Ryzen build with a Ryzen 5 1600 CPU and 16GB of storage in a single RAM stick, so I can upgrade to 64GB later. It should be enough.

[AkiraDaarkst]

59 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

@AkiraDaarkst So I'm going a little off-topic : I've been taken, and I really am enjoying my job. I've been a very amateur video editor so far and I'm learning new things every day. However, is there any way to become certified or something?

BTW, I'm finally doing a Ryzen build with a Ryzen 5 1600 CPU and 16GB of storage in a single RAM stick, so I can upgrade to 64GB later. It should be enough.

I don't know where you live but there may be training centers.  Also check this out

https://training.adobe.com/certification/exams.html#p=1

https://training.adobe.com/training/courses.html#

http://www.adobe.com/training/certification.html

[IAmAndre]

25 minutes ago, AkiraDaarkst said:

I don't know where you live but there may be training centers.  Also check this out

https://training.adobe.com/certification/exams.html#p=1

https://training.adobe.com/training/courses.html#

http://www.adobe.com/training/certification.html

Thanks. No After Effects certification but it's good to know as Adobe offers such trainings.