AFTER EFFECTS WISHLIST

A column in the Project panel that shows if an item is used and, if so, where. Currently can only see this for a single item at the top of the Project panel. Would be very useful to have it as a column, like in Premiere

And another…

If you import an existing AE project, it gets placed into a folder in your project bin with the same name as the project, including the file suffix. This is a bit daft in itself, but if you then collect the files it gets worse, because you end up with a folder which OS X treats as an After Effects file because it's got the .aep file suffix. The only way to then see what's in that folder in the Finder is to use the Show Package Contents command, which not many people are familiar with. - Filed as a bug report.

Would love to be able to open folders in the Project panel as their own dockable panels. Would ideally work exactly like Premiere's bins.

A couple more while I think about them:

• Workspaces that don't explode when you touch them. Also, why in Zarquon would I want CMD-W to close a freaking palette??? Such a stupid, counter-intuitive shortcut that has messed my workspace up more times than I can count. Which leads me onto…
• A workspace management tool that actually makes sense. Right now, I can alter a current workspace (let's call it "Custom 1"), and if I change to a different workspace, say "Effects" and then back, it will return the workspace to how "Custom 1" was, just before I switched layouts, complete with whatever changes I made to that layout since it was first created. However, if I then choose Reset "Custom 1"… from the Workspace menu, then my workspace gets reset to whatever "Custom 1" was when I first saved it. This is NUTS, and gives me no warning of what is about to happen, or that the fact that I won't be able to undo it. Either save the updates to my workspace as I make them, or warn me that making changes will not be saved unless I choose to re-save the workspace. Like so many things, look at Cinema 4D for the right way to do this.
• Give the workspace files meaningful names. An endless list of "UserWorkspace.xml" files is not meaningful.
• Start writing error messages that mean something to your Users rather than just your own developers. Seriously, what the heck does this even mean:
  
  More to the point, what do I do about it? It is fundamental to human-computer interfaces that error messages do not just state what has gone wrong, but also state WHY, and if possible what remedial action to take. This is only one step above spitting out some obscure error code, and Adobe as a whole is really bad at this.
  
  

tiny request: I'd love to have the labels color picker to show the actual colors of the labels instead of using their names. It makes me crazy every time

Top Bug:

1. AE Crashing when dragging files into the project list just as the app is showing the auto-save progress bar… (“ae.blitpipe making new context”, every time) - Filed as a bug report

Top Niggles:

1. Resolve the performance hit introduced with the layer cache in CS6 that basically kills expressions that look forward or backwards on the timeline. I really shouldn’t have to keep CS5.5 around just to animate some bouncy text…
2. Start being more intelligent about multiprocessing and memory allocation in general, instead of the current crap-shoot.
3. Start telling me exactly which layer/effect is causing multiprocessing to be disabled. AE must *know* which one, in order decide whether to disable it or not. Why is it so hard for it to tell me?
4. Stop including the time taken to initialise the background processes in the calculation for the render time estimate. The other day I got an initial estimate of 17 hours for a render that ended up taking 35 minutes… I appreciate that estimates are just that, but simply waiting until the background processes had fired up before starting to consider the remaining time would instantly increase the accuracy and usefulness of this feature by about 1000% - Filed as a feature request

Top Feature Requests:

1. Colour swatches. The continued absence of this feature is just silly - Filed as a feature request
2. Allow me to animate a camera’s Point Of Interest as separate dimensions - Filed as a feature request
3. Allow me to delete more than one marker at a time (And no, “Delete All” doesn’t count) - Filed as a feature request
4. Separate script editor panel - Filed as a feature request
5. Separate Layer Effects panel, rather than digging down into individual layer attributes - Filed as a feature request
6. Timeline folders - Hahaaaa, just kidding.
7. How about being able to split the timeline window (á la Excel)? Like a previous poster, I often use a layer as a control surface which I usually keep at the top or bottom of the stack. At some point I will always end up working on layers at the opposite ends of the stack, but need to be working on keyframes for both. If we could split the window (horizontally or vertically, I could see a value in both) that would be a big convenience win, perhaps without the redevelopment overhead of adding layer folders.

Also, just so you know, the CAPTCHA on the feature request/bug submission form is one of the most user-hostile pieces of crap I've ever had the misfortune to use. And I used to use Flash a lot, so... just saying.

You might find you got more bug reports if you didn't expect people to tell the difference between lowercase "L" and uppercase "I", upper and lowercase "J, V, W, C, O" etc. etc. etc.

Oh and Non modal pop up windows....Like properties and Comp settings etc.  Just have them as normal Panel.  Damn I hate Modal windows.  Main reason I stopped using 3DS Max.

I know it's hard to allocate features vs Fixes to programmers, but seriously the engine of AE really needs an overhaul.

Multi proc fails constantly.

Export is now both a joy and a pain in equal measures. 

To be honest I'd be off to nuke studio in a shot if their pricing was better. 

I'm sure many of these have already been said, but here goes:

- Swatches (I mean, seriously guys, how long has it been now?)

- Timeline folders/groups (allowing you to collapse and uncollapse groups of layers similar to grouping in photoshop layers)

- Unmult/premult modes available without needing a plugin

- I've always dreamt of a day in which I could do custom keyboard shortcuts...

MEDIA ENCODER

One thing Adobe have  to fix is the complete inconsistancy between the Media Encoder and the built in encoder.

Integrate it into the AE interface.

They remove MP4 in the built in because its buggy.... so you have to use the encoder.  Fine I like the background processing... but try and export an Alpha Animation codec or Pro res 4444 with Alpha from Media encoder. Doesn't work

MULTIPROCESSING

Also fix the Multiprocessing. Never works. Fails constantly.

Timeline Curves

Why on earth did they build the timeline curves unlike ANY other application. It makes no sence and

To be honest I think the entire app is a comedy of Errors and needs a complete overhaul like they did with Premiere. 

My one and ONLY wish would be to make it the newest version of after effects compatible with my 32 bit computer. I'm stuck with an old CS4 version which has error messages I start after effects.