[Newbie Question] Editing Longer Animations Workflow

[kevinh23223536]

Hi,

I'm new to AE, and currently interested in creating motion graphic/vector-style animations.

So far, I'm 30 seconds into editing my video but it takes an EXTREMELY long time to pre-render my scenes... There's a new YouTube channel called "RedOwl Infographics" (running a laptop with core i7 processor, 16GB Ram, 960m nvidia and a ssd as the primary hard drive) and he has a similar editing style as Kurzgesagt...  and so I know that it's not a hardware issue considering my PC is considerably beefier...

I know that I'm doing something wrong in terms of my workflow. I know AE is not meant to edit longer videos, what am I doing wrong here?

[Rick Gerard]

Every shot, or at least every sentence or phrase in the narration, should be a separate composition. You need to learn how to work with shots and then you edit those shots together using something like Premiere Pro to finish longform projects. My average After Effects composition is less than seven seconds.

[kevinh23223536]

Ah... I see... Thank you for your help Rick.

I suspected that I might need to take these separate scenes into PR but how would I go about adding the necessary transitions into 2 different scenes? What if I need to use AE to create the transition? How would you work around this problem, sir?

[Mo Moolla · Accepted solution]

As Rick mentioned you need to work by a “shot by shot” basis. So each scene in your motion graphic vid needs to be a seperate sequence. You can then do one of several things:

1. Create a Master Sequence and drop each sequence onto that. Transitions can then be easily created between scenes

2. Pre-render each scene and then bring those into the master sequence for transition work

3. Render out each scene seperately and take that into PP for final polish (this won’t allow the AE transitions so u will need to use PP transitions)

4. Render out each scene and bring into PP, do the offline edit and then take that into AE through dynamoc link and do AE transitions

Tbere are many workflows and your decision will be based on your comfort level, experience and hardware spec. You will eventually find what works best for you.

Best of luck and let us know how you are doing

Mo

[kevinh23223536]

Thank you Mo,

To clarify, I create a Master Scene by rendering individual scenes first (which seems like Method 1), but is there another way to create a Master Scene without doing that (What is method 1 exactly?)?

I'm just confused at what a Master Scene is and how to set one up on AE.

[Andrew Yoole]

Mo Moolla is talking about Premiere Pro when he says to create a Master Sequence.  This is the final collection of all the separate scenes into one timeline that can be rendered.

It doesn't matter if you create that Master Sequence before or after you design the animations, its just a  standalone timeline in Premiere, with the same resolution and frame rate as your other content, that allows you to view all the animations together, add transitions or colour grading if necessary, lay in final audio, and output.

You can use After Effects compositions directly in that Master Sequence via Dynamic Link, but that's going to mean a lot of rendering in Premiere to see the end product.  It's usually a much more efficient workflow to render your animations as standalone intermediate files.

[Lucas Lago]

Do you know the command inside premiere? right-click > replace with After Effect Composition.

[kevinh23223536]

Thanks Andrew, I think I’m beginning to understand the different types of workflow between AE and PP.

So just to clarify, out of the 4 ways Mo has listed, if I’m correct, you prefer #4? Which, to clarify for my sake so I understand what to do, I would have to take these 5-10 second composition scenes created in AE, render them out in the preferred (and final) video format, bring them into PP as separate files in order to create a Master Scene, and then I can take 2 individual scenes that are in the timeline, and via Dyanmic Link, I can easily create a transition using AE?

Also; what does Mo mean by offline edit? That seems to be the only difference between his #3 and #4.

Thanks~~

[Dave_LaRonde]

kevinh23223536  wrote

I would have to take these 5-10 second composition scenes created in AE, render them out in the preferred (and final) video format, bring them into PP as separate files in order to create a Master Scene, and then I can take 2 individual scenes that are in the timeline, and via Dyanmic Link, I can easily create a transition using AE?

Also; what does Mo mean by offline edit? That seems to be the only difference between his #3 and #4.

Thanks~~

If you do transitions in AE, it's because PP can't do them.  Which means they'll be more intricate, so not easy.  And the use of the term "offline" is a bit misleading in this case.  You'd still make high-quality renders from AE -- unlike the practice of using using proxies in PP, which are lower-quality copies of video footage, which would be more like "offline".

"Offline" and "Online" were coined in the days of videotape and computer edit controllers.  You'd do an offline edit using 3/4", create an edit decision list (EDL) and then take it to the CMX Online suite for final editing on 1". 

[kevinh23223536]

Bump~~~