Re-render after every edit?

[hemmickreef]

Hi,

I am new to after effects and have bought a 9 second sting as a youtube channel.

The file opens without problems, I have inserted my own logo and have rendered it.

The problem is when I make small edits (e.g. fade out) and want to preview my changes, I have to wait for the red Time Indicator to very slowely move showing the green bar before I can watch in real time. Sometime the green bar that appears at the top has missing sections and the 9 second video does not completely play.

Could any experts in After Effects help me out please?

[Byron Cortez]

Put the playhead at the beginning of your timeline, then press the spacebar and wait for it to scroll through your timeline (be patient), when the playhead ends, it will go through the timeline a second time and it will play in real time your modifications and you will surely see the green stripe. This is what After Effects does in its normal parameters, but if you have something else to tell us after this then something is wrong or you have to configure it better.

If you continue to cause problems tell us the tech specs of your computer.

[hemmickreef]

Thanks for the reply.

The problem I am finding is that if I make a small change to an effect, I have to wait to go through that whole sequence again.

So every time I make an edit I have to wait for it to scroll through very slowly before I can see my edit in real time... working on a project then seems to take forever?

[Byron Cortez]

Welcome to the post-production world with After Effects. Yes it is.

[Rick Gerard]

The number 1 newbie workflow error that I see - trying to use After Effects as an editing app. AE is best suited to working on shots. Most of my comps are a single shot under seven seconds. Motion graphics projects like explainer videos are almost always limited to a single phrase or sentence, then the sequences are edited in Premiere Pro.

If you are trying to edit a 30-second video or a 3-minute movie in After Effects you are going to be frustrated, have incredible difficulty making changes, risk render failures that are hard diagnose, fix and redo, and you will always spend more time working on the project than you would if you broke your AE comps up into single shots that cannot be produced in an NLE.

If making changes is killing your productivity and your comps are longer than one shot try making each shot in your main comp a separate comp. You can get there by just pre-composing all the layers in a shot and trimming the new comp to the length of the layers.

You should also spend a significant amount of time with the User Guide and exploring the Search Help feature. Make sure that you vet your trainers. Most of the new AE tutorials I see and end up helping users understand are poorly produced amateur productions that leave out important information completely or promote inefficient workflows and dead-end techniques.

[Chris_Bobotis]

I agree with Rick. Pre-comping is your friend (in cases like this). Try to isolate the layer(s) and effect(s) that need tweaking often to a pre-comp if possible... this will help tremendously.