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Y'know, I really wish the high school kids had chosen an application like Apple Motion to make their lame-ass visualizers and YouTube intros. Life around here would be a lot simpler and mush less tedious.
Besides, you buy Motion just once and you're done. You don't have to pay rent on it every month.
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I really hope that's a rhetorical question. Because the answer/answers are obvious.
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I really hope that's a rhetorical question. Because the answer/answers are obvious.
G-Fish,
It's not really a question. An interesting topic, though. I marked it as a discussion.
Thanks,
Kevin
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Yeah, this forum has seen better days, not just because of lazy kids doing audio visualizers and not reading the help. Not sure, though, if Motion would be the answer. They'd be just as lost there and Motion in its own way has its caveats and shortcomings...
Mylenium
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What's a visualizer, exactly (or generally)? I'm feeling a little insecure & that I might be one of those doing lame-*** visualizers. I did Google it, jeez. Give me a little credit will ya? I'm still unclear.
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Gutter-Fish wrote
I'm still unclear.
Oh, it's a variation on using the Audio Spectrum effect. You make the spectrum wrap around a circle. Then you put it over some kind of background. I guess the type of background used determines your level of creativity.
I don't want to say anything more about it lest I encourage more instances of it.
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Ahh...that's not what I do, although I have done that . It would be funny if a bunch of people now started asking how to do it & why it isn't recognizing their audio. lol
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Bite your tongue.
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For those that are still unclear...(look ma, no plug-ins)—this is what the kids want to make.
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And I will forever wonder why.
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Why AE? Because that's what all of the other YouTube kiddies are using. I think we know who we can "blame" for a lot of that. He sits in the left seat of your moving images aeroplane.
Honestly, I don't mind people trying to learn AE. I mind people who try to use it without learning it.
I mean, you don't see me running around with a violin complaining that I don't immediately sound like Lindsey Stirling!
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Szalam wrote
He sits in the left seat of your moving images aeroplane.
Are you saying it's Andrew Kramers fault? LOL
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He made it easy and fun to make really cool stuff. I've benefited from a number of his tutorials myself. The guy is a wonderful asset to the community.
Some of the people who follow his tutorials, however...
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I bet Sean Parker had something to do with it as well.
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To be honest, I'm a little disappointed this is kind of thing being posted on the here. I'm no saint, but this kind of talk seems juvenile and counterproductive.
I don't mean to offend, especially because I recognize a few of you and you're always super helpful on the various forums. I just think that complaining doesn't really accomplish anything. Instead we should nudge them in the right direction and to the resources available. I remember when I first started messing around in AE I had no idea how capable and robust the app was, much-less how many resources existed outside of Andrew Kramer and Creative.
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kris_cave wrote
To be honest, I'm a little disappointed this is kind of thing being posted on the here. I'm no saint, but this kind of talk seems juvenile and counterproductive.
This isn't meant to be counterproductive. This is really just a quick little blowing off of steam.
When you deal with these forums, /r/AfterEffects on reddit, CreativeCOW forums, several Slacks, Discord servers, etc. every day for years (or decades), sometimes certain kinds of threads (and certain kinds of users) get very tiresome. It's nice to just vent real quick before we get back to helping.
Besides, this thread is set up in such a way that it's unlikely anybody is going to stumble across it that we're discussing. I mean, if somebody is searching these forums, they're already not the kind of person being discussed!
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Szalam,
What is the real purpose of creating these things, though? Are they trying to popularize their own music? Someone else's music? Their DJ skills? All of the above?
Kevin
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Kevin-Monahan wrote
Szalam,
What is the real purpose of creating these things, though? Are they trying to popularize their own music? Someone else's music? Their DJ skills? All of the above?
Mylenium nailed it. They are usually taking someone else's song and monetizing it on YouTube. So, in many cases, it's outright piracy where THEY are getting money for doing it. Which bothers me on many levels. I don't even like pirating a song for one's own listening pleasure, but to make money off of it is much worse.
Sometimes they're trying to promote their own music, but that has been a tiny minority of the posts I've seen.
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Szalam – Again, not the point of my argument. What they do on YouTube is an entirely separate conversation from how contributors conduct themselves on these forums, which is what I'm trying to point out. That point aside, that shouldn't justify lumping all these people into one category and calling their work "lame-ass" and telling them to switch to a different product.
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​kris_cave wrote
. That point aside, that shouldn't justify lumping all these people into one category and calling their work "lame-***" and telling them to switch to a different product.
Agreed. I wouldn't call them lame-swear and I wouldn't tell them to switch. As anyone can see from my history (and, really, the history of most everyone in this thread), we point them to beginners resources for AE and are helpful even if we think some of that in our head.
kris_cave wrote:
This is akin to 1st-grade teachers walking into the cafeteria at lunch and openly ridiculing their students for not understanding addition and subtraction.
It's more like ridiculing their students for demanding they do the addition and subtraction for them.
Actually, it's usually even more like 1st-grade teachers complaining that their students are trying to do calculus without taking the time (or listening to the advice) to learn addition and subtraction first.
kris_cave wrote
This conversation easily could've been a presentation of the problem and a discussion of possible ways to address that problem within the community.
Whether it be sticky posts with useful resources for newbies or a strategy to point a lot of these simple questions towards the help, FAQ, or other threads for example.
The problem is that I don't know of any way to address that problem. We have FAQ posts that don't get much traffic. Granted, they could use an update as they haven't been touched much since Todd Kopriva left Adobe, but it's hard to justify the effort if folks aren't going to use them.
I understand what Gutter-Fish was saying about trying to teach someone animation in Maya and they didn't want to learn about polygons and points. I don't know what the solution is to that type of person coming into the forums. I've had countless numbers of people asking to do advanced things and refusing, outright refusing, to get a basic, foundational understanding of how to work in After Effects. They're used to quick and easy phone apps and refuse to understand that After Effects is not like that at all.
Honestly, I don't think there's a good solution to this except for provide links to the right beginning resources and moving on despite the insults that sometimes follow.
kris_cave kris_cave wrote
Cinema4D has the best 'Help' assistance I've ever seen. Right-click on anything in the UI and show that element in the help doc; that's a beautiful implementation that actually got me to use the in-app Help and something like it would be a wonderful addition to the program.
I would LOVE it if Adobe's help could match C4D's. You are so right. Occasional mistranslations from the German aside, it's a fantastic, easy-to-use, resource.
kris_cave kris_cave wrote
I think you guys get where I'm coming from.
I do. If we had threads like this often, I would be concerned too. However, this is the first venting thread I have seen on the Adobe AE forums since I've been a part. And, hopefully, post-venting here, we'll have a bit more patience for our wayward newbies in their own threads.
You're also right that there are millions of tutorials out there. So many of them are awful! Rick has been especially good about calling out bad tutorials and pointing newbies to better tutorial resources. I'd like an updated version of this resource that Todd made. Too many of them are out of date now since they're all from before the new "Preview" replaced RAM preview, but it was a great, one-stop-shop for newbies to get solid resources when starting out.
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THIS! You've made some very good points and I'm fairly certain we're in agreement across the board.
Szalam wrote
The problem is that I don't know of any way to address that problem. We have FAQ posts that don't get much traffic. Granted, they could use an update as they haven't been touched much since Todd Kopriva left Adobe, but it's hard to justify the effort if folks aren't going to use them.
Do you think this is something isn't getting much traffic because it hasn't been updated recently? Obviously I'm a bit newer to this particular forum, but I want to start contributing and giving back to the community that's helped me for so long (and now that I have a decent amount of experience under my belt) – so forgive me if some of this has already been discussed.
Szalam​ wrote
I understand what Gutter-Fish was saying about trying to teach someone animation in Maya and they didn't want to learn about polygons and points. I don't know what the solution is to that type of person coming into the forums ... Honestly, I don't think there's a good solution to this except for provide links to the right beginning resources and moving on despite the insults that sometimes follow.
Yeah I'm not sure what the best solution to that is, other than to try to be patient and do our best to explain walking before running, which I'm sure you guys already do plenty of. I'm sure there are some people who just can't be helped if they're not willing to give a little. I think you're right, sometimes it might be best to do what we can to guide them and move on
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kris_cave wrote
Do you think this is something isn't getting much traffic because it hasn't been updated recently?
I don't think so. A newbie wouldn't really know the difference. Besides, not that much has changed with how AE works fundamentally since I first started learning on VHS tapes back in version...4...I think? I mean, the UI processing thread being separated from the render thread that happened in CC 2015 was a fundamental change under the hood and the biggest change to AE in decades, but that doesn't really affect how we work (except we can work faster).
Well, pressing spacebar is now a reasonable way to preview. That's a big change, I guess.
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Hi Szalam,
Szalam wrote
kris_cave wrote
Do you think this is something isn't getting much traffic because it hasn't been updated recently?
I don't think so. A newbie wouldn't really know the difference. Besides, not that much has changed with how AE works fundamentally since I first started learning on VHS tapes back in version...4...I think?
The After Effects FAQ list could use some freshening up, for sure. Thanks for the reminder. I'm working with the tech writer and my support staff to assist, but this will mainly be up to me. If I could get the community's assistance on this, it would be appreciated. I'll let you know.
Regards,
Kevin
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HI Szalam,
Granted, they could use an update as they haven't been touched much since Todd Kopriva left Adobe, but it's hard to justify the effort if folks aren't going to use them.
I think if we all point people there, with links, they will get more attention. Hopefully, I can get in there to clean up the links and references to the older architecture. Todd was so great at those FAQs, I learned a lot from him.
kris_cave kris_cave wrote
Cinema4D has the best 'Help' assistance I've ever seen. Right-click on anything in the UI and show that element in the help doc; that's a beautiful implementation that actually got me to use the in-app Help and something like it would be a wonderful addition to the program.
Let me take a closer look at their Help implementation and talk it over with the tech writing crew. Something like this would be great.
I'd like an updated version of this resource that Todd made. Too many of them are out of date now since they're all from before the new "Preview" replaced RAM preview, but it was a great, one-stop-shop for newbies to get solid resources when starting out.
That would be great. I'll see if I can freshen up that blog post. I made a similar one for Premiere Pro users in the CS5.5 era that I can also update.
Thanks,
Kevin
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Hi Szalam,
Mylenium nailed it. They are usually taking someone else's song and monetizing it on YouTube. So, in many cases, it's outright piracy where THEY are getting money for doing it. Which bothers me on many levels.
Well, that's disheartening to hear. Thanks for the info. I see that in a lot of those tutorials, piracy of After Effects and plug-ins are also encouraged. That sucks too.
Sometimes they're trying to promote their own music, but that has been a tiny minority of the posts I've seen.
Too bad. Seems YT is filled with folks that want to be a famous artist through no efforts of their own. Still, I would like to encourage those that are genuinely interested in learning After Effects.
Cheers,
Kevin