Overview

Opening Projects, Offline & Reconnecting Media, Windows, Panes And Workflow, Selecting Customizing And Resetting Workspaces, Importing, Previewing & Breaking Down A Finished Movie, Understanding Where Media Has Been Created, Working Out What & How Media Has Been Animated, Closing And Deleting Media, Understanding Alphas, Mattes, Keys & Masks, Previewing Colour, Alpha & Transparency, Understanding Broadcast Sizes and Pixel Aspect Ratios.

Adding Media To The Timeline

Setting Preferences To Work Efficiently In The Timeline, Switches And Customising Timeline Columns, Different Way To Add Media To Your Timeline And Composition Windows, Home & End Shortcuts, Spatial & Temporal Placement, Scaling, Positioning & Rotating Layers, Data Feedback From The Info And Timeline Windows, Different Ways To Reset Values

Animating The 1st Layer

Viewing The Parameters, Setting Your 1st Keyframe, 4 Things That Happen On Creating The 1st Keyframe, Go To In & Out Of Layer, Changing Values To Automatically Set Keyframes, Motion Paths, Navigating Keyframes In The Timeline, Creating A Bezier Curve Motion Path, Deleting Keyframes To Restore A Previous Animation, Parameter Shortcuts, Collapsing Layers, Playing The Animation

Navigation

Navigating In Time Using Mouse And Shortcuts, Opening, Adding To And Closing Parameters, Rasterizing Eps Files, Why Add Keyframes Backwards?, Differences Between Go To In/Out And Home/End, Ram Preview And Playing The Composition

Movies & Masks

Adding Movies To The Timeline, Shapes, Masks & Paths, Adding A Mask To A Movie, Mask Parameters & Shortcuts, Feathering Masks, Fading Layers In With Opacity

Solids And Duplicating

Creating Solids At The Right Size, Zooming In/Out And Fit To 100% Or Window, Animating Solids, Duplicating Layers, Snapping To Keyframes, Changing The Stack Order, Keyframe Ease In & Out, Adding Audio And Fading In/Out

Effects & Making A Movie

Adding & Animating Effects, Effects Render Order Problems, Understanding Pre-Compositing / Nesting And It’s Purpose, Optimising Workflow – 3D Layer Or 3D Effect And Associated Problems, Making A Movie, Render And Output Settings

Setting Up and Trimming a Composition

Automatically Creating A Composition From Media Files, 3 Ways To Trim Layers In The Timeline, Automatically Trimming Composition To Layer Length

Cleaning Up Footage

Stabilizing Your Footage and Motion Tracking, Time Remapping Video, Faster, Slower, Reversing and Freezing.

Working With Text

Understanding Title And Action Safe Areas And When They Are Important, Adding Text Layers And Animating The Layer Properties, Using Shortcuts To Set Keyframes And Values, Advantage Of Using Multiple Text Animators, Using After Effects Built In Animators, Effects Panel And Using Bridge For Better Effects Previewing, Duplicating Text Layers Quickly, Advantages Of Separate Text Layers, Creating A Motion Path Using The Keyboard & Mouse, Copying And Pasting Keyframes Across Time And Layers, Resolving Spatial Interpolation Problems, Using Shortcuts To Select Layers & Navigate Keyframes, Setting The Timeline Range To Optimise Previews, Animating, Tweaking & Previewing A Motion Path, Using Auto-Orient And Resolving Problems It Can Cause, Using Motion Blur And It’s Settings, Understanding How To Override Timeline Settings During Render, Scaling Layers To Enhance Animation, Improving Ram Preview Speeds And Duration

Working With Effects

Precomposing To Add & Control Global Effects, Resolving Transparency Issues From Effects, Creating And Timing Effects To Emphasise The Composition, Copying And Pasting Keyframes Into Different Parameters In Effects, Using Hold Keyframes To Resolve Problems, Pre-Compositing The Pre-Composite To Gain Control, Using And Customising After Effects Presets, Breaking Down The Presets And A First Look At Expressions, Resolving Timing Problems Inside The Pre-Comps

Audio

Adding and Keyframing Audio, Adding Markers On The Fly To Audio

Output

Using Add To Render Queue To Render Multiple Compositions, Rending Correctly With Alpha Channels, Add Output Module To Multiple Render A Composition

3D Intro

An Introduction To Working In 3D