Adobe After Effects CS6 For Beginners - The Basics

hey guys welcome back to another techguru video I have had many requests to do some more beginner Adobe After Effects tutorials so I thought where better to start then the very basics so this video here is going to cover the basics of After Effects understanding the workspace understanding what everything is and just getting started with After Effects so you can move forward and create the projects that you're wanting to create so the first thing I want to show you is just how to understand the workspace and what everything is so the first thing you're going to want to do when you open After Effects is you want to create a new composition in order to do this you can go up to composition new composition just like that once you're there you'll see this panel appear this is your composition settings panel once here you will need to name your composition so I'm going to go ahead and name this tutorial once you've done that you'll see the basic settings which is where I'm going to stay today you can make your width and height different but I'm leaving mine at 1920 by 1080 which is you know pretty much the highest you want it to be that's 1080 which is high definitions you know this really needs to be if you're trying to produce high-quality high definition content there are different presets you can adjust by clicking the down arrow here by the preset and then it'll show you some of the other presets such as 1080 25 frames per second it'll go up here if you're doing a web video for 320 by 240 or you can even click on custom just like that and adjust these numbers by dragging the slider just like so but I'm gonna go back down to the HDTV 1920 by 1080 and that's gonna be a great quality video footage so once we've done that and we've looked here and everything looks you know the way we want it to look and everything else you can leave the same so next thing you want to do is go ahead and click OK now you have created your first composition congratulations you are now on your way to becoming an Adobe After Effects Pro once we've done that we need to understand what all these panels are and what we can do with them to better utilize our time when working in After Effects the first thing I'm going to show you is how you can edit your workspace first off if you go up here and see workspace there is a drop down menu that probably says standard so you can change this and go up here and go to all panels which is you know we're gonna show you a lot more stuff but I would recommend clicking that down arrow and go down to standard and leave it there once you've done that you can also go up here to all of these panels and drag them around put them anywhere you want so any of these panels that you see here can be dragged to a different location on the screen if you work better that way and all you've got to do is click that panel and move it over and then where you see the blue is highlighting that's where that new panel is going to be located at I'm gonna leave mine just like it is because I really like the standard setting I don't like anything to be moved around when I'm working with in After Effects the next thing I'm going to show you is over here this is pretty much your project manager it's called like a project panel or project tab whatever you want to call it this is where all of your video you know Clips your pictures your audio this is where all of your files all of your content that you're going to drag down to your composition that's where it's all gonna be hosted ok and in order to add files videos pictures audio whatever it may be it's as easy as going up to file and then go down to import and then over here you can see you could import a single file multiple files or you know other stuff such as Premiere Pro projects Pro import after-effects but just focus in on the single file or multiple file option I'm gonna go ahead and drag in a few different things here in order to you know select multiple files is you know on a Mac hold down command on a Windows hold down shift and then I'm gonna go ahead and just select two different video clips and then I'm gonna go down here to the blue Open button and then click that once all of this is imported into after-effects you should see it over here in your project panel you can do a lot within that panel you can double click that there to see that footage if you want you can right-click on it and you can reload the footage if it is corrupted or whatever it may be and you can even go in here and rename that footage to be something other than what it was imported as okay so we're gonna go ahead and just you know not do anything there but if you do want to you can actually go in here and change the color of the light the layer so you can say okay that's gonna be blue there that right here is going to be yellow that way you can separate those files and know the difference between them so in order to get a file onto the composition you need to understand all of this stuff here this here the main center panel is going to be your viewer this is where you're going to watch what you are creating this is where as you're scrubbing across the timeline down here you're going to see your production or your video right here in real time again that's after it's been rendered and all of that good stuff so it's as easy as taking one of these files here over in the project panel clicking on it holding down the mouse button and dragging it down to your timeline or you can drag it here onto your video viewer panel just like so now once you drag a video into your composition in after-effects it's not going to be automatically rendered you will need to play through at one time in order for it to render so if you look up here it'll be showing me that it's not real time and the reason why it's not is because it hasn't been rendered yet so as you see this green line going across my timeline here it's showing that that is rendering that file so the next time that you go from the top of the timeline so I'm gonna drag my scrubber if you don't know what that is that's this little thing here they call it the current time indicator I call it a video scrub or whatever you want to call this fine with me and I can just drag that anywhere I want on the clip and that shows me where I'm at and then I can look right here on my video viewer and see what is going to be showing at that time stamp within that video so I'm gonna drive it I'm gonna slide the scrubber back to the beginning and now when I play this video it has been rendered in the green line has gone above it which means it will be in real time so just remember that if you're playing a video when it goes a little slower or it's a little Jaggi whatever it may be it may be because the video has not rendered yet that's not even being rendered what that is that's being pre-rendered I'll talk about rendering a video at a later time so this again is your timeline here this is your video viewer right up here and then this area over here like I said is indeed your project panel which is going to host all of your files and one thing I forgot to mention is you can actually click the search bar here to search for a specific file by typing in its name there but again I only have a few files so that's not a problem for me here now this up here is your toolbar I'm not going to get into these specific tools because I'll do other videos on that later and if you'd like to see more Adobe After Effects tutorials let me know in the comment box below and by liking this video so up here is where all of your tool you know tools are housed so you know I drug that over there like I told you you can drag it anywhere you want and then this is gonna show me all of my tools here okay the type tool the pin tool the shape tool I'm not gonna get into it but this is where you can go and add text add shapes and add a lot of flair to your videos so I'm gonna go ahead now and I'm gonna add the toolbar back up where it was and then I am actually going to you know show you again that you know the After Effects panel is so customizable you can do everything you want just by moving things around so remember that also if you're wanting to zoom in on a clip that you're working on if you have a mouse with a scroll wheel you can click on that there and then scroll up or down to minimize or you know zoom in or zoom out so that's a little bit about the workspace and how to go around it how to you know just pretty much work with Adobe After Effects and really make it easier for you to understand what we're doing over here is your effects and presets panel this is where you can add presets that have already been done within Adobe After Effects a great way to get started a great way to add effects that'll really impress your friends and family even if you don't really know what you're doing here is your you know play pause buttons here you can go here to preview it from wherever it is on the timeline you can stop the video fast-forward it mute it whatever you want to do here this is just an info panel here I'll tell you all about the video you know the frames per second how big the video clip is and if there's any issue with it will show up here if you click on the audio tab here it'll show the audio if it gets up in the yellow you know above the yellow to the red you're having some issues so you probably want to go back and adjust your audio and down here is pretty much just showing you what the clip name is and then down here is where you're gonna see all of your layers by clicking on this little drop-down arrow here you can transform it and then as you get more versed with After Effects you'll have more and more layers down in this panel here that you'll be playing with and I'll get more into that as we go on with this beginner After Effects tutorial so guys this is just the basics of Adobe After Effects there's so much more to delve into when you're talking about one of the best you know animation and just video editors you know out there on the market this is a great tool to use and if you know how to use it you can really accomplish some amazing things so I really hope you enjoyed this tutorial I hope you enjoy my channel if you do like I have said previously go ahead and hit that thumbs up button down below and like this video if you want to see more tutorials like this if you want to go ahead and subscribe to my channel absolutely free and guys as always thanks again and I will see you next time [Music]

Channel: Dusty Porter

Views: 130,821

Keywords: adobe after effects tutorial, after effects for beginners, beginner after effects, after effects basics, adobe after effects, adobe after effects help, basic adobe after effects, after effects cs6 tutorial, tutorial, technologyguru77, techguru77

Id: wHeHqhLHggI

Length: 10min 52sec (652 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 09 2013