neorevolutions

Adobe After Effects marches on with a spiffy new version for the Creative Suite 4 (CS4) Production Premium and Master Collection packages. As always, there are numerous new features and enhancements. But there's also the inclusion of an entirely new program, Imagineer Systems mocha for After Effects, which provides professional-level 2.5D planar motion tracking.

One of the best new features for me is not the sexiest: Timelines and nested compositions are now searchable. Previous versions had basic search functions. You could go into the effects panel and type in a phrase, and the program would produce results. But because After Effects (AE) is a, let's say, scrolling-intensive program, getting to where you wanted to be always took a little moving around ? especially once you started to stack up the effect layers and nest compositions inside other compositions.

Adobe has improved the search function greatly in After Effects CS4 ? it's practically on every panel. In the project window, a search input lets you quickly locate a video clip or image that resides within your current composition. Now there's search in the actual composition as well. Want to look at the transformations of all your objects? Just type in ?transform.? Trying to find a colored background that you know is buried somewhere in your presentation? Just search. A few versions back, Adobe added a lot of keyboard commands. Type ?R,? for example, to see only the rotation parameters. Granted, these are still useful, but once you start using search, you'll see how convenient it is to type a few letters to find exactly the parameters you want to tweak. You have the option to search just the selected layer or search the entire project.

I use AE a lot for producing podcasts for clients. Several have weekly shows, and the titles often change from week to week. For these projects, I can tag a text layer with a keyword so that it pops up immediately via search. I have one client who swaps between two sets of different credits. I simply named one set ?c1? and the other ?c2.? When I load up After Effects to do a new render, I just type in the keyword to search the timeline. The layer pops right up so I can toggle it on or off as needed.

There is also a Help search at the top of the screen in AE CS4. As is becoming more commonplace, it jumps to the Adobe help website for AE. I do miss the built-in help programs we used to have, but obviously this makes help more organic: It can be constantly tweaked, updated, and expanded on Adobe's server.

When After Effects introduced nesting ? i.e., putting a sequence inside another sequence ? the workflow got a tremendous boost. AE artists were suddenly able to stack and layer within different sub-sequences. But all this power quickly proved difficult to manage. Tracking effects and changes via the timeline was tough enough; it was doubly so when sequences began inside each other. Adobe did add a flowchart, which provided a bird's-eye view. But this lived on a separate screen, so it was a little bit of a chore to toggle back and forth.

To solve this problem in CS4, there's another unsexy yet vital new feature: Composition Navigator. On the top of each composition panel (your main middle panel) is a pop-up miniature flowchart, which displays hierarchical text-based panels that describe incoming nested compositions and outgoing parent compositions. Think of it as Google Maps for AE. It's now easy to figure out where you are as you drill down into sub-sequences. This more manageable mini flowchart lives on the same screen where you do most of your work, as an immediate reminder of your current position within the composition.


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