After Effects region of interest

(See this post for After Effects CS5 information.)

You can run After Effects CS4 in either the local language associated with the installation and activation or in English. For example, if you have the German version of After Effects CS4 installed, you can switch to English. You can switch back and forth as many times as you want. This should make it easier to do many things, including following instructional materials written in English.

Mac OS X 10.5.8 and earlier (before Snow Leopard):

1. Control-click the After Effects CS4 application icon, which is in the Applications/Adobe After Effects CS4 directory.
(You can navigate to the application icon by Control-clicking the icon in the dock and choosing Show In Finder.)
2. Choose Get Info (or the equivalent, such as Informationen in German).
3. Expand the Languages (in German, Sprachen) category in the Info dialog box.
4. Deselect (uncheck) every language other than English.
5. Close the Info dialog box.
6. Double-click the application icon to start the application.

UPDATE: For instructions on how to do this on Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6), see the comments for this post.

Windows:

1. Open a command shell (Choose Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt).
2. Run After Effects by entering the full path to the After Effects executable file followed by the argument -L en_US.

For example, on my computers running 32-bit Windows Vista and Windows XP, here is the command that I entered to run my German copy of After Effects in English:

“C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CS4\Support Files\AfterFX.exe” -L en_US

Here’s what it would be on 64-bit Windows Vista:

“C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CS4\Support Files\AfterFX.exe” -L en_US

Of course, your path may be different, depending on where you installed the application, et cetera.

Note that this behavior is slightly different from earlier versions of After Effects. In After Effects CS3 and earlier, the argument for the Windows command line was different.

Every once in a while, I go through the search logs and through the responses to various surveys, looking for ways to improve your ability to find information about After Effects.

In an attempt to figure out what issues people were having and to elevate the visibility of the pages that I think would have helped with these problematic searches, I’m presenting them here and asking for your assistance. Please try these searches and let me know if there are some pages that aren’t coming up that should (or are coming up that shouldn’t). You can leave a comment on this blog entry or use the “Give us feedback” link on the Community Help search results page to report how your searches are working.

After Effects Help

People still report that they are having a hard time finding After Effects Help. I think that this is because people are confused when they end up on the After Effects Help & Support page. But if you’ve installed the After Effects 9.0.1 update, then you won’t end up on that page when you press F1 or choose Help > After Effects Help.

Some people look for After Effects Help using terms like manual, user guide, and documentation. I’ll add some key words.

And remember, if you want up-to-date information for when you don’t have an Internet connection, download the PDF version of After Effects Help. There’s a link at the top of every page of After Effects Help. I just updated it this week.

error codes

We tend to have a pretty good collection of documents in our Technical Support Knowledgebase for After Effects error codes, but Mylenium (Lutz Albrecht) has done a much better job of bringing together information on error codes, possible causes, and possible solutions in his Mylenium error code database.

expressions
and
expression reference

I think that the introduction and overview of expressions in the first part of the “Expressions” chapter of After Effects Help does a pretty good job of introducing expressions—in part by linking to material on some other websites.

And I think that the various subsections of the “Expression elements reference” are what most people are looking for when they’re looking for reference material about expressions.

I did get one response that said that someone wanted to just search the expressions reference part of Help. Other than searching using the PDF version of Help, I can offer this as a workaround: Search from within the Help document (with the This Help System Only checkbox checked) and include the word ‘expression’ in your search. This search is an example of searching for ‘gaussrandom expression’ in the Help document.

camera shake

It seems that the people who were well served by searching for ‘camera shake’ were the ones who wanted to add simulated camera shake to their movies. But those who wanted to remove camera shake with motion tracking and stabilization weren’t as well served.

draw line

When some people searched for ‘draw line’, it appears that they wanted to know how to underline text.

When others searched for ‘draw line’, it appears that they wanted to know how to draw a line in the sense of a simple vector graphics element. There are lots of ways of drawing lines in After Effects. Here are a few:

- a stroked mask
- the Write-On effect
- a thin solid layer
- a shape layer with a stroked path
- an animated series of tightly spaced (kerned) underscore or dash characters

Using shapes or masks to draw a line (path) is probably what makes the most sense in most cases.

fog

I think that a lot of people searching for ‘fog’ are trying to simulate fog, but they end up seeing the Fog 3D effect, and that is just confusing (because that effect is for a pretty limited use case involving renders from 3D applications). I would hope that people would go to the “Fog, smoke, clouds, and such” section, which points to a wonderful document by Mark Christiansen on simulating fog. (You do know that you should buy his book, right? Seriously.) There’s also a good blog entry by Daniel Broadway about compositing fog linked to from that page.

slow motion speed

This seems like an odd search string, but it came up a lot in the logs. Sure, I expect to see ‘slow motion’ or ‘fast motion’, but ‘slow motion speed’ is weird. I just added some more keywords to the relevant sections of After Effects Help.

FLV export

You should definitely read this section for FLV export. There’s an important note there that warns you away from using the FLV exporter that QuickTime installs.

Color Finesse

The fine folks at Synthetic Aperture provide documentation for Color Finesse. It’s in the folder that contains the plug-in.

new XMP metadata tutorial, with fully functional script examples

Dan Ebberts has a new tutorial on the After Effects Developer Center website. The tutorial walks you by the hand through using the XMP metadata features in Production Premium CS4. The motivating example in the tutorial is the transcription of speech to text and the creation of a simple video player with which you can navigate to the places where those words are spoken. Along the way, the metadata is used to speed up editing, to check for copyright information, and to create simple subtitles/captions. The step-by-step instructions are very clear and leave nothing out.

Check it out:
“XMP metadata in Creative Suite 4 Production Premium”

Thank you, Dan, for filling a huge gap in our previous documentation about XMP metadata in After Effects and the other applications in Production Premium CS4. We did what we could to get the basic information into the “XMP metadata” section of After Effects Help before we shipped the applications, but it took someone like you really diving in and getting your hands dirty (scripty?) to flesh out the material and build something like this tutorial that really gives people all that they need to make use of these features.

Here’s the synopsis from the first page of the tutorial:

“In this tutorial, you’ll learn how XMP metadata is created, how it flows through Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium, and how it can enhance your workflow. To show how you can use XMP metadata in general, this tutorial focuses on one specific method for using Speech Search metadata to create a user experience in which a viewer can search for, and navigate to, specific spoken words in a video.

Beyond the simple workflow described in this tutorial, XMP metadata features in Creative Suite 4 Production Premium applications make many common editing, asset tracking, animating, and compositing tasks easier. After you’ve completed the simple steps in this tutorial and seen how much information is readily available to you at each stage of your work, you should realize how easy it is to use these features in each application to streamline your workflow and expand the possibilities of your creative work.

In this tutorial, you’ll complete the following tasks:

-(Optional) Create and view metadata with Adobe OnLocation CS4.
-Transcribe and edit speech with Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.
-View metadata with Adobe Bridge CS4.
-Use expressions in Adobe After Effects CS4 to display speech metadata.
-Use scripting in After Effects to convert speech metadata to cue points.
-Use ActionScript in Adobe Flash CS4 Professional to create a movie with speech navigation controls in Adobe Flash Player. ”

XMP library for ActionScript

Gunar Penikis has recently announced the availability of an XMP library for ActionScript, which can be used to directly access XMP metadata in FLV and F4V files.

This library provides an alternative to the method that Dan’s tutorial outlines, which uses an After Effects script to convert XMP metadata to cue points, which are then operated on by ActionScript code in the video player.

The great thing about XMP metadata in Production Premium CS4 is that it can be used and accessed in so many ways, so it can be used to suit many, many needs.

update: another approach to creating searchable video

Adobe has just posted a new demonstration and white paper (PDF) that show how to create a searchable video using CS4 Production Premium. This new paper and demonstration show how to use Soundbooth to create an XML file that contains the metadata, rather than using After Effects scripting to convert cue points.

There are many ways to use the XMP metadata features in Creative Suite 4 Production Premium. Hopefully, these two different approaches to the same problem will help you to see the breadth of these tools.

UPDATE: The first solution to this problem is to update to After Effects CS4 (9.0.2).

If you start After Effects and get a crash with the message “After Effects warning: Error parsing properties list.”, then try deleting the .xml files from this directory and its subdirectories:

Windows XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Application Data\Adobe\After Effects\9.0

Mac OS:
[user name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects/9.0

One of the After Effects software engineers tracked some instances of this error to corruption of one or more of the XML files in this directory.

To be on the safe side, try deleting one of these at a time, trying to restart after each one. This way, you won’t throw away, say, saved workspaces when the problem was with a different XML file. The bug report that I saw implicated AIFEffectCache.xml, so I’d start with that one.

BTW, we’re getting a lot of great information and making some fixes based on information from the crash reports that some of you have been submitting. Keep it up. Read this post for more information about the crash reporter and how to give us information.

UPDATE AND REQUEST

Before you delete any of the files in the preferences directory, make a .zip file containing all of the files in this directory. Then change the file-name extension to ‘.piz’. After you’ve determined which file was causing the problem, email the .piz file to aebugs@adobe.com. This will help us to figure out what is corrupting the file(s).

Also, there’s now an official Technical Support knowledgebase article about this issue.

As you (I hope) already know, anyone can add comments to After Effects CS4 Help on the Web.

What you might not know is that you can subscribe to a feed for these comments.

Click here to add the feed to Google Reader.

If you use another feed reader, then here’s the URL that you can add manually through your RSS reader’s interface:

http://community.adobe.com/help/rss/comments.html?label=aftereffects_product_adobelr

Please read my earlier post in which I plead with people to add comments.

Seriously, folks, we want you to use the comments to show off, to advertise your materials, to promote yourself… as long as your doing so helps the After Effects user. If you wrote a tutorial about After Effects, point to it. If you watched someone else’s video tutorial about After Effects and thought that it was good, point to it. If you think that you can explain something better than we (I) can or did, then add a comment and show the world how knowledgeable you are.

And don’t think that you can only point to brand new information created for After Effects CS4. As we all know, most of the fundamental features of an application don’t change from one version to the next. So tutorials and examples that were good for After Effects CS3 (or even After Effects 7.0) are probably still good for After Effects CS4. So go ahead and point to older material if it’s still valid and good.

(BTW, if you ever want to know how to map instructions from After Effects CS3 to After Effects CS4, see the ” User interface changes from After Effects CS3 to After Effects CS4 “ page of After Effects Help on the Web. That’s why we made this page.)

Ko Maruyama has been collecting a vast number of helpful documents about Cinema 4D integration with After Effects on his Ninja Crayon blog.

I’ll soon be adding a link to these materials from the “Importing and using 3D files from other applications” section of After Effects Help on the Web.