Datasheet

12 chapter 1 ■ Setting Up a Composite
Tips & Tricks: Progressive-Frame Tutorials
21 out of 22 tutorials included in this book use progressive-frame footage. Any footage that was
shot interlaced has been converted to progressive frames. This was done to keep the tutorials
relatively compact and to place the emphasis on various techniques, tools, effects, and nodes.
In addition, this allows footage to be shared between After Effects and Nuke. At present, Nuke
possesses a limited toolset for working with interlaced footage. Nevertheless, the ability of both
programs to work with interlacing is discussed later in this chapter.
Setting Up a Composite
After Effects and Nuke each require a unique set of steps for creating a new project, import-
ing footage, previewing composites, and rendering the result.
After Effects Projects
After Effects composites are referred to as compositions. Multiple compositions can exist
in a single project. To create a new project, choose File
→ New → New Project. To adjust
the project’s global properties, choose File
→
Project Settings. In the Project Settings dialog
box, you can choose the timeline measurement
by switching between the Display Style radio but-
tons (Figure 1.8). If you are working exclusively
with video footage, the default Timecode Base
radio button is suitable. In this case, the timeline
uses base 25 or base 30 measurements; that is,
the time is counted in units of 25 frames for
PAL and 30 frames for NTSC. If you are work-
ing with motion picture film or CG, it’s generally
best to select the Frames radio button, whereby
the frames are counted upward from 1. (For
the tutorials in this book, the Display Style is set to Frames.) The Project Settings dialog
box also carries settings for bit depth and color space, which are discussed in Chapter 2,
“Choosing a Color Space.”
To create a new composition, choose Composition
→ New Composition. The Compo-
sition Settings dialog box opens, allowing you to set the composition’s critical properties.
The Preset menu sets common formats and their appropriate resolution, frame rate, and
PAR (see Figure 1.9). You can also manually set the resolution Width and Height cells, plus
enter a custom value into the Frame Rate cell. You can manually choose different PARs
through the Pixel Aspect Ratio menu. The composition length is set by the Duration cell.
When a new composition is created, it’s placed in the Project panel and named Comp
n (see Figure 1.10). To see the composition as a tab in the Timeline panel, double-click the
composition name. If you create more than one composition, each composition receives a
separate tab in the Timeline panel. Initially, a composition is empty. However, you can cre-
ate layers for the composition by importing and adding footage (see the next two sections).
Figure 1.8 The Display Style section of
the Project Settings dialog box
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