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The Adobe Spa

Jan 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By S. D. Katz

Inside Adobe Production Studio with After Effects 7.0

Adobe begins 2006 with the biggest makeover ever in its history. With the release of its highly integrated Production Studio Premium bundle this month, the San Jose, Calif.-based software company stakes its claim as a top contender to lead the postproduction suite stakes. (The Premium version includes After Effects 7.0 Professional, Audition 2.0, Encore DVD 2.0, Illustrator CS2, Photoshop CS2, and Premiere Pro 2.0.)

Previously, Adobe solved the proliferation of creative apps by developing a unified architecture for Creative Suite; the still graphics- and Web-themed design bundle saves steps and effort by interlinking the programs. Now, Adobe does something similar for Production Studio Premium, harmonizing the video, audio, and graphics products via a sleek, dark gray GUI. Adobe Bridge, an integrated file browser, makes finding files a snap, while Adobe Dynamic Link boosts program interactivity by automatically updating projects.

While Production Studio is designed to enable the smooth interface among the programs as equals, After Effects is essentially the keystone, the integrative engine that in combination with the other programs produces the kind of "sum-greater-than-the-parts" interplay that Adobe was envisioning, especially for the highest end user. With that in mind, here's a hands-on look at AE 7.0 in the context of Production Studio (at press time, AE 7 was complete as a standalone program; Production Studio was in final beta).

Nip Tuck

New industry-leading programs needed an interface update more than After Effects. By far the oldest product in the Production Studio (Premiere Pro is a completely new product rather than a revised version of Premiere), its interface, while functional, had grown messy. It's a tribute to AE's underlying organizing principle (stacked layers vertically deployed screen right and a horizontal timeline across the screen) that hundreds of thousands of users have so quickly grasped the concept of compositing through using AE. This remains unchanged.

The new Production Studio über-interface employs a number of modern design techniques—Drop Zones, Templates, Dockable windows—in an overall effort to reduce the quantity of AE's all too numerous palettes. From a purely aesthetic point of view, the new interface is a vast improvement, but the gains in efficiency really make the GUI a winner.

Open up AE 7.0, and it appears as though the old interface has been modernized, but it's still basically familiar. All the keyboard shortcuts, tools, and palettes are the same, but they now function more coherently—and with some handy new behaviors. For instance, in the past, if you wanted to rearrange the Comp window, moving or resizing probably required moving the Timeline, Tool panel, the Project window, and various palettes. That's a lot of clicks and hand motions. The new interface allows you to resize the Comp window (or any other) in one action by grabbing a single window, and all the other windows and panels resize proportionally. This avoids overlapping interface elements.

Also, Adobe now calls windows "Frames," and when you select a Frame, such as the Comp window, an orange border lights up, indicating that it's active. You can drag Frames by grabbing Braille-style dots at their tops and dragging them over any other interface element—the Project window, for instance. When you do this, blue Drop Zones appear over the target window. The options are the top, bottom, left, and right border or the center of the Frame. This indicates where the Frame that you are moving will be joined to the target Frame. Drop Zones work with Panels and Palettes as well, so you can rearrange any workspace to your liking.

As you might expect, you can name and save any custom template, which Adobe calls "Workspaces," and which are another big timesaver. At the right hand top of the screen in the Menu Bar is the word Workspace. Next to this is a dropdown menu with a number of choices, including Animation, Effects, Paint, Text, and any custom Workspaces you have created. Select one of these, and you instantly have the task-specific tools you need. Just in the short time I have been using the Beta, I have found this a huge timesaver.

Having used AE since the pre-release of version 1.0, my initial reaction to the new interface was that it was a bit bossy. Now that I have created custom templates, (essentially my version of Paint, Animation, and other default Workspaces), I find that I'm back in control and saving time in the bargain. By the way, you can undock Frames and Panels so that they are free floating and able to overlap other Frames, so you can pretty much do anything you could do in the past. If the only Production Studio app you use is AE, or if you're on the Mac, the fact that the Production Studio's other products share the same interface innovations as AE is not of any value. If, however, you are on a Windows XP box and use just one other app, such as Premiere Pro or Encore, then the benefits are considerable.

Sista City

There are two other integration innovations common to the Production Studio products: Adobe Bridge and Adobe Dynamic Link. Adobe Bridge is a standalone program based on the image browser in Photoshop but expanded to navigate and manage audio, movies, and still images. In AE, you open the Bridge from the File menu, only it's called "Browse" not "Bridge." This brings up a new window, and again, Photoshop users will be right at home. Vertically on the left side of the Browse window are panels with tabbed folders (such as Favorites and Folders) where you will organize your assets. Below this is a file directory stack, so you can navigate to the folders and drives where your assets are stored. Below this is a Preview window with video controls and zoom slider, and below this is a panel with a folder for Metadata and a folder for keywords. This is where you apply search parameters.

The main browser window is to the right of the search and organizational panels, and this is where the picons for your files appear. There's a handy zoom slider at the bottom right of the Browser window that lets you determine the size of the picons and how many fit in the window. Click on a picon, and depending on the file type, it plays audio or shows an animation. I use a very fast AMD-powered HP workstation, and the Browser loads very quickly. It's a joy to use. Because I like the browser in Photoshop, I'm happy to see it here in AE and in the other Production Studio programs. It's one less thing to learn and, more important, to remember. I have a visual memory, so seeing all my assets displayed the same way throughout the Adobe Production Studio helps me recall where everything is stored.

The second integration innovation, Adobe Dynamic Link, is going to be a big plus for anyone using Adobe Encore DVD or Premiere. For years, AE users have been looking for the editing app to use with AE. Because AE users tend to be all-around motion graphics and postproduction service providers, editing AE projects is part of the job description. Over the years, AE has made some improvements to its editing tools, but Adobe Link provides a complete solution.

In the past, an AE project had to be rendered before importing it into any editing program to make editorial changes. This meant that versions had to be managed and stored, and if there were changes (of course there always are), a project had to be re-rendered, often many times. The idea behind Adobe Link is simple: It allows an AE Comp into a Premiere Pro or Encore DVD project to be shared live in any of the other programs. Because all three programs now share the same interface, this is very close to having a complete set of editing tools in AE or, conversely, a complete motion graphics tool in Premiere Pro. It's a great way for Windows users to work.

Dynamic Link allows for transparent playback of an AE comp in Premiere Pro, but you can also import an AE project into Premiere Pro and have it recognized as a Premiere Pro project. This, in turn, means that your AE folders show up as Premiere Pro bins with access to edits, markers, effects (and their keyframes), nested sequences, etc. Dynamic link also lets you drag and drop source clips in AE or Premiere Pro.

You might be asking, though, if an unrendered file with lots of effects piled on is going to play in realtime. Well, yes, Dynamic Link requires a fast workstation, and there are limits. Premiere Pro, however, does have a very good playback engine, and for many projects this will allow perfectly acceptable previews. For monster projects, you can still render and import the file as before. Dynamic Link provides a shortcut to Capture Video for AE users, another feature that had been on the Beta list for years. AE users can use Premiere Pro's capture capability in AE (Windows only) with their favorite I/O card and log shots with Premiere. The logged bins show up as folders in AE.

Throwing Curves

The single biggest new feature in AE 7.0 (remember, this is not a full version upgrade) is the new Graph Editor. This was my single biggest feature request for at least eight years. The old curve editor remained pretty much the same for a decade. It was cramped and very limited. It was also difficult to grab the handles of the curve; it always felt like a game of pickup sticks to make changes. It was also very basic compared to so many other apps that AE users were likely familiar with—Maya, 3D Studio, or even Animation Master.

Enough said about the past. The new Graph Editor is a huge improvement and has terrific innovations. What's new here? First, you are no longer restricted to showing curves for only one layer at a time. Now you can show all the curves for selected layers and have them color-coded, so you can distinguish one from another, even though lots of curves begin to look like tri-color spaghetti. This is a huge step forward for even simple animation, because frankly, layer animations and properties have to be compared and adjusted to one another—that's the process. Now it's easy to line up and control animation and effects in the Timeline.

Invoking the Graph Editor (a button at the top of Timeline) brings up a series of options at the bottom of the Timeline. These provide options for display, access to the Transform Box, and Ease In and Ease Out curves. The Transform Box is by far the most interesting new feature in the Graph Editor, and animators would probably call this a curve envelope. In other words, you can marquis select keyframes and the curves between them and then apply an over all adjustment. This is a very flexible and powerful way to adjust multiple curves quickly.

The Transform Box can be scaled vertically and horizontally with different results. A vertical squeeze (the box can be scaled uniformly so one "end" of the box can be reduced or enlarged) flattens the curve at the squeezed end, thus reducing the amplitude of whatever value is represented. This is a very efficient way to impose smooth changes over lots of keyframes with a single action.

Enhanced GPU Performance

For a couple of revs, AE has been taking some criticism for the OpenGL implementation. It works very reliably, but up until 7.0 it did not support transfer functions or other basic effects. OpenGL was originally aimed at the 3D market, so many 2D effects are not supported. But AE 7.0 supports OpenGL 2.0, which opens the door to a wider range of supported effects.

Here's what you get in AE 7.0 GPU support: substantially faster 2D and 3D performance (more than double on my dual AMD HP 9300 workstation with an Nvidia Quadro FX); support for all blending modes (a big one because these are used all the time); Motion Blur for 2D layers; and very smooth anti-aliasing. There are also improved results with intersections and shadows.

Another benefit from OpenGL in AE 7.0 is the ability to use the GPU for final renders. Oftentimes, OpenGL produces perfectly acceptable results for broadcast. Depending on the project, you might even be able to achieve near realtime renders. Most of the time, however, OpenGL 2.0 in AE 7.0 is going to be an incremental improvement (but that could be a big increment) because it takes only a few slow unsupported effects to bring a project into the realm of long renders.

A Bit of Bit Depth

AE 7.0 now supports floating-point math, which means 32 bits per channel color. This is a very specialized new feature that is of interest to some visual effects artists. There is not enough space here to cover the subject of extended dynamic range, and anyone who needs to ask what it is good for probably is not going to be using it.

Basically, though, HDRI (High Dynamic Range Image) photography is a way to capture a much wider range of dark and light information in a still image or animation. Usually this imagery is combined in an animation package for image-based lighting. This is an efficient and very accurate way to match digital elements, such as a 3D CGI car into a film-acquired backplate with photorealistic lighting. There are other uses, but this is why HDRI was initially popularized in the VFX industry.

No motion picture or video camera can actually capture HDRI images. The image data for HDRI is acquired using a still camera through a process of shooting consecutive exposures across all the available stops (and beyond using ND filters) and combining the individual exposures in a special file format such as OpenEXR, which was developed at ILM. AE 7.0 supports EXR and Camera Raw files that can hold the extended range information that will be of interest to compositors who want to be able to work with CGI plates and backplates in full color space. There are other advantages and applications of HDRI technology, but in a limited number of special cases. When extended-range motion footage can be captured (five to 10 years from now), then this new feature will be as necessary as 16-bit color.

Dos Extras

The last two major features in AE are actually effects that were available from third parties for several years but are now included for free. There are a couple of new blurs, but the main one is Camera Blur. This is essentially a simulation of the circle of confusion, an artifact of a camera lens that appears in situations with limited depth of field. This is the same filter as Lens Blur in Photoshop, and it offers various iris types and an additional control to smooth the edges. It's very fast and easy to use—basically a first rate implementation.

A much more challenging effect is slowing down footage, and for that AE 7.0 adds Pixel Motion to the effects menu. AE has had frame blending and other ways to fake slow motion for years, but to get high-quality vector-per-pixel algorithms, you had to use products such as those sold by The Foundry, Pixel Farm, or Re:Vision. Pixel Motion is based on Kronos, a filter that Adobe licenses from The Foundry.

Vector-based analysis tracks the motion of every pixel in consecutive frames and takes a guess at what might go between existing frames when you need to add frames to create slower motion. Using the same underlying calculations, Pixel Motion can add motion blur to footage where none exists—cel animation, for example.

Slowing down footage is very useful, but Pixel Motion's success (like all vector-based motion-estimation products) is entirely dependent on the type of motion in the footage. When it works, it's great, but it's hit or miss. The determining factor is typically how big the change in position of elements in the footage is. If the change from frame to frame is significant, Pixel Motion (or any other vector-based product) has trouble knowing what to do, and the results won't be much better than frame blending. Also, even though there are times when Pixel Motion can be successfully applied to footage without much intervention, there are many times when it is necessary to mask unwanted motion that confuses the effect's algorithm. Slowing down time-lapse clouds often looks fantastic, while slowing down sports footage is unpredictable.

What makes Pixel Motion good is the Timewarp panel that allows straightforward controls to achieve the best results. In addition to the very clear controls, Pixel Motion is fast. On my HP 9300 (admittedly a screamer), it previewed frames to RAM slower than realtime, but very tolerably. Not all footage can be slowed down smoothly, but AE now includes these vector-calculated effects with a solution that is as good as any other I've seen.

Conclusion

The Production Studio is a major strategic move by Adobe, but only for Windows users. If you are on the Mac, there is no collection, just a worthwhile update to After Effects. Windows users will find that they have a powerful pipeline based on Dynamic Link, as well as improvements to After Effects, Premiere Pro, Audition, and Encore. The question is whether the gains in efficiency are enough for users to switch from, say, Final Cut Pro or Bias Deck, to an all-Adobe approach. For studios, this is not a no-brainer by any means, and Adobe will have to continue to improve individual apps to overcome the inertia and maturity of Avid, FCP, and Pro Tools, the top competitors in NLEs and audio editing. For casual users, the new Production Studio delivers an affordable and impressive workflow based on products that are market leaders or strong entries in their category. Other pluses for AVC are Adobe's excellent support and training materials. For a large segment of the video media market, Adobe Production Studio may be the one purchase needed for a complete post solution.

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.