After Effects has evolved throughout the past 20 years to make rotoscoping a less eye-bleeding task. Check out how After Effects has changed throughout the years and get a sneak peek at the evolution of rotoscoping.

Simple shapes—circles, squares, ellipses, and more—can be valuable building blocks in an animation. A rectangle shape can be a basic background for a lower-third title, or it can be the base of a complex, three-dimensional clone animation. In this movie, Ian Robinson introduces the fundamentals of building, transforming, and animating basic shapes.

It’s easy to build an After Effects project that includes many layers of objects being animated in different ways, and it’s easy for all of those layers to become disorganized. In this movie, Ian Robinson fully explains how to use precompositions to nest multiple layers together. With precompositions, you can animate, transform, manipulate, and apply filters to multiple layers all together as if they were one single layer.

Often, in After Effects, it’s valuable to trim and move layers in a project the same way you would edit individual clips in a video-editing application like Premiere Pro. In this movie, Ian Robinson shows how to trim and re-time multiple individual layers, each with their own animations, to create a complete composited animation.

In this movie, Ian Robinson shares a set of special tips that will make positioning and duplicating 3D layers much easier and faster. By temporarily switching to a 2D orthogonal view and adjusting anchor point controls, Ian is able to set up a 3D layer for easy positioning, resizing, and fast duplication.

In this movie, Ian Robinson introduces the After Effects interface, identifying the most essential panels—the Project panel, the Timeline, and the Composition panel. He also introduces workspace presets, which instantly reconfigure the After Effects workspace for specific tasks.

In this video you'll see how fast and robust Dynamic Link has become and learn about the ability of After Effects and Premiere Pro to work together, even without being part of a suite package.

You can use the built-in Adobe Media Encoder to render and export many kinds of files within After Effects, or use the standalone Adobe Media Encoder application to render and encode movies outside of After Effects. Batch encoding and using a watch folder in Adobe Media Encoder can save time and free After Effects for other tasks, as you'll see in this video.

A compound effect is an effect that refers to, or takes values from, another layer in your comp. In this video we'll look at how this works by examining the Lens Blur effect, which can be used to create a pull focus effect on your layers. You'll see how to apply it selectively to specific areas of your footage using a Luminance Map we create using the Ramp effect.

In this lesson we'll use time remapping to achieve three specific results: slow motion, a freeze frame, and reversed playback of a layer.

When someone has had the foresight to film a subject in front of a solid-color background, compositing work gets a lot easier. This video shows you how to use the Keylight effect to key out (make transparent) a solid-color background and use a garbage matte to isolate the area to be keyed.

You can use the Brainstorm tool to randomize effect properties in order to figure out what they do. In this video you'll see how it can help you experiment and come up with new ideas.

In this video you'll see how the RAM and disk caches are used to save time, and how you can render compositions in the background so that you don't need to wait for a preview to be rendered before you can resume work.

This video introduces various small new and changed features in After Effects CS6 that have not been covered elsewhere in this course. Several of these features are briefly demonstrated.

In this video, you will lean how to use the Fast Previews menu. We will look at a rather complex scene and see how different settings affect your ability to manipulate elements.

In this lesson you will learn how to import projects using Pro Import After Effects. We will demonstrate using a Final Cut Pro project, but the same procedure works for other formats, such as XML, AAF, OMF, and Apple Motions.

There are several ways to send your creative work from Premiere Pro to After Effects, and this lesson will walk you through all of them.

Users have something to say to the After Effects team during their 20-year celebration.

In this episode, Dave gives you a quick tour of the new HP Z820 workstation tied together with NVIDIA's Maximus technology working in Premiere Pro CS6 and After Effects CS6. See how these 2 technologies take your workflow to the next level of compute power.

Appreciate the finer points of Creative Suite 6 Production Premium with Adobe Evangelist, Jason Levine. In this session you’ll learn about the powerful new versions of Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition and Media Encoder. Jason will also demo two new CS6 tools: SpeedGrade and Prelude.

Made Visual Studio and Bill and Ben Productions switched to an all Adobe workflow based on Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium to bring the animated Graham Chapman memoir to life. Watch this video to learn about the making of the film, the switch to Adobe Premiere Pro, and the filmmakers' experiences using the latest versions of Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium, including Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Flash Professional, and Photoshop Extended.

Download a trial of Adobe CS6 Production Premium

See an overview of all the comprehensive content direct from Adobe at IBC, from customers to partners, the booth to live events, its all here.

Feature film, "A Liar's Autobiography - The Untrue Story of Monty Python's Graham Chapman" premiered at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival. Direct from Toronto to Amsterdam animation producer, Justin Weyers, joins Adobe at IBC and shares his belief that only with Premiere Pro and After Effects was this epic animated feature able to become a reality.

The new 3D Camera Tracker can give you some amazing results in analyzing 2D footage and creating a true 3D camera to work with. But there are times when the tracker gets “fooled”. In this episode, Colin uses real-world footage that includes a camera pan, moving subject and an escalator and shows what to do when the tracker gets confused by all that motion.

In this video you will see how you can search and browse the FORK media asset database without leaving Adobe Premiere Pro. Now you can select timelines created in the FORK editor, clips or entire bins, and simply drag and drop them into an Adobe Premiere Pro project, and when the edit is done send the completed sequence, ready for air, direct to FORK or fulfill a placeholder from a newsroom control system.

Sean Kilbride from NVIDIA talks about how fast and easy it is to create the 3D extruded and ray traced Heavy Hand logo in After Effects CS6 utilizing NVIDIA GPUs.

VPMS is arvato Systems’s MAM system that serves as a cross-funcitonal control unit for broadcasting processes with the infrastructure of video server, editing and graphics. See how VPMS now integrates with Adobe Premiere Pro for an effective and simplified workflow.

The foundation of Harmonic’s solution is the Media Application Server (MAS), a SOA-based platform that hosts and coordinates applications that comprise an enterprise-class content management, preparation and delivery platform. Built in conjunction with MediaSmiths, the Adobe Premiere CS6 content panel allows editors to directly browse & select content managed by their MAS system, pulling the content directly into to an edit session.

Master the 3D Camera Tracker in After Effects CS6 and use 3D Extrusion and Rendering for True 3D Graphics. You'll also learn how to integrate 3D content from leading applications like 3D Studio Max.

Set up CS6 Production Premium for speed and efficiency. Join partners HP, AJA, and G-Tech to learn how to extend the capabilities of Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 & After Effects CS6 with powerful hardware add-ons.

In this video you will see how the ProductionLink plug-in for Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and Adobe After Effects CS6 enables users to publish directly to the Avid Interplay production asset management (PAM) system. Facilities with Avid Interplay can now use Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and After Effects and easily incorporate Adobe Creative Suite into their workflows.

The IPVLive plug-in enables growing, frame-accurate proxies to be streamed directly into Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 in a multi-user environment across a standard IT network. The IPVLive panel enables the user to stay within the Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 interface and quickly produce highlight packages and promos.

Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 integrates with LiveCut to combine ingest, metadata handling and post-production into a single, streamlined easy-to-use interface. See how LiveCut records all edits being performed as an Edit Decision List (EDL), which is converted into a multicam timeline for immediate and fast post-production.

The Bluenet plugin for Adobe Premiere CS6 enables access to the graphics templates used in news broadcasts and can be directly applied as timeline elements. Learn about Cloud based or local template driven self-service graphics solutions which together with Adobe Premiere Pro CS6, reduce time to air, cost per graphic and facilitate centralization and collaboration.

Adobe Premiere CS6 integrates with the Viz Media Engine, which enables media production and distribution on many platforms. Now through a custom panel within Premiere Pro CS6 users can access and publish assets to the Viz Media Engine, and overlay graphic elements to the timeline.

Users can through the custom panel for MXF Server in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 utilize the features of MXF Server such as quota management, growing files, rights management, project locking and much more. This video shows how all these features are accessible right within the Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 User interface.

Bluefish444 manufactures the high quality uncompressed SD/HD/2K/4K SDI video cards for professional editors. Its Epoch and Create 3D video cards integrate tightly with Adobe Mercury Transmit for complete monitoring, scaling and support for video output.

Blackmagic Design known for its high-quality, affordable DeckLink capture cards; its groundbreaking USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt technology–based video products; offers complete integration of Adobe Mercury Transmit to provide scalability and multi-format video output.

Matrox offers the only I/O solutions on the market that let you deliver H.264 files up to five times faster than software alone without sacrificing quality. Fully integrated Adobe Mercury Transmit support lets you scale, monitor, and output in any format you need — from analog and HDMI to HD-SDI.

AJA Video is a leading manufacturer of high-quality, acquisition and digital video interface solutions, for broadcast and post-production. AJA’s support and integration with Adobe Mercury Transmit allows complete scalability, multi-format support, monitoring and output of complex video content.

Take a look at the Prelude panel which integrates into deltatre’s production logging application. See how to take advantage of a broad range of valuable features, including the ability to attach global metadata to clips, manually create participant and production specific Vocab panels and create unlimited timecoded log markers.

Our friends at Downrunner Productions talk about a real life example of how NVIDIA Maximus coupled with Adobe After Effects CS6 helped them meet a tight deadline when a client asked for a last minute change.

Check out the making of this far out music video of the indie band, Heavy Hand, and see how the extensive set of NVIDIA GPU accelerated features throughout Adobe CS6 made it happen.

Explore the Global Performance Cache (AKA the “Hash Cache”), along with the “Persistent Disk Cache” and learn to take advantage of their strengths to dramatically speed up the way you work in After Effects. Work through a comp specifically designed with examples that help you understand the new caching functions and what you can do to get the most from them.

Discover how to make your not-so-great footage look better using the new Rolling Shutter Repair effect. Get an overview of the effect controls and how to adjust them to get some nice results from your footage.

See how you can use the new "Create Shapes from Vector Layer" command to convert your Illustrator documents to editable vectors in After Effects. See how a shape in Illustrator ends up as a Ray-traced, extruded 3D layer in After Effects.

Discover how the new Bounding Boxes work to help you select and manipulate elements in a scene. Learn about the new Inverted "V" pattern on layers, how to use the selection indicators to identify layers and elements, and how you can edit a 3D element by manipulating its Bounding Box.

Take a look at the new 3D Material properties and get an understanding of how they work to make your scenes look their best by creating realistic sharp or diffuse reflections. Learn to adjust the refraction properties of transparent layers to get a nice looking final composition.

Transform a 2D layer into an Environment Layer and discover what an Environment Map is and how it works. Apply effects directly to the Environment Map to precisely control object reflections.

Examine 3D bendable layers and their properties, learn how segments and curves can be adjusted, and effects can be added to get creative, fun results.

Learn more about the power of the Mask Feather tool and how it can be used in design work for creating both outside and inside feathers on a single mask. Discover how to set and adjust multiple points in the mask, context menu features such as Hold, and how to use the tool to add a nice blur effect to a text mask.

Discover the new Mask Feather tool and why it's so important and useful. See how the tool can easily take a difficult rotoscoping task and simplify it by allowing AE to generate a variable feather around a mask that includes both sharp and blurry edges.

Take an in-depth look at extruded vector layers in this continued lesson on Ray-traced 3D. Review the new properties including the extrusion parameter, the bevel settings, the material options including reflections, also explore the animate pop-up and environment maps.

Get an introduction to Ray-traced 3D, how to activate it, the 3D layers it adds, and the many options that are available in those layers. Vector layers for text and shapes have greatly expanded options in this version of AE, and most useful for non vector layers are the new "Material" options which include the ability to create after-effects-native reflections for the first time.

Learn how to use the new 3D Camera Tracker by creating a 3D project that adds animated text to a movie. See how the tracker works in the background to analyze a scene and then automates the addition of an animated 3D camera with text. See how to adjust, manipulate and add animators and other effects to the text for amazing results.

Explore the Global Performance Cache (AKA the “Hash Cache”), along with the “Persistent Disk Cache” and learn to take advantage of their strengths to dramatically speed up the way you work in After Effects. Work through a comp specifically designed with examples that help you understand the new caching functions and what you can do to get the most from them.

Discover how to enable 3D in a composition and work in the Classic 3D mode. Review the difference in the UI and tools once 3D is activated and take a look at the new properties available in the "Materials" category, as well as in layers and effects, as well as 3D-only elements like cameras and lights. And of course, Brian provides some handy tips for setting up your comp window for 3D.

Review some of the fun new effects available in AE CS6 including the Cycore HD effects and other built in plug-ins. Along the way, you'll discover why updating many of these effects to 32-bit in this version of After Effects is so important.

Explore one of the the most-changed performance enhancements in After Effects CS6, the fast previews menu. Learn the difference between the latest options including adaptive resolution, draft, fast draft, wifeframe, and the draft 3D button in the timeline. Using a Ray-traced 3D comp as an example Brian shows how the different options behave and offers suggestions for an efficient workflow even if you don't have the best video hardware.

Discover the power of this industry-standard video-compositing, motion-graphics-design and animation tool. Learn how it integrates with the Creative Suite, see how it is used in television and film to create special effects, how to composite scenes with blue/green screen keying, and complete creative tasks like drawing, 3D, and titles.

Get familiar with the After Effects workflow in this brief overview of the tools, project windows, elements, compositions, nested comps, effects, keyframes, the timeline, expressions, exporting and the Render Queue.

Explore the various ways you can set up projects in After Effects including importing individual or multi-layered files from Illustrator and Photoshop. Review some of the options for sorting folders and elements in the project window to keep you organized. Plus take a look at the Flowchart panel and get an understanding of the value of flowcharts as a visual reference to easily see how your project elements relate to each other.

Explore the various ways you can set up projects in After Effects including importing individual or multi-layered files from Illustrator and Photoshop. Review some of the options for sorting folders and elements in the project window to keep you organized. Plus take a look at the Flowchart panel and get an understanding of the value of flowcharts as a visual reference to easily see how your project elements relate to each other.

Take a close look at timeline elements including switches, navigation, zooming, trimming, setting keyframes, and basic layer properties. Next, review how to set and change keyframe parameters in the timeline, and multiple ways you can accomplish this in After Effects.

Learn to use the Preview Panel to generate a RAM Preview of your animation that plays in real time. Review the features available in the panel, how to adjust the work area in the timeline, and how to generate a preview to see your results at full speed. Also explore Frame Rate, Skip and Shift+Ram Preview, as well as the From Current Time feature. Finally, learn some handy keyboard shortcuts that can save you time.

In this video, you will see how to quickly convert vector graphics from Illustrator to shape layers and animate the paths in After Effects CS6. In previous versions, this would have involved a great deal of tedious cutting and pasting - but no more.

In this episode, hear from Jason Levine, Adobe Worldwide Video Evangelist, about the Creative Cloud and all the new features in Adobe Production Premium CS6, the complete solution at the heart of any production workflow for video professionals. Packed with major updates to help bring high-quality productions to any screen, you’ll learn about new updates to familiar tools including powerful new versions of Adobe Premiere® Pro, After Effects®, Audition®, Adobe Story Plus, Media Encoder and Photoshop Extended, along with two new tools, SpeedGrade CS6 for professional color grading, and Prelude CS6, the world’s most elegant solution for the processes of ingest, logging and transcoding – essential tasks in a modern file-based workflow.

Join Meagan as she talks to Kenny Mosher, winner of the Red 4k Portrait Challenge, about his project and his experience working with Adobe Premiere Pro & Adobe After after Effects.

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Try multiple scenarios without waiting for frames to rerender.

Remove rolling shutter artifacts such as skew and wobble without forcing stabilization.

Extrude fully ray-traced text and shapes natively and take full advantage of reflections, environment maps, and more.

Sr. Product Manager Steve Forde takes a deeper look at what's new in After Effects CS6.

Sr. Product Manager Steve Forde shares how to optimize After Effects CS6 for high performance.

Adobe Evangelist Jason Levine provides an overview of what's new in After Effects CS6.

Place and track 3D elements on 2D footage for precise visual effects and motion graphics. The 3D camera tracker automatically analyzes 2D footage in the background and places elements on that footage, with complete control over depth of field, shadows, and reflections.

With new Global Performance Cache, your previews are saved and ready when you are — no more waiting for the application to catch up.

Adobe Evangelist Jason Levine provides an overview of After Effects CS6

Join Meagan at NAB 2012 as she talks to Art Nickel, a Media Producer at S.A. PRD about Adobe Premiere Pro CS6.

Make an instant Motion Graphics Promo using the new Create Shapes from Vector Layer in After Effects CS6.

How to get the most out of the Mask Feather Tool in After Effects CS6.

Create a 3D Eviorment using the CC Enviorment effect and the new Enviorment Layer using After Effects CS6.