An easier way in AE?

Elfed · Post by **Elfed** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 2:12 pm

I'm sorry for the ignorant question but it would seriously help me out a lot if someone could give me their input. This isn't really something I can search for. I bought After Effects about a week ago. Throughout this whole week I have done nothing but read the manual, read tutorials, the help engine and everything. Because I wanted to know exactly what I was doing. The past two days I have started my video and I was wondering if there is an easier way to match up the clips to the beat of the music. I have found this extremely hard to do using AE.

I find the clips I want via VirtualDubMod then save it as an AVI. Import it into AE then place them on the timeline and hope it is somewhere near the beat in the music I want it at. Then I click the icon for a RAM preview, find out that it's no where near the beat...I try to keep my eye on the timeline for the beat so I know where to replace the clip to. Then I do it all over again for the next clip.

In short, I am wondering if I am doing this process right. A lot of what I do seems tedious. Adobe Premiere was a lot easier cropping clips, and dragging the marker to hear the music (and find out where the beats are). So am I doing this right, or is there an easier and less painful process?

Thanks.

BigDude · Post by **BigDude** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 2:18 pm

Well, to hear the audio on the timeline, hold down 'ctrl' and scrub through it. That should make it easier to match up with the beats.

V13tB0i · Post by **V13tB0i** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 2:19 pm

Eh... Aren't you suppose to do movie stuff on Adobe Premiere, not Effects. Adobe After Effects is for editing / special effects. Or so I think...

Elfed · Post by **Elfed** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 3:28 pm

Thank you so much, BigDude! That's exactly what I needed. That will make editing so much easier!

V13tB0i, you're correct. Premiere is for video editing while After Effects is for video effects. I have about five seconds where I want to do this effect to my AMV...five seconds may seem like a short period but to a fast-paced music video (which will contain about six different clips from the series) it is very time consuming.

Thanks again, BigDude.

V13tB0i · Post by **V13tB0i** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 3:41 pm

Err... No problem dude, lol.