After Effects, a powerful video-effects and broadcast animation program, has been a must-buy application for video producers of everything from CD-ROMs to commercials to films. After Effects 3.0 adds enhanced video-manipulation features and tighter integration with its Adobe siblings.
You can purchase After Effects 3.0 as a $995 base version, from standard software-distribution channels, or as a $1995 Production Bundle, from Adobe value-added resellers. The version I tested includes the Production Bundle, additional effects and functions that will appeal to video professionals; except where otherwise noted, the features I describe are in both versions.
After Effects now ships on a CD-ROM, which contains sample movies, application tips, and demonstration versions of MetaTools’ Final Effects (plug-in effects modules). Unfortunately, Adobe did not completely do away with copy protection. The Production Bundle comes with a hardware key that plugs into the Macintosh’s ADB port (a dongle). The program functions without the dongle, but the extra plug-ins are not available without it.
The After Effects World
After Effects isn't a general-purpose video editor the way Adobe Premiere or Avid VideoShop are. While you could use After Effects to create simple cuts and dissolves between scenes, people commonly use it to supplement an editing package. Its primary specialty is motion-based effects that involve multiple image layers: moving text, images, and video clips superimposed over full-screen video or patterned backgrounds.
The basic operating style of After Effects remains unchanged in this version. You work in two main windows: the Comp window, a large pasteboard on which you can layer and position elements such as video clips, text, and still images; and a Time Layout window, which you use to control how the position and characteristics of elements change over time. A set of elements and their associated motion and effects settings is called a composition.
A typical project begins with importing elements — QuickTime movies, PICT images, sound clips, or motion sequences or still images created in the Electric Image 3-D rendering package. To work with elements created on a PC or workstation, you may have to use a conversion program such as Equilibrium's DeBabelizer — which could significantly lengthen production time.
Version 3,0 supports Adobe Photoshop 3.0 files and filmstrips. After Effects retains all the layering information specified in Photoshop 3.0 files, including transfer modes and transparency settings, streamlining production if you use Photoshop to prepare still artwork.
After Effects also now supports Adobe Illustrator files (versions 1.1 through 5.5), Illustrator documents remain in their vector-oriented form until rendering time, so you can scale an image's proportions over time while retaining its sharpness — perfect for titles in which the camera appears to zoom through a letter... When you render with After Effects' best-quality option, the program antialiases the edges of the art.
Adobe has added support for video recorded using D1, a professional format in which pixels are rectangular rather than square as they are on the Mac. After Effects can import D1 video and reconcile the difference so that the video displays correctly, and it can output finished movies in the NTSC and PAL variations of the D1 format.
Making Motion
After importing source elements, you drag them into a Comp window, where you can position and resize them. One project can have numerous Comp windows, and you can nest one composition within another to simplify working with complex projects or to reuse parts of a project.
After Effects' Comp window provides a canvas that is much larger than a final movie's actual proportions. This enables you to position an dement completely outside the movie's boundaries and then have it fly into the frame.
Creating such a motion path involves using keyframes. Position the element at its initial position, move to a different point on After Effects' timeline ruler, and then move the element to its destination location. After Effects then interprets the path the element must take to get from paint A to point B,
That’s a simplified description. After Effects provides far more sophisticated motion controls than any other video-effects program. With the Timeline window, you can create multiple keyframes for a motion path to specify that an element change speed or direction along its path. You can draw Bézier curves to control speed or grab individual control points and drag them.
Creating and manipulating keyframes and motion paths is easier than in previous versions, thanks to si streamlined interface. You can now specify speed by specifying absolute values, such as 35 pixels per second. Most significant, however, After Effects now treats time and motion as two distinct attributes, enabling you to edit the shape of a clip’s motion path independently of the clip’s speed along the path. And you can specify that keyframes rove — move forward or backward in time — to create smooth changes over several keyframes.
Enhanced Effects
Another significant improvement is the ability to apply more than one effect to an element. In previous versions, applying more than one effect was cumbersome; in 3.0, you can easily apply up to 32 effects to a single layer. A new Effects Settings window lets you control the settings of each effect and the order in which to apply them.
After Effects 3.0 also provides better support for Adobe Photoshop filters. (Some Photoshop filters — Variations, Filter Factory, and Texture Fill — don't work in After Effects, however.)
As for masking, previous versions supported only oval, rectangle, and polygon mask shapes. After Effects 3.0 replaces polygon masks with Bezier masks, which provide Illustrator-like control points that enable you to create precise mask shapes.
After Effects will run on any Macintosh II- or Quadra-class machine, but anything less than a Power Mac is frustratingly slow. A PowerPC 604-based machine is best — Adobe says version 3.0 has been optimized to take advantage of the 604 chip.
After Effects 3.0 remains an audio weakling. You can vary the volume of an audio track over time, but there are no audio effects or sophisticated processing options. Audio is best handled by plugins such as those from Waves...
What differentiates the Production Bundle from the base version are some tremendously useful plug-ins for broadcast professionals and advanced multimedia developers. A set of keyframe assistants allows you to draw complex motion paths with the mouse in real time and calculate motion paths using a built-in scripting language. A Motion Stabilize command removes handheld-camera jitter, while a Motion Tracker command lets you synchronize the location of one element with an exact point on another element. The Production Bundle also includes significant enhancements to After Effects' keying features, nine additional distortion filters, and plug-ins for controlling high-end digital disk recorders from Abekas and Accom.
The Last Word
Both After Effects versions provide the same top-drawer rendering quality. However, the Production Bundle is well worth the extra grand for video professionals. The creators of After Effects 3.0 did an A-plus job of making this already unparalleled program better while also bringing it into the Adobe fold. If you're a video producer whose work requires digital effects, you need After Effects.
Heid, Jim. (March 1996). After Effects 3.0. Macworld. (pgs. 54-55).
Adobe Systems, Inc.
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Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
