Hello and welcome to the 12th episode in this Beginner's Guide to Adobe After Effects.
In this tutorial I'm going to be discussing pre composing in After
Effects. So in a previous video we learned how to edit multiple video clips
in After Effects in a single composition. Now at this point it would be helpful
for you to learn about pre composing. In After Effects pre-composing basically
allows you to take multiple layers in a composition and place them into a single
composition to allow you to control that one composition separately. Pre-composing
in After Effects can make your workflow much easier and improve your
organization. For those of you that are familiar with Photoshop it may help to
think of pre-composing like grouping or using smart objects. In After Effects
this allows you to work much more effectively. So in this video we are
going to be covering the following topics: What is precomposing?
and pre-composing layers in After Effects. After this video you will understand how to
pre-compose and manage your layers more effectively. So let's get into it! so here
I am in Adobe After Effects and I have a project open here that I am going to use
to demonstrate how pre-composing works. Now if you have the project folder you
can open up the document I have here, with the project folder open, click into
the S2 essential practice folder, into folder 12 pre-comps and open the
pre-comps After Effects file and you will have the same document I have opened
here. Now if you don't have the project folder and you want to follow along with
this tutorial using this document I have prepared especially for you, you can
download this project folder for a small fee the download link with instructions
is in the description. The download folder comes with lots of exercise
documents we will be using on this course that have been carefully
developed to aid your learning experience. The folder also comes with
document resources such as videos graphics and images you can use to build
your first video presentation from scratch later on in this course. To get
the full learning experience I recommend you get the project folder,
download link with instructions is in the description. so with the project
folder open, click into the S2 essential practice folder, into folder 12 pre comps
and open the pre comps After Effects file, and you will have the same
document I have opened here. OK so looking here in the timeline panel we
can see we have three layers. Now if we look at the icon for each layer by the
name over on the left, we can see a composition icon, this means that these
layers are composition layers. So if I make sure the time indicator is at the
start of the timeline and press spacebar to activate preview, what we have here is
a small graphic intro sequence, then some video footage of Hyde Park London and
some video taken at the Aquarium. So I'll press spacebar to stop the preview and
if we come to the first layer, the bottom layer called Intro, let's double click
this. Upon click we will open the comp up in a separate tab and we will also
see a new tab on the timeline panel. Here we can see it contains all the
individual layers that make up this comp. Now if we come back to the main comp by
clicking on the main comp tab, this time I'm going to double click on the Hyde
Park edit layer, upon click we will open up another tab and we can see it
contains the individual video layers that make up this video edit comp.
Upon click we will again see a new tab on the timeline panel. Now if we come
back to the main comp by clicking on the tab this time I'm going to double click
on the Aquarium edit layer, and again we can see it contains all the individual
video layers that make up this comp. Upon click we will also see a new tab on the
timeline panel. So I'll come back to the main comp by clicking on the tab, so here
we have a single composition which only includes three layers but each layer
contains a complex set of layers carefully edited. These layers have been
pre-composed. So why would we do something like this? Well this allows us
the flexibility to compartmentalize the media on our timeline and manage them
individually instead of having to manage lots and lots of
layers at a time. So let's have a go at this and see this in action. So with the
project folder open click into the S2 essential practice folder, into folder 12
pre-comps and opened the pre-comps worksheet After Effects file and you
will have the same document I have opened here. So here we have the same
document we just saw but without the pre-composed layers. So I'll place my
mouse cursor carefully between the timeline panel and the composition panel,
when the mouse cursor changes to arrows up and down, I'll click and drag up a
little. This will allow me to expand the timeline panel so we can see the layers
a little bit more clearly. So unlike the previous file which has three layers
here we can see all the layers in one composition. Now you will find that as
you add lots of media to your project it will soon build up like this and it can
get overwhelming pretty quickly. So one method to make this easier to manage is
to pre-compose your layers. So if I scrub my time indicator across the timeline we
can see we have the various parts. What I want to do now is pre-compose these
layers into various sections. So I'll begin with the first part, so the first
four layers here in the timeline panel are making up a simple intro to the
video sequence. So I'll start by pre- composing these. So to pre-compose layers
first select the top layer you want, so here I'll click on the top yellow
layer, I'll hold shift and select the bottom layer, by holding shift this will
select them all then I'll right-click on any of the layers,
I'll come across and click pre-compose. Upon click you will see a menu box open.
So first I'll name this to intro at the top, then I'll make sure I have 'move all
tributes into the new composition' checked,
I'll make sure 'adjust composition duration to the timespan of the selected
layer' is checked, this will mean that the new comp will only be as long as the
content selected, on this occasion I would also make sure 'open in new comp' is
checked and I'll click OK. Upon click we will now open a new composition and the
layers I initially selected will be inside, also notice that in the project
panel a new composition will appear, notice that this will be revealed as a
new tab in the timeline panel. So next I will click back onto the main comp tab
and now we can see that those layers have been reduced into one composition
layer in the main comp, if I want to change the color of this layer to match
the yellow I can simply click on the color box next to the layer name and
select yellow, easy! Now if I want to edit this I can simply double-click on the
comp layer and it will open up the new tab. So back into the main comp I'll do
the same again, but this time for my Hyde Park players.
So here I'll click on the top green layer, I'll hold shift and select the
bottom layer and this will select them all, then I'll right-click on any of the
layers, I'll come across and click pre-compose.
Upon click you will see a menu box open, first I'll name this to 'Hyde Park edit'
at the top I'll make sure I have 'move all attributes into the new composition'
checked and 'adjust composition duration to the time span of the selected layer'
checked, on this occasion, I'll also make sure that 'open in new comp' is checked and
I'll click OK. Upon click we will now open a new composition and the layers I
initially selected will be inside, notice that this will be revealed as a new tab
in the timeline panel and in the project panel a new composition will appear.
So I'll click back onto the main comp tab and now we can see that those layers
have been reduced into one composition layer in the main comp. If I want to
change the color of this layer to match the green I can simply click on the
color box next to the layer name and select green, if I want to edit this I
can simply double click on the comp layer and it will open up in a new tab.
So back into the main comp I'll do the same again but this time for my aquarium
layers. So here I'll click on the top red layer, I'll hold shift and select the
bottom layer, with them all selected I'll right-click on any of the layers and
I'll come and click on pre-compose, upon click the menu box will open. So first
I'll name this to aquarium edit at the top I'll make sure I have 'move all the
tributes into a new composition' checked and 'adjust composition duration to the
timespan of the selected layer' checked. On this occasion I'll also make sure
that 'open in new comp' is checked and I'll click OK. Upon click
we will again open a new composition and the layers I initially selected will
be inside. Notice that in the project panel a new composition will appear, also
notice that this will be revealed in a new tab in the timeline panel. So next I
will click back onto the main comp tab and now we can see that those layers
have been reduced into one composition layer in the main comp. If I want to
change the color of this layer to match the red I can simply click on the color
box next to the layer name and select red and now we have a neat and tidy main
comp layer of just three layers, which I have the option to move, reorder and control individually.
So one of the most useful reasons to pre-compose layers is to
apply effects to the comps as a whole without having to tweak each individual
video clip, for example if I double click into the Aquarium clip, right now this
clip is about 30 seconds long. So back into the main comp, what if I wanted to
alter the speed of this clip? Well in the previous video we learned how to alter
speed of a video by using time stretch. So I'll right click on the comp, come up
time, then click 'time stretch' with the menu up I'll type in 50% and click
OK. So just like that I can alter the time of the entire Aquarium edit without
touching any of the individual layers. So I'll make sure my time indicator is at
the start of the timeline panel and I'll press spacebar to preview. So now we have
the intro as normal the Hyde Park video as normal but now we can see the
Aquarium clip plays faster at twice the speed. Now if I double click into the
aquarium pre-comp, the time of the original video files are unaffected. So
pre-comps can be used not just to organize your layers but to apply
effects to a group of layers without altering the original edit or sequence.
We just saw one example there where we can alter the time but there are lots
more effects that can be added to comp layers like this. Pre-composing gives us
lots of flexibility in After Effects when working on the timeline, especially
when working with complex sequences. So that's how you can
precompose in After Effects. So up until this point in the course we have covered
some of the fundamentals in After Effects. This is all in aid to give you
some good grounding knowledge of how things work so you will feel comfortable
with the software and feel less intimidated by it. So now we have lots of
fundamentals covered it's time to start to look at how we can create in After
Effects. So over the next few videos we are going to look at how we can start to
build and include media into our video sequences and first we are going to look
at how we can use assets and media brought in from other design programs
like Adobe Photoshop and illustrator. So in the next video I will be discussing
how to import media from other programs and manage them in After Effects.
So see you in the next video!