Adobe After Effects 7 - How to Navigate the Interface of the Project Panel Video

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Adobe After Effects 7 - How to Navigate the Interface of the Project Panel

So we are going to start out here with a brand new project inside of After Effects. Now normally when you open the software one is created for you and that is basically what we are looking at there. If you are a previous user of After Effects though, this might be slightly confusing because what you are seeing looks like you have a project open. There is a composition window. There is a timeline all of the pallets and the project window are in place as well. So this is slightly confusing but this is just the way that After Effects 7 works. These panels that you see here are ready for us to show compositions and timelines in as in when we have the relevant pieces to play with. So what we will do is we will open up a project just so you can see the visual difference when you do so, just go out to the file menu and go straight down and choose open project or Ctrl+O, Command+O on the Mac. And I will go ahead and open project 2. This is simply called interface.aep, just double click to open that and you will notice that the only visual change will be that the project window now populates with content. The composition and the timeline are exactly as they were. Now if we go into the project window, you will see there is a list of clips. We are going to take a look at these in just a short while. Go ahead and open up this one here that is called “intro clip” and this is actually a composition. This is not a piece of footage or a piece of audio. This is an After Effects composition already pre-made into this project. So double click to open that and you will notice that two other panels in the interface have now become active, the composition window is showing the video content that we have for this clip, and also down here in the timeline there are the layers that make up this composition. Now the interface here in After Effects 7 is very different. We are going to take a quick look at some of the ways it can be changed around and customized. The first thing I want to do is point out the new structure that Adobe has created for organizing pallets into certain places in the interface. For example, in the upper right hand side here you will notice that the info and audio pallets are stored and you can switch between the two of them just like you have always been able to and very similar to every other Adobe application. However, if you right click on one of those say on the info panel, or control click on the Mac, it actually gives us a sense of what these things are now called. You will notice that this reference in here for a panel and also a frame. Well what we are looking at in the upper right hand side, if I just click off this. This is effectively a frame and it contains panels. This is the audio panel and this is the info panel, but they are both stored in one frame. Now this frame is actually scaleable. If you drag the bottom side you can drag its height down. You can also drag its width which will affect any window to the side of it, and you could also drag its corner which will scale all the windows around it. Now the reason I am showing you this is these two panels are stored inside the same frame. They can also be taken out and stored elsewhere. Now you can do this a couple of ways. If you grab the side of the info panel here and drag it around the screen, you will notice that wherever you position it in relation to other frames, you get these blue highlights that can define where the panels gets dropped. So if I simply let go of it here, you will notice that the info panel is now docked at the bottom of this particular frame which contains the composition and the info pallet. Likewise, you can pick it back up and drag it all the way back to its original position, yet you can still choose where it gets organized inside that frame. So again I could drop it down here at the bottom and everything else resizes accordingly. Now another thing you can do here, if I just drag that back up so it sits right next to the audio pallet, puts it bake pretty much where it was before. Again go to the right click option on the word info

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So we are going to start out here with a brand new project inside of After Effects. Now normally when you open the software one is created for you and that is basically what we are looking at there.

If you are a previous user of After Effects though, this might be slightly confusing because what you are seeing looks like you have a project open. There is a composition window. There is a timeline all of the pallets and the project window are in place as well. So this is slightly confusing but this is just the way that After Effects 7 works.

These panels that you see here are ready for us to show compositions and timelines in as in when we have the relevant pieces to play with. So what we will do is we will open up a project just so you can see the visual difference when you do so, just go out to the file menu and go straight down and choose open project or Ctrl+O, Command+O on the Mac.

And I will go ahead and open project 2. This is simply called interface.aep, just double click to open that and you will notice that the only visual change will be that the project window now populates with content. The composition and the timeline are exactly as they were.

Now if we go into the project window, you will see there is a list of clips. We are going to take a look at these in just a short while. Go ahead and open up this one here that is called “intro clip” and this is actually a composition. This is not a piece of footage or a piece of audio. This is an After Effects composition already pre-made into this project.

So double click to open that and you will notice that two other panels in the interface have now become active, the composition window is showing the video content that we have for this clip, and also down here in the timeline there are the layers that make up this composition.

Now the interface here in After Effects 7 is very different. We are going to take a quick look at some of the ways it can be changed around and customized. The first thing I want to do is point out the new structure that Adobe has created for organizing pallets into certain places in the interface.

For example, in the upper right hand side here you will notice that the info and audio pallets are stored and you can switch between the two of them just like you have always been able to and very similar to every other Adobe application.

However, if you right click on one of those say on the info panel, or control click on the Mac, it actually gives us a sense of what these things are now called. You will notice that this reference in here for a panel and also a frame. Well what we are looking at in the upper right hand side, if I just click off this.

This is effectively a frame and it contains panels. This is the audio panel and this is the info panel, but they are both stored in one frame. Now this frame is actually scaleable. If you drag the bottom side you can drag its height down. You can also drag its width which will affect any window to the side of it, and you could also drag its corner which will scale all the windows around it.

Now the reason I am showing you this is these two panels are stored inside the same frame. They can also be taken out and stored elsewhere. Now you can do this a couple of ways. If you grab the side of the info panel here and drag it around the screen, you will notice that wherever you position it in relation to other frames, you get these blue highlights that can define where the panels gets dropped.

So if I simply let go of it here, you will notice that the info panel is now docked at the bottom of this particular frame which contains the composition and the info pallet. Likewise, you can pick it back up and drag it all the way back to its original position, yet you can still choose where it gets organized inside that frame. So again I could drop it down here at the bottom and everything else resizes accordingly.

Now another thing you can do here, if I just drag that back up so it sits right next to the audio pallet, puts it bake pretty much where it was before. Again go to the right click option on the word info

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