How to Create an Audio Spectrum in Adobe After Effects. With this tutorial you will learn how to make a colorful rendition of an audiofile using the audio spectrum in Adobe After Effects. How To Create Animated Fire In After Effects. Follow this video tutorial the next time you need a cartoon flaming log.

With Adobe After Effects, you can create incredible motion graphics and visual effects for film, TV, video, and the web. Is the free trial a complete version of After Effects? Yes, it includes all the features and updates in the latest version of After Effects. Will this free After Effects work on macOS and Windows? Here are the top 10 effects in Adobe After Effects in my opinion. Please let me know what you think of the best effects. Also, I will definitely be remaking. After Effects is often not the last step in a production pipeline and you want the highest quality file when exporting for the next step. AME can give you the H.264 (as well as every other codec Adobe supports, including Animation) file with the benefit of being able to process in the background while you continue to work in After Effects.

This tutorial is on the different options to play (preview or playback) your composition in After Effects. I’ll show you how to do a RAM Preview, how to preview just the audio, some keyboard shortcuts and more.

By the way, big announcement below! Keep reading after the tutorial!!

Recapping Tutorial on How to Play a Composition in After Effects

There’s a number of ways to play a composition but to get started in After Effects you really only need to know two: RAM Preview and Preview Audio Only.

You would think that just hitting the spacebar that After Effects would play your composition like normal (just like every other video program) but it doesn’t 🙄. So what do we do?

First, open or find the Preview panel. If you can’t find it go up to the Window menu and find Preview. The keyboard shortcut is Command+3 if you’re on a Mac or Control+3 if you’re on a PC. In the Preview panel I really like to have From Current Time checked. This plays the composition from the time position indicator, not from the very start of the comp. From Current Time may be different in later versions of After Effects.

Note: In AE CC 2017 “From Current Time” is now the “Play From” dropdown

There may be other options you’ll want to eventually explore in the Preview panel such as changing the RAM Preview button but to get started in After Effects the only thing you might want to change is the Play From option.

RAM Preview

To preform a RAM Preview hit the zero (0) key on the number pad. The zero (o) key on the top row numbers (the ones above the letters) does something else. Alternatively you can click the RAM Preview button in the Preview panel.

You’ll see the green bar at the time of the timeline start to fill. If you wait long enough, or if you have enough RAM in your computer, the entire composition will load green and After Effects will play your composition. If you don’t have enough RAM, After Effects will load as much as possible into your RAM and start to play when there’s no more room.

Instead of waiting for the entire composition to load or if you just need to play a small section, hit the zero (0) key again on the number pad and your composition will start to play.

Play Audio Only in After Effects

To play just the audio hit the period / decimal point (.) on the number pad. Hitting the period key in the regular keyboard, the key next to the comma, will do something else. This takes no time at all and begins playing right away.

Below are useful links related to the tutorial:

Announcement!: The Command+Edit Podcast

HEY! I’ve been working on this secret project for the past few months. I haven’t announced it anywhere but on Twitter and now right here. If you’re reading this then I know you’d be interested in it. It’s a podcast about video editing and life. It’s me and another editor, Nick, unfiltered and talking about all the struggles and successes about life as a video editor. Anyway, we JUST went live on iTunes. I’d absolutely love for you to check it out and let me know what you think. The link is below. I’m going to have a ton more about this soon. Give it a listen! Please?

Reach out to me if you have any questions on this tutorial or anything else After Effects, motion graphics, video or post production-related. I’m here to help you emotionally, mentally and technically as a video editor.

Doubtlessly, Adobe After Effects is one of the best tools and backbone for graphic designer and motion graphic maniacs. There is nothing in motion graphics that cannot be done via Adobe After Effects. Although, this is much expensive but you will get the more value than its price. You might have heard about more other software for motion graphics and 2D animation but nothing can beat this beast.

Nobody can describe this software in one line but you can call it as backbone of graphic designer. You can create various things using this software. For instance, you can create high quality graphics, unique motion graphics, unbelievable animation and more others. There is one more thing that can be done using this After Effects.

You know that YouTube is the second largest search engine out there. Whenever, you create a channel professionally, you supposed to do some branding. YouTube channel branding means, high quality video, a good logo and most importantly, an attractive intro that will describe your channel to your viewers. Generally, most of the professional YouTube channel owners use intro video at the starting of each video. That is really an awesome thing for branding.

Therefore, Adobe After Effects can create eye-catching intro video for your YouTube channel. Although, it takes few minutes or hours for a newbie but professional Adobe After Effects users can do that within few moments. That is pretty good.

After Effects For Editing

However, everything is ok except exporting. Generally, After Effects doesn’t offer any standard file format to save your intro video or anything that is created in this tool. That is the actual problem. Suppose, you have made a small video clip for YouTube but you cannot export or save it in any standard format such as .mp4 or similar to this.

If you are facing the same issue after creating a video clip in AE, here is a solution. This will help you to convert any Adobe After Effects project (.aep) file to .mp4 within seconds.

How to convert After Effects Project to .mp4?

This is very easy and it consumes less time than your video development time. At first, open your .aep file in AE. You can do the same thing with the file that you are currently creating. Therefore, select the entire file after importing the project.

Adobe After Effects Video Editing

Now, click on Composition and New Composition respectively.

After that, copy all the files from your project and paste that in the new Composition. Therefore, click on Compositions and Add to Render Queue respectively.

Now, click on Lossless.

After that, expand the drop-down menu and select H.264. If your video clip contains audio, just tick on Audio Output. Otherwise, leave it blank.

After doing the aforementioned step, the Output path and file should be changed to name.mp4.

If you cannot find and relate the output file name and composition name, just click on the output file name. Now, select a path and file name.

At last, click on Render button.

That’s all! It takes few times to convert your Adobe After Effects project to .mp4.

Adobe After Effects Video Tutorials

Hope this tutorial will help you a lot. Do let us know if you have any problem.