details of what's coming in the next major update to After Effects

details of what's coming in the next major update to After Effects

by Todd Kopriva

on Apr 2, 2014 at 4:23:22 am

Here are the details of what's coming in the next major update to After Effects:
http://bit.ly/AE_CC_next_details

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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Re: details of what's coming in the next major update to After Effects

by Declan Smith

on Apr 2, 2014 at 11:13:48 am
Last Edited By Declan Smith on Apr 2, 2014 at 12:38:09 pm

I don't wish to seem glib, but my understanding was that one of the main selling points of Creative Cloud was that users could get updates and new features rapidly as they became available with no more having to wait for large product releases, or Major releases as that was the 'old' way software was delivered. Has the model now changed back to traditional product releases ?

Declan Smith
http://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

"it's either binary or it's not"

Re: details of what's coming in the next major update to After Effects

by Erik Lindahl

on Apr 2, 2014 at 2:38:09 pm

Does this mean Premier Pro / AE / AME will have the ability to import and playback DCP's also?

Have you updated masks in any way with this release? Previously using a mask on a layer as it's alfa / matte could cause a lot of unwanted artifacts with certain filters - even built in ones. Also, the previous "tracking" feature of masks was quite terribad seeing you went back to the 90's and merged the tacking and maskin data into each other. Why not use something like Mocha as your tacking back-end? Less keyframes, the ability to re-use tacking data across multiple sources (not just masks) - the possibilities and bonuses are limitless.

Can we (finally) select any layer or mask as our matte for a given layer? Or is this asking too much?

Will this release improve the situation of thing between AE and PrPro? I've been quite surprised how poorly things translate between the apps when this is one of your major selling points. You still in the latest version call different filter differently in the two apps an as stated, the workflow between the apps could be tons better.

Will we ever see anything new in the workflow-area? I.e. having one of your apps splitting media into a set directory structure in a given manner for mor efficient post workflows and versioning's? Will we see some kind of scene and edit version support in Premier? What about useable image sequence support?

Sorry for the bombardment but I always hope a lot of these things will be fixed at some point.

Re: details of what's coming in the next major update to After Effects

by Joseph W. Bourke

on Apr 2, 2014 at 2:43:49 pm

I believe that the CC updates have been coming in a periodic fashion, and have not been tied to a major release cycle as in the past. But to not have major news at NAB would be downright crazy. The logic appears obvious to me: "Do we do a major AE release where there are thousands of world wide media professionals in attendance, or at the local barber shop in Fresno on free balloon day?"

While it may have entailed a slight delay (or not - how would I know?) in one of the releases, not doing a major release at NAB would be sheer marketing folly. Timing is everything...

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

Re: details of what's coming in the next major update to After Effects

by Erik Lindahl

on Apr 2, 2014 at 3:16:42 pm

…and to be honest, this release doesn't that that massive.

Re: details of what's coming in the next major update to After Effects

by Walter Soyka

on Apr 2, 2014 at 4:05:43 pm

[Erik Lindahl] "…and to be honest, this release doesn't that that massive"

It makes sense to me that more frequent releases means smaller releases. Under the old model, this next version of Ae would also have carried every new feature introduced in 12.1 and 12.2.

I know this next part is subjective, but I'm a lot happier with the direction of development now than I was a couple years ago. I needed per-effect masking and Ae templates with editable text in Premiere a lot more than I needed the raytracing renderer.

In my mind, a set of "little" features as we've seen over the last year is more exciting than a couple of "big" features we were seeing a couple years ago.

Then again, that doesn't mean I've stopped filing "big" feature requests!

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog - What I'm thinking when my workstation's thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

Re: details of what's coming in the next major update to After Effects

by Erik Lindahl

on Apr 2, 2014 at 5:07:43 pm

I fully agree. Frequent feature updates and bug fixes are very welcome. I just hope the features they push actually work in the real world. Masks have been some what iffy in AE previously in conjunction with filters, PrPro has had a horrible mask / matte engine. The whole mask-tracking feature sounded AMAZING but in reality it's so-so useful in something like AE. For an editor like PrPro I can see some function for sure but still quite an odd solution in this day and age. Text templates sound amazing for some workflows. Just hope it works in a sane way and performance isn't horrible.

Re: details of what's coming in the next major update to After Effects

by Todd Kopriva

on Apr 2, 2014 at 3:20:45 pm
Last Edited By Todd Kopriva on Apr 2, 2014 at 3:54:07 pm

> I don't wish to seem glib, but my understanding was that one of the main selling points of Creative Cloud was that users could get updates and new features rapidly as they became available with no more having to wait for large product releases, or Major releases as that was the 'old' way software was delivered. Has the model now changed back to traditional product releases ?

In the past, we released software once every 12-18 months.

We've released three versions with new features---and just now revealed a fourth---in 10 months.

That's a lot more rapid, without "waiting".

We do still need to bundle changes together so that we can package and broadly test features, installers, et cetera... as well as so that we can talk about the updates more easily than if we released an update every week with one feature change each.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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Re: details of what's coming in the next major update to After Effects

by Declan Smith

on Apr 2, 2014 at 3:29:33 pm

Thanks for the clarity.

Declan Smith
http://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

"it's either binary or it's not"