From the course: After Effects CC 2021 Essential Training: Editors and Post

Big-picture concepts - After Effects Tutorial

From the course: After Effects CC 2021 Essential Training: Editors and Post

Start my 1-month free trial

Big-picture concepts

- [Instructor] Both After Effects and Premiere are similar in that they are used for the manipulation of video, but differ in their philosophy approach and workflow. One of the main differences is that After Effects is mainly used for compositing, while Premiere is used for editing. Here in this movie, we'll take a look at some of the big picture concepts that differentiate After Effects from Premiere. One important concept is that Premiere deals with tracks, and within those tracks, you can host multiple clips. After Effects doesn't have tracks and instead each clip has to live on its own separate layer that is then stacked vertically. After Effects tends to be more shot centric, while Premiere uses a more sequenced centric approach. While After Effects is great for manipulating one or a few shots together, editing a long form project would be better suited for Premiere Another distinction is that the timeline is infinitely long in Premiere, while in After Effects, the composition duration must be defined by the user. In After Effects there are compositions and that's the home to all the assets used in an animation. They're analogous to Premiere timelines, but you can have compositions inside of compositions with After Effects, and that's a powerful way to compose and animate elements. They're kind of like nested timelines in Premiere, but they're much more powerful. When it comes to layers, both After Effects and Premiere can have footage stacked on top of one another, revealing or obscuring the other elements beneath it. However, After Effects has something called shape layers, which are a powerful vector-based tool that is unique to After Effects. Regarding animation, After Effects has keyframes on the layer itself. While keyframing in Premiere offers the basics, After Effects has much more powerful tools for animation. Both After Effects and Premiere make use of effects to alter our layers and clips by changing the color, behavior, and overall look. Another distinction and something unique to After Effects is that our workspace can occupy 3D space in addition to 2D. Placing our elements in the frame can take place in 2D and 3D space to give our work added depth. And lastly, in After Effects rendering is how we can output our work to disk so we can share it with others in its finished state. In Premiere, exporting is the term to output the sequence for distribution. Both After Effects and Premiere have functionalities that overlap and can differ in their execution. However, there are parts that are unique to each application and it's in these areas that we'll learn about and see how After Effects can be used to better manipulate video.

Contents