After Effects Common Mistakes and Solutions Part 2 Video Tutorial

Going Inside Layers

1. To go inside a piece of footage, a Precomp, or a regular layer, double-click on the layer within the layer stack.
2. To go back to the main composition, click on the main composition's name in the Project Panel window or on top of the layer stack.

 

Toggle Switches/Modes

1. To locate Layer Modes and associated settings, click on Toggle Switches/Modes at the bottom of the layer stack. 
2. To locate Switches, repeat step 1. 

 

Columns & Panes

1. If any of the layers stack's columns are missing, they may have been accidentally removed. To fix that, right-click on any of the column names.
2. Select any column to have it appear again in the layer stack.
3. To reorder columns, click and drag any column to the right or left.

 

Shy Switch

1. If an object is visible within the composition window but invisible within the layer stack, check to see if the Sky switch is activated. The switch looks like a person's face peeking over a fence. It's located at the top of the layer stack to the right of the cube icon.
2. If the Shy switch is active, it will hide any layers with their own Shy switches activated. To reverse this, click the master Shy switch on top of the layer stack.
3. To turn off a layer's Shy switch, click on the smaller Shy switch to the right of the layer's name within the stack.

 

Broken File Links

1. If an object in the composition window or Project panel appears corrupted, it's almost certainly due to a missing file link. To remedy this, right-click on the affected footage within the Project panel.
2. Navigate to Reload Missing Footage.
3. Locate where the appropriate file within the computer.
4. Select the file.
5. Hit OK. Doing this will reconnect the file location with the project, making the object load correctly.

 

Mask & Effect Order

1. Depending on how they're ordered, masks and Effects applied to a layer influence each other. If a layer has multiple Fill effects, the topmost one will be the only one visible.
2. To rearrange Effects and Masks, toggle open the layer options.
3. Grab and drag the Effects and Masks to reorder them. The topmost Effect or Mask will cover the rest below them. If the Effect or Mask is transparent or doesn't cover the layer completely, the underlying effects will still show through.

 

Slow Performance

1. If After Effects lags, it might be due to too many assets. Deleting unnecessary assets can help reduce the strain on the program and machine.
2. Another option is to ensure the Motion Blur switch is turned on at the end.
3. Alternatively, go into Edit > Preferences > Media & Disk Cache.
4. Click on Empty Disk Cache.
5. Hit OK. These methods should speed up the performance of After Effects.

 

Large Video File Size

1. If the program is outputting massive file sizes, there are ways to reduce this. First, make sure that the animation is trimmed. Move the playhead to wherever the animation ends.
2. Hit N to trim the animation.
3. Another option is to ensure that the correct file type is selected. Go to Composition > Add To Adobe Media Encoder Queue.
4. Within the Encoder Queue, click on the file's format.
5. A new window should pop up. Underneath the word Format, there will be a dropdown list. Open up the dropdown list.
6. Locate the H264 format. This format is a standard file type that balances quality with file size. Larger file formats include Quicktime and AVI files. Avoid using these codecs if space is a concern.

 

Looping Expression Error

1. If a project has a Loop expression applied to it, and an error message keeps occurring, it could be due to missing keyframes. To avoid this issue, open up the Timeline.
2. Ensure at least two keyframes are placed on the animated layer's Timeline. Slide the playhead to the desired spot and hit the diamond shape next to the animated property if missing. Doing this will set a new keyframe.

 

Video Transcription

00:00:00:08 - 00:00:20:04

Tziporah

Hey, everyone. This is part two of a two part series on common mistakes in Adobe After Effects and how to fix them. We're going to link part one down below in the description when it comes out. If you hear weird sounds, that is my cat trying to help me out with this tutorial. He doesn't know anything about Adobe after Effects, but he does provide moral support and sometimes destroys my equipment.

 

00:00:20:15 - 00:00:44:29

Tziporah

So yes, here we are. Noises. That's him. Hey, man. Hey, babka. Anyways, on to the tutorial. All right. Sometimes when you're clicking around and after effects, you might actually double click player and all that does. It takes you inside that layers individual pre comp, You can see its own timeline. All you've got to do is navigate over here to go back to your original.

 

00:00:44:29 - 00:01:09:04

Tziporah

And if you accidentally click inside a piece of footage like this, it's just going to open up like a layer panel. Again, let's head back here with composition one. So the next thing and after effects some you see all this which is down here. Now, if you're looking for color modes and that kind of thing, you want to hit toggle switches and modes for them to show you like your trackman, your parent and length column mode for your modes.

 

00:01:09:15 - 00:01:29:10

Tziporah

But either way, let's say you're not seeing any of these guys even when you hit toggle switches and modes. It might be because you've accidentally hit some of these days, you know. So you might be seeing this instead. Now, this happens when you hit in a couple of these columns. Now, the way to reveal again is you right click on any of these columns.

 

00:01:29:18 - 00:01:47:24

Tziporah

You go over two columns and then you find the one that you're missing and then use add it back in. Now, you like having these panes, these columns in a particular order. You can grab them and actually move them around to like fit however you want your workplace to be. Not only that, you see down here, this is real small, but you see the couple of switches over here.

 

00:01:48:07 - 00:02:12:15

Tziporah

So each of these expands or collapses each of these panes. So if you want to see all your options on the layer switches pane, then you hit this leftmost button. But if you don't, you just hide it. You know, this goes for the transfer controls pane. I just hit it in for this. This is the in out and duration and stretch panes.

 

00:02:12:23 - 00:02:36:12

Tziporah

So that's like determining how long your composition is so that I could really extend to see all the timestamps for how long each layer is. And finally, we've got the render time pane. Once I open that up, it'll tell me how long each of these has in terms of render time. So sometimes in your animation you'll be able to see like an object in your composition window.

 

00:02:36:12 - 00:02:52:05

Tziporah

Here. But when you go to look for it in the timeline, you can't seem to find it like, Where is my dog? Layer over here. When that happens, make sure that your shy switch isn't set on this thing. It kind of looks like Kilroy was here. Kind of deal like a person with a big nose looking over a wall.

 

00:02:52:22 - 00:03:12:07

Tziporah

And you'll see it's blue, which means it's switched on. So I'm going to hit it in there. There's my dog layer again. And you can see that the shy switch has been activated because of the little guys hiding somewhere in the background. And now, even if I accidentally hit this, they're not going to disappear. Conversely, if they're already hidden, they're going to become invisible, which is how you can spot your missing layer.

 

00:03:12:14 - 00:03:34:18

Tziporah

All right. Another common mistake. So you're getting this error message. It says a file cannot be found. Don't forget, this is real easy to do. To hit. Okay. What's happening here is after effects after effect is very straightforward in how it thinks. Basically, it's like if you put a file in a certain folder, it's only going to look in the initial folder that the file was in.

 

00:03:35:07 - 00:03:51:20

Tziporah

So in order to fix that, we're going to go over to whatever's missing and you can tell what's missing because it's got this little corrupted icon over here. You're going to right click on it and you're going to hit replace footage file. You can see controller command, which is the shortcut for that. You can also call this real inking, but technically it's called replace.

 

00:03:51:24 - 00:04:10:08

Tziporah

That'll bring up your file explorer over here. So start looking for where you move the folder or move the file. There we go. I found the yipping dog right here in this folder. Is it port? Here you go. It's fixed right up. In some cases, you'll even see the corrupted files in the composition window. It looks just the same.

 

00:04:10:08 - 00:04:27:06

Tziporah

It's like colorful block, but nothing strange about the method. That's how you fix it. All right. Now, I know this file certainly looks very different, but this is all temporary, basically point of view. So effects and a couple masks to the dog. So I'm going to show you how order of effects and masks within later can alter that layer's appearance.

 

00:04:27:15 - 00:04:41:15

Tziporah

So let's say you're like, okay, I don't want the color of my whatever. I'm going to use the full effect over here. I'm going to change it to periwinkle, right? And then you're like, Well, actually, I think I want it maybe more like a fuchsia. I'm going to add a couple of masks also to play around with it.

 

00:04:41:25 - 00:05:02:01

Tziporah

And you're like, Why am I not seeing my fuchsia color? So check it out. If you go over to whatever you're working with and you open up all the properties here, now, you know you've added these effects to fill one and the fill. Now filter is above so one, and I'm going to drag it down, see whatever effect is on top.

 

00:05:02:17 - 00:05:19:20

Tziporah

That's the one that's going to show through. Now, it's the one that you want is not appearing. Check to make sure that it's not squished at the bottom of its own layer stack here. Same goes for masks. Let's see. You're like, I don't want this effect. This is not the one that I wanted. So again, make sure that your masks are ordered correctly.

 

00:05:20:11 - 00:05:42:14

Tziporah

Maybe this is the fact that you want instead, this is just a general tip. But if you find that your machine is moving real slow, you might have too many assets running within the project. And so I'll show you ways to clean that up. First off, you can just, you know, delete a couple. Secondly, if you have a couple of like effects like this adjustment layer or paper, these paper textures, that takes a lot of memory hide until very end.

 

00:05:42:20 - 00:06:07:19

Tziporah

That should improve your performance. And finally, head over to edit preferences media in this cache. Make sure that enable this caches you know enabled and then empty this cache. Make sure you hit okay again. And that should help speed things up. So let's see of looping animation like this weird one I just made removal tutorial on how to make those, by the way.

 

00:06:07:19 - 00:06:25:28

Tziporah

So check those out and let's say you got an expression error like this. It's likely that you deleted some key frames by accident. Clicking on the error message in this magnifying glass here is going to highlight where the error is. And of course, you know it's here because the only frame is looping expression. Putting the key frames back should fix that.

 

00:06:26:16 - 00:06:50:00

Tziporah

All right. Finally, let's say that the files that you're out putting are absolutely massive. It's likely that you selected the wrong format to export in. So you've hit render settings. You've gotten this far. So in order to open up this window, you want to hit over here. File output model lost. Let's go over to format and now you've got AVR selected.

 

00:06:50:17 - 00:07:14:26

Tziporah

Those things are huge. Generally, it's a better idea to try to use something like h264, which again, a video is always going to be big, but there are bigger and smaller video formats. Another thing to do. Let's head back to Camp one. Number two, trim the end of your animation because it might be really, really far. Like you know, this is 14 seconds and that's much more than we need in order to show up this animation.

 

00:07:15:09 - 00:07:36:25

Tziporah

Remember to trim it by either sliding this little thing, this little in and out point on your timeline or just hitting end to end your timeline over here. So, yeah, that's a whole bunch of common issues you might come across in the program. Don't feel bad if you get into a few issues like this. I know that learning anything new can be difficult and frustrating, but these are common just in general.

 

00:07:36:25 - 00:07:50:16

Tziporah

Keep your project organized. Make sure you've got the correct boxes checked and modes toggled and you'll be golden. So yeah, that's all for this tutorial. I hope you've enjoyed learning how to fix those common issues in Adobe After Effects. So this has been designed for Noble desktop.