Adobe After Effects 4.1 Production Bundle

Key features--such as saving RAM previews, composition, project-tree navigation windows, and even effects settings--make this version a solid package and a worthwhile upgrade.

If you've watched any major cable network, a recent feature film, or a corporate presentation, you've probably seen After Effects at work. Used for layering, compositing, and animating of elements like video footage, Photoshop files, and Illustrator files, After Effects is the heart of motion graphics for video and multimedia.

It can also be used for animation ("Bluue's Clues" is made using it) and special effects, and by mixing and matching the wide variety of effects and filters that are included, one can make an endless variety of backgrounds, visual effects, and animated textures.

The biggest drawback to After Effects is the time it takes to render footage. This can vary from just a few minutes to hours and hours--even days--depending on the output resolution and the amount of layering and effects being calculated. In light of this, After Effects 4.1 now has an unlimited-license network render module. You can now have all available computers rendering away on the same job, churning out frames. The performance of this feature is dependent on the speed of the network--but we wouldn't try this on anything less than fast Ethernet (100baseT).

After Effects remains a flexible and important tool for any animator or digital video artist, whether the method of delivery is video, film, the Web, or CD-ROM. --Mike Caputo

Amazon.com Product Description
Adobe After Effects 4.1 offers extraordinary creative freedom and control for designing sophisticated motion graphics and visual effects for film, video, multimedia, and the Web. Its tight integration with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere gets you up and running fast and makes you more productive. Choose between the Standard version, with a core tool set for motion-graphics professionals, and the Production Bundle, with more advanced motion-control and keying capabilities, plus additional 3-D channel, audio, and visual effects.

The user-model is thorough and obviously has been arrived at through meticulous research and user-testing amongst professionals engaged in real-world post-production situations. The feature set is balanced and the user-interface metaphors finely tailored to the art of multi-layered, concurrent, motion-image production. Be it expressive motion graphics for a corporate video, undetectable compositing for broadcast, or sublime title sequences for feature films, in caring hands there is little in the video arts that cannot be achieved with After-Effects.

Alas, there are some shortcomings, one is that the color-space model is limited to 8-bit color (rather than the 16-bit that feature film work often demands). Another is the really unfortunate lack of 3D space (which means that objects can not be translated, or "moved," along the Z-axis but instead must be scaled to simulate this important element of composition--a poor substitute). Finally, some sort of, even rudimentary, content-management system would be very welcome, especially in work where many files are involved. I would pay another $1000 extra for the addition of these three things (heck, I might pay that just for the addition of 3D space alone).

These few deficiencies aside, After-Effects really stands out there on its own, and anyone engaged in serious desktop video owes it to themselves to add it to their bag of tricks.