Updated 2024 Approved Adobe After Effects Review

Adobe After Effects Review

Make cinematic films, movies, intros, and transitions. Delete people from clips. Start fires or create a foggy weather. With Adobe After Effects, the industry-standard motion graphics and visual effects software, you are able to take any idea and make it come to life. Animate titles, credits, and lower thirds. Begin editing from scratch or with presets available. Combine photos and video footage to create anything you can think of.

Choose amazing effects from hundreds of options, remove unwanted parts from the frame, people or objects, and make VR videos to push your audience into the action. This software lets professionals configure keyframes, allow them to create compositing operations. Features of Adobe After Effects include a content library, digital asset management, video rendering, data import/export, and much more. In this article we will give you a brief overview of what After Effects is, what it’s used for and by who and the overall experience!

With that said, let’s get started!

1. Speed and Stability

When talking about speed and stability, After Effects has the latest release packed with improvements. All the developers have focused themselves on speed and also performance. The team at Adobe have worked very hard to make this application more responsive and when we go along in this article, that can be seen in many ways

The main improvement which is immediately clear to all users, is the renewed preview playback optimization. What we noticed is that After Effects is creating the ram preview for your projects a lot faster. However, while working with the software for this article, we did find the user interface to be more responsive, the playback is way smoother, so is it a lot more stable overall.

While using shape layers, there was a significant improvement. A few expressions are a lot faster. This alone is worth upgrading to the latest version of After Effects.

2. User Interface

The After Effects interface is constructed up of four main parts. The Timeline panel, the Project panel, the Composition panel and the Effects panel.

The Timeline Panel

In the Timeline panel, you edit all the footage and clips to create your rough cut. You can find the Timeline panel on the bottom of the workspace.

The Project Panel

It’s pretty straightforward that in the Project panel you import your footage and create your project. This is located on the top left of the standard After Effects workspace.

The Composition Panel

The Composition panel is where you will see the final product. This is located in the middle of your workspace.

The Effects Panel

In order to make creative changes to your video, use the preview, audio, effects, and Preset Panels. These panels are located on the upper right area of your workspace, each one also has its dropdown.

3. Learning Curve

The learning curve for After Effects depends on your background, the best way to find out if you like it is starting a free trial. Go through some tutorials online or paid courses. You’ll also want to spend time with the User Guide. The Search Help field in the top right corner provides you an easier search for answers to most questions that you have. Speaking of YouTube and online learning, most of the video tutorials you will find have been created by people that are experienced in After Effects and know their way around it.

4. VFX

There’s a time-period when video editors require strengthening their skills, calling it imperative software for improving editing skills is nowhere near an exaggeration. it really helps prospective professionals improve their learning experience through visual effects, camera tracking, text animation, motion tracking, color grading, etc. All of these methodologies do help in improving the VFX learning process in the long run.

Video editing happens to be a crucial part of film production. Making videos in a fantastic process can indulge in building professional videos via motion graphics animation. This is where Adobe After Effects become an excellent learning tool.

5. Motion Graphics

Motion graphics can sound quite scary. It’s a new term for a specific genre of animation. Motion graphics is the intersection between animation and graphic design. These are purpose-driven visual aspects with the goal of showing information to the viewer through the use of animated graphics or text. Sometimes they include voice-overs narrating what the text or graphics are showing. Where it gets a little complex is that the more popular the term motion graphics becomes, the more people are misaligning animations to it. They need to represent information and illustrate the idea to the viewer clearly, so they do that using animation and motion graphics.

6. Titles and Outros

Adobe released a new combination of features for you. For Adobe Stock: Graphics templates. Those pre-made templates give you a super smooth way to discover new motion graphics within Premiere Pro, without needing to spend time creating titles, overlays, or animations from scratch. The world has digitalized, and videos often need visual aspects such as titles, lower thirds, to present information. The templates not only assist video editors increase the quality of the content by showing certain information, but they also give a strong visual touch to keep the viewer engaged throughout the video. The audience nowadays is a lot more sophisticated, meaning that motion graphics are a necessity in a driven media world.

Motion Graphics templates are valuable for video editors of all levels. For the beginning content creators, the templates offer great quality, ready-made footage to help their creative goal. They can explore and work on their skills. Motion graphics that are pre-made are an excellent way to express the vision and express inspiration to new opportunities.

So now that you are aware of what After Effects templates are, we can move on to the actual workflow, why it is important, and how to use it as efficient as possible.

7. Workflow

Whether you are using Adobe After Effects to create motion graphics, or composite realistic visuals, you usually follow the same workflow, you may repeat the process of adjusting layer properties, editing, and compositing until everything looks good. You can change any property of any element, such as position, opacity and size. Make use of motion tracking to stabilize footage so that it follows the motion from another clip, and so much more!

8. Rendering Speed

When it comes to exporting your project in After Effects, you don’t need to buy an expensive workstation. You can speed up your rendering process from your own laptop without investing too much and by using the following tips we have for you below!

Tip #1: Enable Multiprocessing

What exactly is multiprocessing? That is when After Effects uses multiple cores from your CPU to export multiple frames at once. If your processor has one or more cores, you can enable this feature to reduce your rendering time. We want to mention that you need to check whether or not this option is turned on. Once enabled, you’ll see a great decrease in export time.

To enable Multiprocessing, navigate to Preferences > Memory & Multiprocessing. Then you click the check box next to ‘Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously’ and remember also to adjust the settings that you need.

Tip #2: Optimize Your RAM Usage

The RAM memory inside your workstation can be used to write and read data at a lot higher speeds than regular hard drives and portable drives. Configuring your RAM in a system is one of the easiest upgrades for better performance. Giving you affordable solutions for both desktop and laptop systems, the RAM memory upgrade does not require a lot of knowledge. The more RAM you allow applications to use, the higher the performance you will get out of it.

It also shows a noticeable increase in rendering speed. When the export time in your work is longer than needed, look at your RAM memory and see if you can make the necessary changes or upgrades.

Tip #3: Use the Media Encoder

Let’s talk about the Media Encoder. It’s the software that comes up with Adobe Creative Cloud products such as After Effects and Premiere Pro to simplify the export process. You can easily render your project from After Effects to Adobe Media Encoder and begin the project render process from that point on. The Media Encoder will increase your rendering performance and will significantly decrease rendering time.

Tip #4: Disable Ray-Traced 3D

The included After Effects Ray-Traced 3D feature enables you to produce 3D models within After Effects without any struggle. Calculating all the motions and visual graphics is such a heavy process for your workstation. When you disable raytracing, you will get a faster export time. By looking that ‘Classic 3D’ is checked instead of ‘Ray-Traced 3D’ from your composition preferences, you can speed your rendering speed up to 50%. Isn’t that incredible?

Tip #5: Activate GPU Exporting with Cuda Acceleration

Exporting your videos with GPU rather than CPU will increase the efficiency of your render process. The export length will decrease a whole lot when you activate Mercury GPU Acceleration, also known as ‘CUDA’ from the ‘Project Settings’.

After Effects doesn’t really require CUDA features from a special kind of Nvidia GPU. Only the GPU accelerated 3D renderer, that is based on the raytracing algorithm, requires that. The other GPU features are running on any GPU that meets the basic minimums, including Intel and AMD GPUs.

9. System Requirements for Windows

These are the minimum specifications needed to use After Effects on PC:

OS: Windows 10 (64-bit) versions 1909 and later, or Windows 11

CPU: Intel or AMD Quad-Core Processor (Intel i5 and i7 will do the job)

RAM: 16 GB

Monitor resolution: 1280 x 1080

An internet connection

Free storage: 15 GB

GPU: Minimum 2 GB of VRAM

10. System Requirements for macOS

OS: macOS 10.13 or later

RAM: 16 GB

CPU: Intel and Apple Silicon (Rosetta2 Supported) Quad-Core Processor

GPU: 2GB of VRAM

Monitor resolution: 1440×900

Free storage: 15 GB

An internet connection

11. Keyboard Shortcuts

You can work visually when you configure your keyboard shortcuts with the visual keyboard shortcut editor within After Effects. You can use the keyboard user interface to show the keys that have been assigned to shortcuts, the available keys for assignment, and edit assigned shortcuts to make your workflow even easier.

The keyboard layout:

This is a representation of your physical keyboard where you can see which keys have been assigned a shortcut, and which are available.

Command list:

The list displays all the commands that can be assigned shortcuts.

Key modifier list:

This list shows you all the modifier combinations and assigned shortcuts associated with the key you select on your physical keyboard.

After Effects does not allow you to reassign the following keys:

12. Should You Buy It?

Well first, you cannot buy After Effects, Premiere Pro or other software from Adobe. You have to rent them by paying monthly. After Effects is primarily a compositing and graphics software. Premiere is primarily a video editing program. In the case of After Effects and Premiere Pro, it’s not really an either/or. They’re both software with different purposes. After Effects is a lot more powerful and essentially showcases most of Premiere’s functionality, but according to our experience, the Premiere Pro interface and workflow is way more superior for video editing.

Premiere Pro is essentially built around its timeline, the region where you cut your video clips and drag and place them into your appropriate sequence. Hollywood filmmakers and professional YouTube content creators are using Premiere Pro to edit high-performing content and award-winning films. The software is very intuitive and easy for beginners to start with.

Are going to work with After Effects to create an income? Or are just going to use it for a hobby? It’s crucial to mention that question because Adobe After Effects is not something that is cheaply available. You will be investing much money on the program, and if you are working to use the software, paying a good amount, and earning nothing in return, then you might want to shift to another alternative which would cost you less. For instance, let’s assume you are using the application to earn an income, and have a few low-paying clients. In such a situation, you will have to rethink your options of software and analyze whether what you are paying in comparison to what you are getting is enough for you or not. We all are different individuals and have different preferences. Once we can see what is more important to us, or what is our need at this moment, then we will be able to judge the worth of purchasing Adobe After Effects better.

Are you going to use After Effects to earn an income? Or are just using it as a hobby? It is very important to address this question because Adobe After Effects is not something cheaply accessible. You will be investing a lot of money into this software, if you are using the software while paying a good amount and earning nothing in return yet, then you could shift to a different alternative which will cost you a lot less. Let’s say you are using After Effects to earn an income and have some low-paying work. In that case, you will have to reconsider your options of video editing software and look at whether what you are paying in comparison to what you are getting is possible for you. When we can see what is more important to us, we will be able to see the worth of buying After Effects.

Did you previously use After Effects or are you new to the program? The return that you will get using Adobe After Effects, depends on how good you know how to work with the options, functions and features in the software.

The Bottom Line

So summing it all together, Adobe After Effects takes care of all your assets and creates a final product, considering that After Effects is usually an asset-generation tool. Most video editors complete their projects in After Effects non-stop. It’s excellent for making visual videos come to life.

AE version 22.3 is very impressive. Giving you a wealth of new features created to make VFX editing a lot faster and easier. Offering new features on a regular basis, improving their subscription model making it more attractive. Especially if you’re a professional editor and designer.

Once you get comfortable with Adobe After Effects, you learn how to dynamically combine After Effects compositions to your Premiere projects. You are able to access both assets at the same time if needed!

Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)

Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later

Some Effective Slow Motion Video Editors You Can Try

Slow-motion videos help in sports analysis to gain insights into the performance. Slow motion is beneficial for observing precise movements in instructional videos. Moreover, such videos are crucial for product showcasing in advertising and marketing. Due to the various uses of slow-motion videos, you may need to create one with an edit video slow motion online free.

Thus, this article will focus on some top-notch slow-motion video editors online for free. With these tools, you can produce slow-motion videos at the desired pace. Moreover, we will introduce a desktop tool that leaves behind all online video editors slow motion free.

Slow Motion Video Maker Slow your video’s speed with better control of your keyframes to create unique cinematic effects!

Make A Slow Motion Video Make A Slow Motion Video More Features

Part 1: [Top List] Best Slow Motion Video Editors To Work Within 2024

Have you ever worked with slow-motion video editors? In this section, we will shed light on some of the best online video editors that are slow-motion free. By using them, you can produce professional quality slow-motion videos with ease:

VEED.io
Canva
Typito
Media.io
Flixier
Kapwing
Clideo
Online Video Cutter

1. VEED.io

VEED.io is a prominent tool that you can access through a web browser. Along with its many features, this tool lets you slow down a video with proficiency. It lets you change the video speed to up to 0.5x. Moreover, you can enter the custom speed for more modification. For precision, you can slow down certain parts by splitting the clips. Hence, this tool gives you complete control for making slow-motion videos.

Pros

This tool shows compatibility with many file formats. For example, you can import videos in MOV, MP3, AVI, and other formats.
After slowing down a video, this tool lets you perform basic video editing. You can cut, crop, trim, and annotate the slow-motion video.

Cons

This tool freezes and lacks fast processing speed.

2. Canva

Have you ever edited a video through Canva? This famous edit video slow motion online free tool offers many tools to execute basic and advanced editing. Among them, it contains the feature to add a slow-motion effect to a video. After uploading the video, you can reduce the speed to 0.1x. While adding a slow-motion effect, you can add comments to the video for more modification.

Pros

This tool provides many options for uploading a video. For instance, you can upload videos from Facebook, Google Drive, Google Photos, or Dropbox.
It includes a collaboration link to help your teammates access the video. You can also enter groups, people, and tags for collaboration.

Cons

The options for template designs and export are limited.

3. Typito

Typito is a reliable tool that supports over 20 video file formats. With its video speed modifier, you can speed up or slow down a video file without hassle. Furthermore, it supports many aspect ratios, like a square letterbox, vertical, etc. Moreover, it contains a stock media library containing royalty-free videos and images. Thus, it’s a competent online tool featuring a reliable option to make slow-motion videos.

Pros

You can display your own brand video with this tool. It allows you to upload your brand colors, designs, and fonts for brand marketing.
It offers a real-time video preview to analyze the final result. By doing so, you can download satisfactory slow-motion videos.

Cons

Sometimes, the tool encounters glitches, which can disrupt its overall performance.

4. Media.io

Media.io is a capable online tool famous for its flawless results. After importing the video, you can reduce it to the lowest speed, which is 0.25x. Meanwhile, you can also increase the video speed to 4x efficiently. One of the best things about this tool is that it can edit the motion effect to YouTube URLs directly. Hence, this slow down video online free can benefit you in making slow-motion videos.

Pros

This tool contains many free additional features. For instance, it contains a video converter, letting you convert the file format into another one.
To remove unwanted audio from a video, you can mute the video. Thus, with a single click, you can mute the video instantly.

Cons

You cannot upload large file sizes on this tool. Thus, you can face file size restrictions on Media.io.

5. Flixier

This online video editor slow motion free tool has an easy-to-use interface that you can operate without watching tutorials. It can slow down a video at any frame rate without decreasing its quality. To reduce the video speed, you can drag the slider with great ease. Moreover, you can add powerful effects to enhance the slowed-down video. Hence, it’s an advanced tool for creating slow-motion videos.

Pros

It contains an AI subtitle generator through which you can transcribe your videos. It supports all common languages for the generation of video subtitles.
To make your video pleasing in a visual way, you can add many filters. This tool consists of many filters which can improve your facial appearance.

Cons

Flixier takes extra time to process video files. Thus, making slow-motion videos with this tool is time-consuming.

6. Kapwing

This online tool uses advanced technology to slow down a video without losing quality. Whether your video is 4K or 1080p, the tool maintains the original resolution of the video. You can import the video from your device within a few seconds. It also allows you to paste the URL of the video quickly. Afterward, you can adjust the speed slider to manage the video speed in a preferred way.

Pros

Kapwing is an all-round video editor offering many features. Using this video editor, users can combine and split video tracks.
The AI audio enhancer of this tool can improve the sound quality of your audio. You can improve the quality of your voice recording and background music with this feature.

Cons

To use its premium features, you must buy its subscription plans. However, its subscription plans can be expensive for some users.

7. Clideo

Do you want a basic tool for slowing down videos? Clideo is one of the simple tools that has intuitive controls to modify a video. It has a fast processing speed to offer users instant results. It provides six commonly used speeds for video clips. In addition, you can use the speed slider to adjust the speed in a personalized way. Meanwhile, the tool ensures complete security to protect your valuable video files.

Pros

This slow down video online free can function as a great video compressor. It decreases the video file size without compromising its resolution.
It acts as a video maker, allowing you to create videos from images. Moreover, you can produce videos with GIFs of desired quality.

Cons

It adds a watermark to the videos in its free version.

8. Online Video Cutter

This comprehensive slow motion video online without watermark tool offers a great user experience in making slow-motion videos. Without adding a watermark, it can create slow-mo videos as best as possible. Along with various video speeds, it provides many file formats. Moreover, you can slow down videos without creating an account. Within a few taps, you can make slow-motion videos in high resolution.

Pros

To describe your video clips, add text to them using this tool. It lets you select the desired text font, style, size, and color.
It contains a screen recorder to capture the current activities of your desktop. After recording, you can edit and export the video flawlessly.

Cons

The interface of this tool contains many pop-up ads, which can be annoying.

Part 2: Alternative For Better Results: Wondershare Filmora

After knowing the drawbacks of online tools, you must want an alternative. Wondershare Filmora is a skillful tool comprising good qualities as a video editor. It targets every need of a professional video editor with its robust features. With its friendly user interface, you can perform video editing without hurdles. It lets you apply effects, transitions, animations, and other modifications with ease.

Moreover, it allows users to control the speed of the videos. After dragging the video to the timeline, you can adjust its speed accordingly. It retains the frame rate of the video with high-end rendering. Also, it contains tons of AI options to improvise the video clip. Hence, Filmora is a must-have offline tool catering to all the needs of video editors.

Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)

Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later

Directions to Make Slow-Motion Video

In this section, we will enlist the simple steps to create slow-motion videos. Thus, check the following instructions to generate slow-motion videos in a flawless way.

Step 1Sign Into Filmora

Start by launching Filmora on your PC. Once done, head to the top bar and select “Profile”. From there, sign into the account and select the “New Project” button.

Step 2Add Video on Timeline

Now, on the main interface of Filmora, press “Ctrl + I”. In this manner, you can import the video clips from your computer. Once done, drag and drop the video file to the timeline for editing.

Step 3Go to the Speed Tab

Select the video on the timeline and go to the right panel. Through this panel, click on the “Speed” tab and tap “Uniform Speed”.

Step 4Choose Optical Flow

Expand “AI Frame Interpolation” and tap “Optical Flow”. Now, stay on the timeline and select “Render Preview” from the top toolbar. By doing so, you can export the video in the selected file format.

Key Features Highlighting Filmora

AI Vocal Remover: This AI feature isolates the music from any song. It preserves the high resolution of the video while removing vocals. Also, it extracts other unwanted elements from audio. Hence, it automatically removes vocals from an audio file.
AI Copywriting: This feature is integrated with ChatGPT to produce AI-generated scripts. Content creators can generate YouTube descriptions and titles from this smart feature. To do so, you can enter the question in the given box. After some seconds, the AI tool will answer your queries.
AI Image: By using this feature, you can convert your text to images in an automated way. You can describe the image in the text in the given box. Afterward, the tool will create an AI image in three resolutions.

Part 3: What Are Some Major Drawbacks to Using Online Slow Motion Video Editors Compared to Offline Editors?

There are some disadvantages to using online slow-motion video editors as compared to offline tools. Here are some of the common drawbacks of slow motion video editor online free that you should consider:

Network Dependency

Online slow-motion video editors need credible and fast internet connections. You can’t access their website with a poor internet connection. If there is a poor network connection, the tool will take extra time to upload and process videos.

Limitations of Features

Unlike offline slow-motion video editors, online free tools have limited features. They don’t offer advanced options to make professional enhancements. Moreover, advanced tools need high-end computing sources. This may not be present on web-based slow-motion video editors.

Privacy Concerns

Desktop tools use enhanced encryption methods for data privacy. However, online sites may contain hidden malicious files which can harm your data. Hence, online users may face privacy threats when making slow-motion videos.

User Interface and Subscription Packages

It’s common that online slow-motion video editors lack intuitive controls. The interface of online tools is difficult to operate for beginners. Moreover, the subscription packages can be expensive for some users. In contrast, desktop tools have better user interface experience with affordable plans.

Conclusion

Slow-motion videos are useful for deep analysis. It helps in highlighting the minor details of a product. There are many online video editors slow motion free to create slow-motion effects. However, desktop tools like Filmora are a better alternative to such online tools. This tool uses high-end computing algorithms to make slow-motion videos with precision.

Make A Slow Motion Video Make A Slow Motion Video More Features