Adobe AFTER EFFECTS 5.5 Help Manual page 116

Adobe After Effects Help
Using Help | Contents
Setting and animating effects
Once you apply an effect to a layer, you can set keyframes for the effect property values.
You can also set multiple keyframes to animate effects. The properties available vary
depending on the effect. For more information on changing and animating effect
properties, see "Changing effect property values" on page 172 and "Changing effects over
time" on page 174.
Setting preview options
After Effects provides four options for previewing your animations: RAM preview, standard
preview, manual preview, and wireframe preview. You can access RAM, standard, and
manual previews using the Time Controls palette. Access wireframe preview from the
Composition > Preview menu.
A B C D E F G
A. First Frame B. Frame Reverse C. Play
D. Frame Advance E. Last Frame F. Audio
G. Loop H. RAM Preview I. Jog control
J. Time indicator K. Shuttle control
The preview options represent different balances between preview quality and speed:
RAM preview This option plays a preview of the frames (including audio) at the frame
rate of your composition or as fast as your system allows. Use RAM preview to preview the
footage in the Timeline, Layer, or Footage windows.The number of frames previewed
depends on the amount of available contiguous RAM allocated to the application. After
Effects displays the total number of frames requested for the preview and the number it
can render.
You have two choices of RAM preview settings: RAM Preview and Shift+RAM Preview. Each
provides different options. In the Timeline, RAM preview previews only the span of time
you specify as the work area. In the Layer and Footage windows, RAM preview previews
only untrimmed footage. Before you preview the Timeline, check which frames are desig-
nated as the work area. See "Setting up a work area" on page 70. Before you preview the
Layer or Footage windows, check to see that footage you may want to preview has not
been trimmed.
Audio plays only for layers in which the Audio switch is on. To preview audio alone, see
"Previewing audio" on page 91.
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Animating Layers
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