Adobe AFTER EFFECTS 5.5 Help Manual page 7

Adobe After Effects Help
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If you will be using an MJPEG codec, keep in mind that the frame sizes and resolutions
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available for rendering are determined by the specific MJPEG board you are using. Refer
to the specifications for your MJPEG board.
Animated GIF When you render an animated GIF, colors are dithered to an 8-bit palette.
Before rendering your final project, render a test composition so that you can adjust colors
if the results are not what you expected. If any source footage includes an alpha channel,
be sure that you know how it will affect your final project before you start rendering.
Streaming video over the World Wide Web Streaming video resembles a conventional
television signal in that video is sent to the viewer frame by frame, instead of by
downloading a large file to the hard disk. Streaming video on the Web is constrained by
the limited bandwidth (56 Kbps or less) of most consumer modems, which is even lower
than those used for CD-ROM playback. Use the same techniques that are listed for CD-
ROM playback, but adapt them for further reduction in file size and data-transfer rate. You
can export QuickTime streaming directly from After Effects. See "Exporting footage using
QuickTime components" on page 289.
Downloading video over the World Wide Web If your final output will be downloaded
as a file from the World Wide Web, the main concern is the size of the file, which directly
affects how long it takes to download the file. QuickTime and Microsoft Video for Windows
are formats often used when rendering final output that will be downloaded. When you
render a QuickTime movie, After Effects automatically creates a movie that can play on
both Windows and Mac OS without modification.
Intranet playback An intranet is an in-house or private network that uses Internet
network protocols. Intranets generally use higher-quality communications lines than
standard telephone lines, so they are usually much faster than the Internet. The data-
transfer rate for playback can be 100K per second or faster, depending on the speed
of your intranet.
Flash (.swf) files When you export compositions as Flash (.swf ) movies, After Effects
maintains vectors as much as possible. However, some items cannot be represented as
vectors in the Flash file. See "Exporting to Macromedia Flash (SWF) format" on page 286.
Considerations for cross-platform projects
After Effects project files are compatible with both the Mac OS and Windows platforms.
You can do several things to ease the process of exchanging projects between platforms.
Project hierarchy When you move a project to a different computer and open it, After
Effects attempts to locate the project's footage files, first looking in the folder in which the
project file is located, second using the file's original path or folder location, and third
searching the root of the directory where the project is located.
If you are building cross-platform projects, it is best if the full paths have the same names
on Mac OS and Windows systems. If the footage is on a different volume than the project,
make sure that the appropriate volume is mounted before opening the project, and that
network volume names are the same on both systems.
It helps to store footage in the same folder as the project file or in another folder within
that folder. Here's a sample hierarchy:
c:\newproject\project_file.aep
c:\newproject\source\footage1.psd
c:\newproject\source\footage2.avi
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Working with Projects, Windows, and Palettes
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