Creating Compositions; About Compositions; Creating A New Composition And Changing Settings; To Create A Composition - Adobe AFTER EFFECTS 7.0 Manual

Chapter 6: Compositions

Creating compositions

About compositions

To create a movie with the footage items in your project, set up a composition. A composition includes one or more
footage items—video, audio, still images—arranged in a Composition panel and in the Timeline panel. Simple
projects may include only one composition, while elaborate projects may include several compositions to organize
large amounts of footage or intricate effects sequences.
A composition includes at least one layer. When you add a footage item to a composition, the footage becomes the
source for a new layer. A composition can have any number of layers, and you can also include a composition as a
layer in another composition, which is called nesting.
A composition is the work space in which you create all animation, layering, and effects. Like other graphic program
work spaces, a composition has specific spatial dimensions. In addition to these spatial dimensions, compositions
also have a temporal dimension called duration. Each composition has an overall duration, or length in time.
For additional information, go to Adobe Studio on the Adobe website.
Adobe periodically provides updates to software and Help. To check for updates, click the Preferences button
Adobe Help Center, and then click Check For Updates. Follow the on-screen instructions.

Creating a new composition and changing settings

When you first create a new project, you must create a composition before you can start working with your footage
items.
Once you have created a composition, you can change its settings at any time. Remember, however, that changing
frame size or pixel aspect ratio can affect your final movie, so set these as early in the project as possible. Use
Flowchart View to get a big-picture perspective of complex projects; see "About the Flowchart panel" on page 59 for
more information.
When you create a composition without changing settings in the Composition Settings dialog box, the new compo-
sition uses the same settings as the previous composition.
Note: When creating an elaborate composition, you may find it easier to organize the layers that make up the compo-
sition by using a technique called nesting—putting one or more compositions into another composition. You can create
many levels of nesting. For more information, see "About nesting" on page 130.)
See also
"Organizing footage in the Project panel" on page 58

To create a composition

Choose Composition > New Composition.
1
2 Type a Composition Name.
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in