Adobe After Effects CS4 - Manual (Page 61)

55 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4
Projects and compositions
Last updated 12/21/2009
More Help topics
“ Creating layers ” on page 138
“ Preview video and audio ” on page 195
“ Flowchart panel ” on page 51
“ Basics of rendering and exporting ” on page 688
Create a composition
You can change composition settings at any time. However, it’s best to specify settings such as frame aspect ratio and
frame size when you create the composition, with your final output in mind. Because After Effects bases certain
calculations on these composition settings, changing them late in your workflow can affect your final output.
Note: You can override some composition settings when rendering to final output. For example, you can use different
frame sizes for the same movie. For more information see “
Render settings ” on page 697 and “ Output modules and output
module settings ” on page 700.
When you create a composition without changing settings in the Composition Settings dialog box, the new
composition uses the settings from the previous time that composition settings were set.
Note: New compositions do not inherit the previous Preserve Frame Rate When Nested Or In Render Queue and Preserve
Resolution When Nested settings.
You can create a set of After Effects compositions tailored for a selected set of devices by using the File > New
Document In > After Effects command in Adobe Device Central. See “
Create compositions for playback on mobile
devices ” on page 56.
Jeff Almasol provides a script on his redefinery website that creates and saves a new project for each selected
composition in the current project. If a folder is selected in the Project panel when you create a new composition, the
new composition is placed in the selected folder.
More Help topics
“ Composition settings ” on page 58
“ About precomposing and nesting ” on page 60
Create a composition and manually set composition settings
❖ Choose Composition > New Composition, or press Ctrl+N (Windows) or Command+N (Mac OS).
Create a composition from a single footage item
❖ Drag the footage item to the Create A New Composition button at the bottom of the Project panel or choose
File > New Comp From Selection.
Composition settings, including frame size (width and height) and pixel aspect ratio, are automatically set to match
the characteristics of the footage item.
Create a single composition from multiple footage items
1 Select footage items in the Project panel.
2 Drag the selected footage items to the Create A New Composition button at the bottom of the Project panel, or
choose File > New Comp From Selection.