Work with placeholders and missing footage items, Work with proxies for footage items – Adobe After Effects CS4 User Manual
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USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4
Importing and managing footage items
Last updated 12/21/2009
Proxy items in Project panel
A. Proxy assigned and in use B. Proxy assigned, but original in use C. No proxy assigned D. Proxy name
More Help topics
Work with placeholders and missing footage items
For best results, set the placeholder to the same size, duration, and frame rate as the actual footage.
If After Effects cannot find source footage when you open a project, the footage item appears in the Project panel
labeled Missing, and the name of the missing footage appears in italics. Any composition using that item replaces it
with a placeholder. You can still work with the missing item in the project, and any effects you applied to the original
footage remain intact. When you replace the placeholder with the source footage, After Effects places the footage in its
correct location in all the compositions that use it.
You can find footage items for which the source items are missing by typing missing in the search field in the Project
panel. See “
Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels
•
To use a placeholder, choose File
> Import > Placeholder.
•
To replace the selected footage item with a placeholder, choose File
> Replace Footage > Placeholder.
•
To replace a placeholder with the actual footage item, select the placeholder you want to replace in the Project panel,
choose File
> Replace Footage > File, and locate the actual footage.
Work with proxies for footage items
When you use a proxy, After Effects replaces the actual footage with the proxy in all compositions that use the actual
footage item. When you finish working, you can switch back to the actual footage item in the project list. After Effects
then replaces the proxy with the actual footage item in any composition.
When you render your composition as a movie, you may choose to use either all the actual high-resolution footage
items or their proxies. You may want to use the proxies for a rendered movie if, for example, you simply want to test
motion using a rough movie that renders quickly.
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D
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