After Effects CS4 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickPro Guide

Chapter 4. Compositions

Without compositions, a project is nothing more than a list of footage items—a grocery list without a recipe, an ensemble without choreography, finely tuned instruments without a musical score. This is because compositions perform the essential function of describing how footage items are arranged in space and time. This chapter shows you how to create a composition and define its spatial and temporal boundaries by setting frame size, frame rate, duration, and so on.

This chapter also describes the fundamental process of layering footage in compositions—and in so doing, lays the groundwork for the rest of the book, which focuses largely on how to manipulate those layers. The footage items you add to a composition become ...