After Effects Editing Software



Adobe After Effects is a professional video editing software that lets you work with visual effects as rain, snow, add cinematic movie titles, intros, and transitions, etc. DOWNLOAD AFTER EFFECTS FREE. 10 After Effects Alternatives. I have selected 10 programs which can become a good alternative to After Effects in terms of functionality. After Effects is a software of visual effects, so we use this software for enhancing the quality of our project or use it for manipulating our graphics designing work. So it is generally popular between Filmmakers for editing shots of any footage, Video editors for editing video footage, adjusting colorization and many other things. Animate a logo or character. With After Effects, the industry-standard motion graphics and visual effects software, you can take any idea and make it move.

Can I try the video and audio editing software and apps for free? Download free seven-day trials of Premiere Pro, After Effects, Character Animator, and Audition. The Premiere Rush app is free with the Starter plan, which has no time limit and includes three exports. Create cinematic movie titles, intros, and transitions. Start a fire or make it rain. Animate a logo or character. With After Effects, the industry-standard motion graphics and visual effects software, you can take any idea and make it move. Minimum System Requirements: Operating System: Windows 10, Mac OS X (All), 10.12 Sierra.

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After Effects and Premiere Pro are two of Adobe’s flagship post-production apps. But which one do you need for which task? Let’s find out.

When you’re creating a new project, knowing when to use Premiere and when to use After Effects can make or break your project. They are both extremely powerful programs, that can sometimes perform the same functions, but most of the time, one of them is better at something than the other.

Software

Now the differences between these two programs are pretty apparent to anyone who has used them before. But, if you’re new to the suite, it can be confusing determining which one you need to learn for a given post-production task.

Let’s take a look at Adobe’s two main video production software tools and see what they do — and when to use one over the other.

Adobe Premiere Pro

Adobe Premiere Pro is an NLE (nonlinear editor) with the main function of editing video clips together in a sequence. This is the program that most beginners open to create a simple video with multiple clips and music. It’s incredibly scalable — easy to use for beginners, and still powerful enough for a master editor. It’s got just about everything you need to complete a professional video: a clip editor, color correction tools, audio programs, and even graphics software.

Tasks for Premiere:

  • Editing a video with existing clips imported from a camera.
  • Editing audio within your video — Premiere’s audio functions far surpass AE’s.
  • Placing transitions between clips within your timeline.
  • Creating/polishing any type of video — short films, music videos, social videos, etc.

Adobe After Effects

Adobe After Effects is a digital motion graphics platform used to create either simple animations or intricate graphics sequences. If you ever hear of a “motion graphics expert,” chances are they’re proficient in After Effects. The program adds motion to layers and assets that you couldn’t do in Premiere. Its motion tools are much better than Premiere’s, and it’s the preferred tool for adding motion to videos, images, and designs. It’s a “hard to learn, easy to master” type of program, but once you get the hang of it, it’s essential for creating motion graphics or visual effects for your projects.

Tasks for After Effects:

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  • Creating motion graphics packages for your projects.
  • Adding motion blur and movement to assets and layers.
  • Manipulating multilayer sequences that require detailed keyframing.
  • Creating title sequences that include keyframe-based animations.

After Effects Vs. Premiere Pro: What’s the Difference?

To sum it all up, Premiere assembles all of your assets and creates a final video product, while After Effects is mainly an asset-generation tool. People complete projects in After Effects all the time, though — it’s great for creating motion-based social video with only a song bed underneath, or even creating a full animation.

So really, there’s no true “vs.” in this argument. It’s kind of like debating PowerPoint and Word — you use them for different tasks, even though they share some similar functions. They are extremely well linked, though — and like many editors, I use them concurrently all of the time. Once you get familiar with both programs, you’ll learn how to dynamically link After Effects compositions to your Premiere projects so you can access both assets at the same time. (For more information about dynamic linking, check out the video by Justin Odisho above.)

Looking for more on Premiere and After Effects? Check these out.

Whether you are a professional or a beginner video editor, you may have envisioned a time when you are able to create special effects videos that equate to the Hollywood standards. Video effects implies videos with better looks and are colorful, hence the term special effects. Adding effects to your videos is one of the most reliable method to take them to the next level. Animations, transitions, filters, and dynamic text animation are just some of the many useful effects to add that wow feeling to your videos. To do this, you need the right special effects video editor that can get the work done.

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Best Free Special Effects Video Editor for Everyone

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After Effects Editing Software
  • Rediscover your story in a whole new way and with minimal effort. You do not need any technical skills.

  • Take advantage of a host of resources that allow you to add effects, transitions, text options, and audio.

  • The fast video mode allows you to create magnetic videos for your events, from birthdays to weddings, fitness videos, and more.

  • Keep in touch with the progress of your work with instant previews. Check out the effect of any new edit and whether you should keep it or undo.

Best Visual Effects Software for Compositing for Professionals

1 Nuke

The Nuke family comprises of an ecosystem of tools that are accessible globally and can be used by both large-scale and small-scale users. Whether you want to use it from a personal perspective or on a blockbuster project, Nuke can be relied on as one of the best free video editors for beginners to add special effects.

Speical Effects of Nuke:

  • 2D visual effects

  • Nuke has over 200 creative nodes to effectively deliver on digital compositing. It features color correction, vector paint, rotoscope, keyers, and much more. The inclusion of a 2D tracker helps with the tracking and correction of difficult objects with ease.

  • 3D visual effects

  • Nuke Studio has an integrated camera that replicates 2D camera motion using an animated 3D camera in order to accurately composite 2D/3D elements while keeping in touch with the original camera footage.

Pros of Nuke:

  • Being part of the Nuke family gives it access to the powerful node-based pipelinet

  • Well-designed interface for fast and easy workflow

  • Can deliver as high as 4K quality

  • Supports up to 200 creative nodesw

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Cons of Nuke:

  • Access to some functions is cost-based

2 After Effects

Created by Adobe Inc., After Effects is streamlined to seamlessly make visual effects and motion graphics for film, TV, video, and web. Users can rely on After Effects to add spinning words, rolling credits, and twirling titles. With this free special effects video editor, you can build awesome effects by combining videos and images.

Speical Effects of After Effects:

  • 2D image into a 3D video

  • The parallax effect is popular After Effects feature that fakes 3D. With this feature, a 2D image layers are separated and moved independent of one another.

  • Pull someone in a picture

  • When you first see this effect, you are sure to doubt whether you can do it. Luckily, After Effects provides an easy way to implement it, with a step by step guide on how to do it, you will be surprised by what you can do. The fact that it requires rotoscoping and careful selection of parameters, only professionals are able to pull this off.

  • Frozen action scene

  • Anyone who sees a frozen action scene can have their mind blown. You can create this if you know the right tricks to use. Start by shooting several individual scenes, then mask some of the clips using After Effects and include them in the scene.

  • Lightning effects

  • Create an incredible and dynamic electricity effect that is more real than fake using the built-in Advanced Lightning feature.

Pros of After Effects:

  • Can be used for composition, visual effects, and motion graphics in a more robust manner

  • Seamlessly add visual effects

  • Helps with making 2D animations and titles

  • Layer multiple visual footages over each other and blend them with ease

Cons of After Effects:

  • Not a true 3D animation program

  • Consumes a lot of RAM and may freeze slower computers

3 HitFilm Pro

An industry-leading software that features the powerful chroma key alongside text and particle tools. Explore the wide variety of specialized effects to enhance your film’s visuals to come up with memorable and awesome scenes.

Speical Effects of HitFilm Pro:

  • Lightning and electricity

  • The program’s lightning generator can create the likes of Harry Potter wand effects, exploding starship systems, and give actors the ability to throw electric bolts.

  • Procedural fire

  • Would you like to build your own Towering Inferno? HitFilm Pro is the right tool for that. It augments stock footage with as many small bonfires as you want to yield a massive fire. Perfectly adds to your production value.

  • 3D muzzle flashes

  • Designed to complement any action scene, the 3D muzzle flash engine is enriched with customizable effects that you will find useful.

  • Distortion effects

  • The distortion effect is built around four concepts: Energy, Heat, Fluid, and Smoke Distortion. Compliment your props and environment by adding industrial grit of hot proton beams, burning fires, and jet exhausts.

Pros of HitFilm Pro:

  • User-friendly interface for excellent editing

  • Creates powerful special effects for professional results

  • A host of learning resources on how best to make the most of the programs

Cons of HitFilm Pro:

  • Non-existent workflow

  • Does not support standard formats such as Final Cut XML

4 Fusion

The Fusion model of operation is such free special effects video editors who have had their hands on After Effects can seamlessly use this program. Whereas both are often contrasted against each other, each is effective in its own domain. Fusion 3D node is a dependable interface for importing 3D scenes and models. The free video editor software has many effects, tools, and filters that yield lifelike visual effects.

Speical Effects of Fusion:

  • Compositing

  • Fusion supports the most basic step in visual effects, that is, adding one image on top of another the blending them. You can easily do this in the program because only two tools are involved – Merge tool and Merge 3D tool.

  • Keying and Mattes

  • With Fusion, you are able to remove green, blue, and other colors from the background. Its Keyers help with this task.

  • Rotoscoping

  • Brilliantly isolate objects or actors from other elements in clips. The B-spline and Bezier tools help in drawing, tracking, and animating custom shapes.

  • 3D Particles

  • The 3D particle generator introduces you to a whole new world of sparkling, swirling, and magnetic effects.

Effects

Pros of Fusion:

  • Works just as promised

  • Usable on the go without requiring any complicated setup

  • Completes VFX and Film at a professional level

Cons of Fusion:

  • Lacks advanced tracking features

  • The connection with Resolve sometimes feels a bit weak

Best Visual Effects Software for 3D Modeling

After Effects Editing Software

1 Blender

When working on a 3D project like the development of a 3D game, you will definitely require to build 3D assets for successful completion. That involves creating everything from trash cans, fences, buildings, and many others. Blender presents itself as one of the many applications available for this purpose. The free and open-source 3D suite for your project.

Speical Effects of Blender:

  • Compositing

  • The built-in compositor is an effective way to post-produce renders while still on Blender. The compositor includes: render-layer support, multi-threading, compositing images, and videos, and rendering OpenEXR files.

  • Motion tracking

  • The production-ready camera included in Blender and the object tracking feature facilitates the importing of raw clips, tracking it, masking areas, and reconstructing camera movements. With this, you accomplish everything in-house instead of switching programs.

  • Modeling

  • Blender has an array of tools to create, transform, edit, and sculpt your models. The tools include N-Gon support, fast workflow, python scripting, and grid and bridge fill.

  • Rendering and beyond

  • The unbiased rendering engine yields powerful and ultra-realistic rendering. Thanks to Cycles, the program’s production render engine, you receive multi-GPU support, multi-core CPU, and unidirectional path tracing.

  • Animation and rigging

  • Turn your characters into impressive animations using blender's animation features like sound synchronization, Non-Linear Animation faster poses, and character animation pose editor.

Pros of Blender:

  • Incorporates all relevant tools for in-house project completion

  • Shortcuts for streamlined workflow

  • Huge community of enthusiasts, hence, readily available support

Cons of Blender:

  • It has a steep learning curve as you relearn and get accustomed to a new interface.

2 Maya

Maya is an industry-standard 3D program created by Autodesk. It is one of the most popular programs in this area, with its first version having come out in 1998 before getting acquired by Autodesk in 2005. It is known to have played a role in the creation of the 2000 film Dinosaur, Harry Potter, and Transformers.

Speical Effects of Maya:

  • Fire effect

  • With the Fire effect, you are able to emit fire from several objects: NURBS curve, Lattice points, polygonal surface, nParticle object, and Number of CVs.

  • Fluid effect

  • The Fluid effect helps to simulate and render fluid motion. It is required for creating 3D atmospheric, space, pyrotechnic, and liquid effects. You have the option to use Fluid Effectssolvers or fluid animated textures in Maya.

  • Fireworks

  • Easily and quickly create Fireworks effects. With this effect, all that you need to do is to build several rockets that fly up, leaving a trail behind. Whereas the effect randomly chooses the colors to use, you can customize these according to your needs.

  • Lightning

  • Create a bolt of lightning between locators or between two or more objects. The lightning bolt has soft body curves and extruded surfaces to be rendered. One thing about this lighting is that after it is created, it cannot be changed.

Pros of Maya:

  • Generally accepted as a leading software at animation

  • Motion-capture handling

  • Applies modelling layers to its 3D modelling

  • Paint Effects to create 3D effects when drawing freehand

After

Cons of Maya:

  • Has one of the most dreaded learning curves

  • The cumbersome node editor can easily discourage you

  • May have compatibility issues, requiring numerous plugin installations.

3 3Ds Max

Previously called 3D Studio and 3D Studio Max, 3Ds Max can be relied on as an effective tool for professionally modeling, creating animations, and rendering. It effectively makes 3D animations, interactive games, models, and visual effects for entertainment purposes. Thanks to the inverse kinematics feature, 3Ds Max breathes life into your characters.

Speical Effects of 3Ds Max:

  • Ambient Occlusion

  • A way to block light using some objects to create dark crevices and setup bright areas that are exposed to the environment.

  • Rounded Edges

  • Sometimes computer imagery may seem unrealistic, mainly due to edges of the objects. 3Ds Max adds rounded edges effect to imagery to make them more realistic.

Pros of 3Ds Max:

  • Gets it right when it comes to programming and customization

  • The maxscript is relatively easy for artists to learn

  • Contains ultra-convenient edit poly modifier

Cons of 3Ds Max:

  • Still suffers from undiscovered bugs that Autodesk is yet to fully deal with

  • The license fees are on the high-end

  • Steep learning curve

4 Cinema 4D

Cinema 4D has some great some features that you can explore for creating visual effects. As a perfect tool for 3D artists, its results are not only fast and hassle-free but also breathtaking. Its top reliability makes it suitable for fast-paced 3D production. The program seamlessly integrates with After Effects for more appealing results.

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Speical Effects of Cinema 4D:

  • C4D R20 for tracking

  • C4D features a motion-tracking workflow which has undergone improvement over time based on the feedback received. Some improvements to expect include 2D Camera Navigation Mode, 2D Tracking, and Virtual Keyframes.

  • Lighting

  • Add lanes and flares to revamp your production.

  • Explosion

  • The TFD plugin is popularly used to create explosion effects

Pros of Cinema 4D:

  • Extremely powerful visual effects tool

  • Easy to learn

  • Yields breathtaking results

  • Works for both beginners and seasoned professionals

  • Has an intuitive interface

  • Widespread usage in the 3D community makes it a stable program

After Effects Editing Software

Cons of Cinema 4D:

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  • Its free trial is for a limited period

Conclusion

After Effects Video Editing Software

The introduction of special effects technologies has led to not only stunning productions but also added the element of realism. Whereas earlier special effects were achieved through special camera lenses, today, this is done mostly via the appropriate program. These programs are available in a variety, from simple to complex free special effects video editors that both beginners and professionals can use to advanced ones that are suitable only for professional editors. iMyFone Filme seamlessly meets the special effects needs of both beginners and professional artists. Try it now and get a 1-month license for free!

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