User Guide

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Chapter 3: Building a
Composition
o create a movie with the footage items in your project, set up a composition.
A composition includes one or more footage items—video, audio, both video and
audio, or a still image—arranged in a Composition window and in the Timeline
window. 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.
Working with imported footage
After you have imported footage, you can view, edit, and change settings for your
imported footage without using a Composition window.
Viewing imported footage
You can view any movie or graphic item listed in a Project window at full size by opening
it in a Footage window. You can also view the footage at different magnifications and
examine individual frames.
When you double-click a movie in the Project window, it opens by default in the appro-
priate Footage window: QuickTime (.mov) files open in the QuickTime Footage window;
Video for Windows (.avi) files open in the Video for Windows Footage window. Still
images always appear in an After Effects Footage window.
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UG.book Page 93 Wednesday, February 21, 2001 12:05 PM