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After Effects Tutorial - Ramped Slowmo

By: Bret Bamford

This is the first thing I learned how to do in Adobe After Effects. I found it difficult at first but after some practice and a few tutorials I got it down,sort of. I had a lot of trouble getting the exporting down without/out it having serious amounts of distortion and frame jumping. I tried for awhile and finally got it down, knowing how frustrating it can be I decided to write a tutorial with pictures to help people just learning it. You might need some knowledge of editing programs, specifically Adobe Premiere before attempting this.

Step 1: When you open After effects, right click in the Untitled project and select ‘New Composition..’
Step 2: The New Composition dialogue box will appear. If you are select the settings I have pictured below.
Step 3: Now click ok, the timeline, and preview monitor will show up. Now right click in the Untitled Project window and select ‘Import>file’ and select the file that you would like to ramp
Step 4: Drag your clip into the timeline. Double click on the clip and another box will appear so that you can set the Mark In, and Mark Out points. Do this then close the box.
Step 5: Drag the work area to just behind the end of your clip as pictured below.
Step 6: Drag the time view window bracket to the left until the clip covers the majority of the visible timeline as pictured below.
Step 7: Now click Layer>Enable Time Remapping

Step 8: Now place keyframes where you would like to start slowing down the clip, for this one I slowed it down just before the skater popped. Do this by positioning your edit line where you would like the key frame and clicking this box.

Step 9: Now place a keyframe where you would like the motion to become normal again, just as or just before the skater lands.
Step 10: Now highlight the keyframe where the skater lands, AND the key frame at the end of the clip by shift clicking on both. Drag them to the right, this will stretch the time in between the first keyframe and the middle keyframe. The line in between them will drop.
Step 11: Drag the clip farther to the right so that the out point is at the right point. Now is where you begin to slow down the slowmo, if that makes sense. You want to click the circles that I have circled in red. Drag them slightly down and towards the center as pictured. This should create a smooth curve, play with them until you get it right, then click 'RAM preview' and see your creation, you will get frame jitters and such right now, don't worry about those until exporting.

Step 12: Now that you have the motion to your satisfaction, it is time to export so that you can use it in your wonderful editing creations for your friends to gawk at and the people on digitalskate.net to joke on. Click Composition>Add to Render Que
Step 13: Now comes the fun part. Select Composition settings. The below Pictured dialogue box will appear, select ALL the settings pictured.

Step 14: Now select Output settings and enter the below pictured settings. Don't forget to click 'Format Options' and select Microsoft DV
Step 15: Select 'Output To:' and set a destination for your video
Step 16: Click Render, wait for it to finish, then watch your wonderful creation.  

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