This isn’t an ordinary transcript, it’s speech metadata. That means the time code where each word was found is saved. And that means you can search a video clip for a particular word and move to that point on the timeline. Speech search is pretty much the “Holy Grail” of video indexing. The speech metadata is stored in the Premiere Pro project file. After Effects is able to import and use this metadata as “markers” in After Effects, so that you can time your animation to events in the audio transcript.
Now, back to the whole suite idea, in Premiere Pro, you can actually search transcription metadata, click on a word, and the playhead will automatically go there. I think you can easily imagine the value of this feature. Someone tells you “add the explosion to the scene immediately after the main character says ‘pickles’”. And you just type in ‘pickles’ and the playback head is magically repositioned to that moment in time. How cool is that?
I didn’t test speech search extensively, as it's not a component of After Effects, which this review is designed to focus on. Generating the speech metadata is supposed to take only about as long as it takes to play the clip. The clip I selected was about 3 minutes and it took Premiere Pro about 15 minutes to generate the metadata. I suspect that I just chose a clip with poor sound quality, and should have performed some sound engineering before attempting to transcribe it.
Again, After Effects CS4 will make use of this data if it is present, but it does not generate speech metadata itself. That’s one more reason to consider a Creative Suite package.
After Effects has always used a layer paradigm that makes it work very well for 2D multiplane compositing. In the last several versions, AE has increased it’s true 3D capability through collaboration with new features in Photoshop, such as Vanishing Point (which was unveiled in CS3). In CS4, After Effects takes it’s 3D abilities to a new level.
Photoshop Extended CS4 is able to import a 3D model along with textures into a “Photoshop 3D Layer”. If you save this as an “Extended” Photoshop .psd file, After Effects can import the Photoshop 3D Layer as a composition. The Photoshop 3D composition has its own 3D camera and can be nested in other compositions inside After Effects. The Photoshop composition preserves the ability to move the model in true 3D space.
Figure 6 illustrates After Effect’s new 3D abilities. Image #1 shows a red sedan automobile from the Marlin Studios Traffic collection, imported into Photoshop CS4 Extended, saved to a .psd file, and imported as a comp into After Effects. That Photoshop 3D composition was then nested inside the “main” composition.
In image #2, the layer in the “main” comp was turned into an After Effects 3D layer to provide X, Y, and Z rotation controls. It was then rotated 66 degrees towards the camera. As you can see, the car model looks like a sticker on the surface of a 2D layer. And rotating it didn’t change the geometry of the car at all, it just distorted the image revealing that it is flat.
In image #3, the rotation was applied inside the Photoshop 3D composition. As you can see, the geometry of the car has changed realistically and the car is moving in 3D space. This is the difference between AE CS4 collaboration with Photoshop 3D and all earlier versions of AE.
Here is how I categorize 3D capabilities:
(1) The ability to create a model.
(2) The ability to texture and color the model.
(3) The ability to light and render a model and rotate it in 3 dimensions.
(4) The ability to animate parts of the model independently from other parts.
(5) Particle and Force Field animation.
(6) Kinematics (bones and body) animation.
(7) Cloth and hair animation.
(8) Physics simulation animation.
Before CS4, After Effects provided 2D Particle Animation (5) with limited Force Field support. Third-parties offered effects that operate in true 3D within a layer. Also, the Puppet Tool introduced in CS3 enables animation based on the distortion of part of a layer, which is a very tiny bit of (4) animation.
CS4 adds fairly robust (3) lighting, rendering, and rotation animation.
What does this mean?
It means that in After Effects CS4 you can make the car move realistically in an animation. But you can’t make the wheels turn on the car. For that, you have to use a native 3D application.
