After Effects 8.0.2 is live, as is an updated Help document.
 

The After Effects 8.0.2 update is live, and so is the new After Effects CS3 Help on the Web. To get the update, choose Help > Updates. To see all of what has changed, see the ReadMe document, which will very soon be at www.adobe.com/go/kb403043.

Here's a link to After Effects Help on the Web, in case you forgot:

http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/8.0/

And here's a link to the page from which you can download a PDF copy of the Help document:

http://www.adobe.com/support/documen.../aftereffects/


Beyond the additions for P2 functionality, we made several hundred changes to the document for this version, most of which fall into two categories:

- We fixed a lot of little errors and clarified explanations based on feedback in LiveDocs comments and feedback from the LiveDocs survey.

- We added a lot of links from Help to external resources.

First, about that survey: We are doing a survey each quarter about our documentation resources. If you took the survey last quarter, please consider taking it again so that we can tell how our changes are working. This quarter's survey has additional questions about kinds of examples and illustrations:

http://livedocs.adobe.com/learn_live...rvey_2007.html

I strongly urge all of you to take this survey. As you may have noticed, After Effects documentation is being done a bit differently than it used to be, with more links to external material, more frequent updates, et cetera. We _need_ feedback about how well this is working for you so that we can decide how to go forward.

Now, about those external links: One of the things that we heard from last quarter's survey was that After Effects documentation is incomplete (but accurate, yay!). One very fast way to fill some gaps is to point users to the example projects, tutorials, and other materials that people like you create and publish. Some of you have been adding LiveDocs comments to Help on the Web that point to these great materials. We've incorporated many of those links---plus a great many more---in the parts of Help where we thought that these external materials could help the user. We intend to do much more of this if you tell us that you find it valuable.

Also, there are a lot of extensions to After Effects (some free, some not) that make After Effects work better. We also point to some of those. How did we pick which ones to point to? In part, we went by what we were being told in LiveDocs comments and on forums. If you don't see a mention of a plug-in, script, or other tool that you think is great, tell us through the comments.

So, thank you to all of the people and organizations whose intructional material and software we now point to from After Effects Help or whose LiveDocs comments have led to substantial improvements:

Lutz Albrecht
Jeff Almasol
Lloyd Alvarez
Dale Bradshaw
Colin Brailey
Guy Chen
Mark Christiansen
Alexendre Czetwertynski
John Dickinson
Dan Ebberts
Marcus Geduld
Rick Gerard
Harry Frank
Richard Harrington
David Helmly
Jonas Hummelstrand
Tim Kurkoski
Stu Maschwitz
Chris Meyer
Trish Meyer
Alejandro Pérez
Aharon Rabinowitz
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Scott Squires
Angie Taylor
Paul Tuersley
Donat van Bellinghen
David Van Brink
David Wigfross
Michele Yamazaki
Rich Young
Automatic Duck
Digital Anarchy
GridIron
Zaxwerks
RE:Vision Effects
ObviousFX
Trapcode
Red Giant
Toolfarm
AE Enhancers
Neat Video
fnord software
Apple

Todd, thank you very much for the announcement. This will make a lot of us running Leopard happy. Any idea if this fixes the issue with QT 7.4 RDM?

8.0.2 doesn't address the newest QuickTime problem.
 

No, the brand new QuickTime 7.4 DRM problems aren't addressed by this update. Michael Coleman, the After Effects product manager, has a quick post about this:

http://blogs.adobe.com/keyframes/200...cktime_74.html

This is all very fine - does anyone have a glimpse into the future with AECS3 with regard to its ability to import .mxf files from the Sony XDCAM HD 330/350 family of cameras, as well as accepting the .mxf files created by the Sony Clip Browser software from the EX1 ??

P2 great, but no Sony support at all?

Paul

> does anyone have a glimpse into the future with AECS3 with
> regard to its ability to import .mxf files from the Sony XDCAM
> HD 330/350 family of cameras...

Here's a link to the Adobe feature request and bug report form.

I can tell you that we've heard this request already---heard it quite clearly, in fact. Of course, I can't comment on the specifics of future software releases.