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-   -   Best books and dvd to buy 4 AE! (https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/digital-compositing-effects/466876-best-books-dvd-buy-4-ae.html)

Marcus Martell October 31st, 2009 11:53 AM

Best books and dvd to buy 4 AE!
 
Which are the best dvd-books for AE?I remember somebody suggesting Christiensen book.....
what about you guys?

thx

Steve Kalle October 31st, 2009 06:04 PM

Hope I can help as I have been trying to learn AE CS4 for the last 8 months. I started with Lynda.com - its only $25/month and has a ton of video training for AE and other software.

fxphd.com - more like a class as you sign up for a semester. I am signing up Monday for their October semester for one AE and 2 Cinema 4D classes. I have seen some of their other AE classes and their 'teachers' are great at explaining what they are doing.

Why do you want to learn AE?

Gregory Gesch October 31st, 2009 08:41 PM

Hi Marcus. A great place to visit is:
VIDEO COPILOT | Professional After Effects Tutorials, Plug-ins & Pre-Keyed Stock Footage
which has very good basic and advanced tutorials and a great forum.
I would also very highly recommend:
Amazon.com: After Effects Apprentice, Second Edition (9780240811369): Chris and Trish Meyer: Books
and their other book 'Creating Motion Graphics' is more advanced and also great (I have found, and still find them, easy to understand and indispensable). Hope that helps.

Tripp Woelfel November 1st, 2009 07:22 AM

Although I cannot say that I have found the definitive AE book, "Creating Motion Graphics" by Trish and Chris Meyer is excellent. It can be used as a training text, which I have done. It also is very helpful as a reference.

I have a hard time keeping the mechanics of masks in my head. When I need a refresher, I can go to the book and get quickly back up to speed.

It's a great book that I view as well worth its cost.

Steve Kalle November 1st, 2009 05:08 PM

Thanks Gregory. Dummy me forgot to mention one of the BEST - Videocopilot.

Andrew Kramer is sort of an AE God. His Twitch plug-in is awesome and so are his stock video and audio.

FYI, Chris Meyer is the host of many AE series on Lynda.com.

Marcus Martell November 10th, 2009 08:22 PM

Ok i'm ordering AE apprentice but i was wonderin what about CHRISTIANSEN book?

thx my friends

Jarred Capellman January 6th, 2010 07:13 PM

For me the best way was to see an effect in a movie and then trying to duplicate it in After Effects, by searching through message boards and by trial and error. Call it the programmer in me, but I've learned so much by that method over the last 9+ years.

The After Effects Illusionist was very good if you want a book though, it went through all of the built in the plugins and some very creative ways of utilizing them without having to go spend tons of money on plugins.

Jim Andrada January 7th, 2010 12:25 AM

Another vote for FXPHD. Great classes, very responsive instructors. Unlike a regular DVD the instructors reply to questions on the forum and in one case I asked an instructor if there would be a class on tracking shots in Syntheyes when there were occluding foreground objects and he added a segment to the class to cover it.

Eric Lagerlof January 10th, 2010 11:52 AM

I own the Meyer's AE books from 5 years ago, since then they've divided the content up into more volumes. But to this day, no other software book has matched what they did, and I'm assuming still do. AS you get more experience you may want to go to a local bookstore and check out their other volumes, they really are great both for learning and for reference.

The Christiansen books are in general a bit more advanced, but Mark is very good, especially at things like compositing and keying. He'll tune you up in areas like how keyers use different ways of working with RGB values to pull keys, etc.

Like Lynda.com there is Total Training.com, run by Brian Maffitt who, along with the Meyers, used to be THE AE guru. I don't know who does the online training now, but it's bound to be good. And Kramer over at VideoCopilot does have great tut's, though you should probably have a good basic orientation before tackling may of them.


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