if you haven't found youself wishing you could do ?? or ? ,, you probably dont need it,,, I do text with it, and magic bullet stuff,,, and slomo, use the render engine for some outputs vegas doesn't give me,
you can download a trial and check it out.
imho pretty high learning curve,,

Probably for what you do it'd bring nothing to the table. I doubt you'd be doing complex compositing or needing any of the huge array of 3rd party plugins available for AE. Keep in mind that compositing apps have a serious learning curve. If you do find something that needs that kind of work realistically it could be cheaper for you to just contract out the work.

If you want to see what AE can do just go to Youtube and search for "After Effects". You'll learn a lot. Most of what you'll find is rubbish, done by clueless people that have no idea about how to make things look realistic or just people having a go. But you'll also find work like the titles for the movie Essex that are to die for but they were done using some serious 3rd party plugs and by people with a lot of experience.

Just looking at the Essex titles, even though I have AE Pro if I needed work like that and a client with a real budget I'd outsource it.

Bob.

I asked the same question months ago, here and on the AE boards, got a lot of flack from the AE crowd for asking... :p

As someone here said, (I can say this, after studying AE a lot the last few months)... AE can basically do more fancy broadcast-quality titles and more with special effects like glows and other effects much more professionally than can be done from within Vegas.

This is largely due to the quality of 3rd party plugins available for AE (knoll lightfactory, trapcode shine etc), that make it a fancier compositing application than what can be done in Vegas.

After all's said and done, AE is the tool for pro broadcast animations and effects, though Vegas can do most of what most of us need by itself... AE is just for advanced polish/effects...

see videocopilot.net and motionworks.com.au for AE examples/tutorials..

btw the learning curve for AE is horrendous, I've bought every recent AE book and DVD tutorial and more available out there, and it's a real bugger of a program to learn, takes months... unlike Vegas where we do stuff on the timeline, AE mainly focuses on the comp window (our equivalent of preview window); takes getting used to.. and there's a ton of micro-settings to dial down to and tweak on each timeline for each effect element.

On a 1-10 scale, Vegas is like a difficulty 3, easy, to learn... maybe a 5-6 to master (7 if you include advanced color correction etc)... whereas AE is a 7 to learn, and a difficulty 9+ to master... very very steep learning curve.. Trish and Chris Meyer have the best books out there to learn from, avail. on amazon.com

It's a bear. It'll take me well over a year to learn how to use it proficiently... but I'll invest the time an energy because it's "the tool to use" for pro broadcast quality animations....

-k

I second the suggestion to look at the links Ken suggested above.
And also scoping out YouTube. I just watched a killer demo that you might find by searching for After Effects reel. Wow.

I think many will agree that Vegas can do MUCH of what AE can do - but AE is easier/cleaner/faster in many cases.

I'm not finding the learning curve to be so dramatic as Ken is, but then, I'm not trying to be a master. Just trying to be "proficient enough" to do my jobs. I've pretty well got a handle on the 3D aspect of AE and many other features.
But the masters use multiple comps, expressions, and so many plugs that it can make the ol' head swim.

Still, I LOVE AE and am SO glad I'm learning it. They say that it's another of those, "must have" tools that will help sell you and your product.
I hear, "If you want a job, you gotta know one of the Power Three; FCP, Avid or After Effects - preferably all three."
I'm not going to argue with the pros or cons of that, but I know where I work, knowing AE would be a deciding factor if your considered for a job or not. It's that important.
(UNfortunately, same goes for FCP - which I don't like at all.)

Thanks to everyone who responded - sounds like AE isn't something I need to look into even though I have AE 6.5 Pro.

The work I do is not in need of the kinds of features AE provides. That's a relief. ;-)

Cliff Etzel
bluprojekt

I did sit through a lengthy demo of AE Pro working with Cinema4D as the presenter showed how they'd built a TVC for a LCD TV.
The TVs were built in 4D and the elements and objects sent int AE for the final comp as it's faster to control many things in a compositing program than a 3D program.
The final tricky element was a film strip with animated frames that snakes its way between the two TVs. They built the reflections of the TVs in each others screens but what they couldn't really do in AE was handle the reflected image of the film strip. The presenter was quite upfront about this limitation in AE pointing out that higher end 3D pixel based compositing apps could do this, if you could afford the cost and the render time.
I'm always more impressed by presentations that include what the product can't do. There's nothing worse than investing serious time learning a new tool and then hitting a brick wall, wasting time trying to workout if you're missing something and then realising, finally, it just doesn't do what you thought it could.

Bob.

I bought a subscription to the online content at Lynda.com just beacuse there were so many applications I needed to "get a clue" about. Having unlimited access to all the tutorials helps.

What led me to do that was this site: http://wikivid.com/index.php/After_Effects. These are all free tutorials, many are intros to other paid tutorials but you get lots of info and a fair sense of what things do.

Rob

I was a bit intimidated by After Effects also, but out of the flood of resources out there, my beginner's favorite for getting up to speed quickly was "After Effects Apprentice" by Trish and Chris Meyer.

This is an outstanding book, in color, very clear, great examples with broadcast quality, and a DVD-ROM with tutorial files. Vastly better than any other resource imho.

After you're done with that, I recommend "Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects" by the same couple. Truly excellent, and they have even more.

whenever shot needs fixing or spicing-up beyons simple CC i go to After Effects. Couldn't image working without it.

There's also the DV Rebel's Guide book. I understand it largely describe sfinishing video in AfterFX.

But to just figure iout if you need it, I'd think the free tutorials are enough. All they cost is your time.

Rob

They are completely different tool for different jobs.

Vegas is an editor, AE is a compositor/effects app.

Confusion arises because Vegas can do some of the things AE can, but obviously not as well, then again Vegas can do some things the entire FCP or Adobe suite can only dream of.

Normally ( if your gudget allows for both ) you would use Vegas to edit, and AE for compositing, titling, effects.

If you have a real budget, then you skip Adobe entirely and go with Fusion for everything else Vegas isn't good for.

Although there are those who have found AE to have a high learning curve, what little I have done with it seems pretty straight forward - although I got my first taste of the interface by using Adobe's discontinued LiveMotion 2.0. The interface was very straight forward to pick up and once I understood how the timeline worked, it was pretty easy to grasp the rudimentary stuff as the interface between LM2 and AE is very similar.

From what I have seen so far, I'm not at a point where I need to be doing broadcast title graphics - I'm a straight type of shooter - instead of glitz and glam, I prefer simple titles for the Doc/Editorial work I shoot.

Given that description - is there anything else that AE would bring to the table that can't be done within Vegas?

Cliff Etzel
bluprojekt

Vegas is, to a certain extent, an effects package. If you are creative enough, you can use Vegas can churn out some cool effects. Being creative is the key and if you can see Vegas as a photoshop like program, you can do some amazing things.

Mike Jones made several excellent points about the differences between Vegas & AE in the To use 'after effects' or not thread on the DMN forum.
IMO, recommended reading if you're considering getting AE.

Mike