Motion Graphics Archives

Watch and learn how to use every effect in Adobe After Effects

Mar 2, 2022 by John Aldred Leave a Comment

After Effects has grown in capability a lot since I last used it regularly. Recently, I’ve found myself needing to use it again for a few projects, so I’ve been hitting up the YouTube search to see what’s new and interesting that I might have missed in the last couple of years. During my search, I ran across the channel Jake in Motion, by motion graphics artist and educator Jake Bartlett.

For the last seven or so months, Jake has been posting a video almost every day with each going over a different effect available in the current version of After Effects, explaining in-depth what it does and how you can utilise it in your creations. Currently, his Effects of After Effects series stands at 187 videos covering a vast array of native effects available within Adobe After Effects and he’s not finished yet!

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DaVinci Resolve 17 final now available in native Apple M1 flavour

Mar 11, 2021 by John Aldred Leave a Comment

Blackmagic has announced that DaVinci Resolve 17, released just a couple of weeks ago, is now also available as an Apple M1 native application. As with the beta, the version built specifically for Apple Silicon is version 17.1. Final releases have been made for both the free and Studio version of DaVinci Reoslve and are available to download now from the Blackmagic website.

After Adobe’s announcement yesterday of Photoshop also seeing its native M1 version come out of beta, Apple’s new Silicon-based systems are starting to look even more attractive to creatives.

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Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve 17 is now out of beta, hits final release

Feb 25, 2021 by John Aldred 2 Comments

It’s been a bit of a journey since the last major release of DaVinci Resolve. Resolve 16 came out almost two years ago, at NAB in April 2019. Finally, last November, Blackmagic announced that Resolve 17 was being released as a public beta, letting us get our grubby little mitts on the newest version to have a play and see what we could break.

Today, Blackmagic has announced that DaVinci Resolve 17 is now out of beta and sees its first final release. As with all new major Resolve versions, Resolve 17 offers a massive number of new features and improvements over Resolve 16. Over 300, they say, along with native support for Apple’s new M1 chips.

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Blackmagic adds support for new M1-powered Macs in 17.1 Beta update

Nov 13, 2020 by John Aldred Leave a Comment

Quick off the mark, Blackmagic has today announced a new update to the DaVinci Resolve 17 Beta. The new 17.1 version adds support for Apple’s new M1-powered Macs. The new update brings all of the recently released features of the DaVinci Resolve 17 Beta to the new M1 Macs, including the new HDR grading tools, redesigned colour wheels, next-generation Fairlight engine and all the rest of it.

Literally, the only thing the new DaVinci Resolve 17.1 Beta 1 offers over DaVinci Resolve 17 is support for the M1 Macs. It’s designed to take advantage of the unified memory architecture on the M1 to increase performance on the new systems. But for those that missed the previous announcement, here is a complete list of all the changes and updates since Resolve 16.

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Blackmagic has announced DaVinci Resolve 17 with a bunch of new features and performance enhancements

Nov 10, 2020 by John Aldred Leave a Comment

Blackmagic Design has today announced the latest iteration of their video editing and colour grading software, DaVinci Resolve 17. The new version, which is a Public Beta, comes with “hundreds of cleanups” and a number of “powerful new features”. As with previous versions of Resolve, it combines editing, colour correction, visual effects, motion graphics and audio into a single package.

The latest update add some performance benefits, particularly with optical flow, and some fantastic features that users have been hoping would come for a long time. There are also a couple of new desktop hardware tools to help you more easily interact with the software outside of the usual keyboard and mouse.

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How to create an animated custom Google Map for your travel videos

Oct 17, 2019 by John Aldred 1 Comment

Maps are wonderful things. They don’t just let us figure out how to get from here to there, but they can also provide context, especially in travel videos. They let the viewer see how far we’ve gone, or get an idea of the surrounding area, or one of a million other reasons you might want to put a map in your video.

Fortunately, thanks to modern technology, doing this is now easier than ever. In this video, Jason Boone walks us through one way to create them using Google My Maps and Google Earth Studio to create an image sequence you can bring into your video editor.

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This insane editing machine supports four Nvidia Quadro GPUs, 2 Xeon CPUs, 1.5TB RAM and can cost over $100,000

Apr 18, 2019 by John Aldred 3 Comments

Sometimes, the video editing and visual effects jobs we get can demand some pretty hardcore specs for maximum performance. While we were at NAB 2019, we spotted a PC on the ASUS stand that definitely seemed to have specs that fall under that “hardcore” category. We spoke with ASUS to find out more.

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Learn Adobe After Effects with this new free course for beginners

Apr 20, 2018 by John Aldred 2 Comments

After Effects is probably my favourite tools in the Adobe Lineup. Essentially, it is for video what Photoshop is for stills. It has a whole lot of very powerful features to let you animate, composite, and otherwise manipulate your video footage. It also lets you do motion graphics, camera tracking, and a host of other cool things. But it can be a little overwhelming at first.

This new course from motion graphics artist Roland Hartmann (graphicINmotion) will help to introduce you to the application gently. It guides you through the whole process from first loading and setting essential preferences to rendering out your final video. And, it’s completely free.

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This Madrid timelapse shows off a variety of cool techniques and a beautiful city

Nov 16, 2016 by John Aldred 1 Comment

Some of you might remember Kirill Neiezhmakov. He shot the timelapse sequence of the Dubai luxury hotel fire on New Year’s Eve. In that short, he mixed some real time footage with timelapse footage and zooms to great, but short, effect. Well, Kirill’s back with a new timelapse of Madrid, Spain and he’s taking those techniques up a notch.

Like the Dubai video, it contains a mix of shooting styles. These include normal real time video footage, timelapse and hyperlapse. The video also shows some great editing and post techniques, with interesting motion graphics. I don’t know if the few motion graphics it contains will be to everybody’s taste, but it’s a cool idea with great potential.

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