After Effects vs Composite

[dande]

I have been using the Adobe Creative suite CS 3 over the last few years and I was thinking of upgrading because I find CS3 very slow on win 7. I only really use After Effects and Premiere Pro. Premiere Pro I just use for bring all my files together to create the final animations

 

I was thinking of moving to CS6. It's not cheap.

 

But then I thought, I have composite with Max. Their must be a decent competitor software like premiere pro.

 

Has anybody used After Effects and Composite. How do they compare.

 

What other alternatives do people use to Premiere Pro.

[Francisco Penaloza]

After Effects CS6 is way faster than CS3 or even CS5, with the integration of GPU computing, you really can see the difference, now if you own any creative suite I recommend to upgrade now because they will not available any more.

Regarding the comparison between Autodesk Compositing and After Effects, for basic compositing, they both are good, now need less to say Autodesk Compositing is a node base software so you need to learn a complete different workflow but sadly the software is unstable and it seems will die in the near future Autodesk does not have any interest in further development, in reality besides the name the software have not changed in years.

After Effect is way more versatile and with a strong development, but it is not optimized for high frame rate an complex compositing. If you want to look in other specialized compositing software you have Fusion, about the same price of After Effects and finally NUKE, but that a very expensive software, designed for really advance compositing.

Video editing software there is many, I used to use Sony Vegas very good software or Avid software, they are running very good promotions now it is worth to consider, plus the latest release of Avid video come with redgiant's look so 2 birth for one stone

[dande]

Thanks very much for the info. I'll just bite the bullet and update my Adobe.

[grzegorzwronkowski]

Are there any cheaper alternatives to After Effects ? Otherwise I will have to get it before they'll start to sell it only via subscriptions.

[Francisco Penaloza]

After Effects is a very well rounded software, I think it worth every penny, now cheaper than this I don't know off, maybe there is but not with the same features.

You can always give a try to Blender, is free, and can do serious compositing and some motion graphics, never used my self but I know that it can be done, you have to deal with the interface thou.