If you have After Effects CS4 (aka version 9.0), and if you haven’t already gotten into the reflexive habit of dismissing the dreaded Adobe Updater every time it appears, then you might like to know that an update – 9.0.1 – is now available. You can trigger an update from inside After Effects CS4 by selecting Help > Updates. (It will try to update all CS4 applications as a default; if you are in a hurry, you can disable some updates in its options.)
Here is the list of bugs that were addressed according to the release notes:
- Miscellaneous performance improvements with MediaCore video formats.
- General improvements to Dynamic Link workflows.
- Mocha AE doesn’t read v210 QuickTime files correctly.
- On some systems, the application may suspend rendering when the display turns off due to power management or screen saver settings
- All Render Queue items are removed when opening or importing a saved project in which the first item has no comment, but other Render Queue items have comments.
- Crash using “Open Layer” when multiple layers are selected if one of the selected layers does not have a source or has a collapsed transformation.
- Auto-save is marking a project as saved; user can close project without being prompted to save changes, and multiprocessing can return old frames.
- (Windows only) Custom eyedroppers in keying effects pick up wrong colors when clicked in custom thumbnail.
- Exposure effect: negative offset values render garbage/underflow in 8bpc and 16bpc.
- Puppet Tool: For a 3D layer, results are being clipped to layer bounds.
- Importing a still sequence via Recent Footage imports only a single still instead of a sequence.
- For some OpenGL effects in 32bpc projects, overbright colors are getting clipped.
- When the “Write XMP IDs to Files on Import” option is selected, MediaCore playback can make some files appear out of sync.
- Application may appear to hang for several minutes “Reading XMP markers from footage” (status message) with files that contain deeply nested metadata.
The ever-helpful Todd Kopriva has also created a blog post which goes into a few more details.
Note that if you want to play with REDCODE files inside After Effects CS4, in addition to the above update, you also need the beta plug-in from RED. Dave Helmly has an extensive blog post plus link to a video on the RED/Adobe workflow.
Near and dear to our hearts is a modification of the way Help works. Now, when you press F1 inside After Effects to open Help, you no longer go to the Community Help Center; you go straight to the home page of Help for After Effects, complete with index. After Effects Community Help is still a very useful place to visit, but it is no longer foisted upon you when you’re in the middle of a problem. Note that you still need to enable “This Help System Only” for your searches (urgh), but overall it’s a big step in the right direction. Thanks to all who followed the links in our rant and filled out the feedback form. Adobe really does want to Do The Right Thing; they just need to know what it is!