After Effects: The Ultimate Organization Guide

The number one idea that should be on your mind when it comes to starting a successful project, is organization. I can’t recall how many times I’ve reopened old After Effects project files and had to deal with the headache of offline media and horrible naming consistencies. Unorganized project files can be extremely devastating to you and your organization, especially when you have limited time. This is why I’ve created this video, After Effects: The Ultimate Organization Guide.
In this video tutorial guide, I will talk about how to correctly start a project with proper organization techniques and naming consistencies. I will dive further into After Effects and talk about when you create “pre-compose” and how you should color label specific elements. Then, we will briefly talk about how we can use After Effects to change the naming labels and colors to create our own custom tags.
After watching our Organization Guide for After Effects, you will be think differently about organization and how to correctly set a project up. Keep in mind that organization is extremely important and even though you might be the only one working on the project, you never know how your future self will react to an unorganized project.
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[@pmpzen]

I've been using AE for years and have always struggled with proper organization and setup. I've been looking for a setup and organization tutorial like this for years! This was an awesome tutorial and will totally help me optimize my work to a new level.... I've been a youtube subscriber for a while but missed this one until now! Thank you a million times over!

[@5PGroup101]

Hi, When ever i come to KZbin to find any AE solution, i watch few of them without any preference. Surprisingly, most of resolviong videos are your's. Great job! Keep it up...!!

[@cmykc.studio]

Thanks for sharing! Picked up a few pointers I wasn't aware of!

[@facu_eze_peralta]

Nice and clean! I really need this video! So cool and now i know where i must to make a precomposition! :D Thank You very much man :D

[@MustWorkWeekends]

Great video. One small criticism of this and another video is that sometimes you will use a term or do an action that is second nature to you but not to all of us (or at least me). i.e. in this video you say you precompose a group of layers, I don't know what they means. In the last video I watched (color matching two clips, you made adjustments to one then pasted those parameters onto the other, I didn't catch how that was done). Sorry to nit pick, I love your videos. Thank you for sharing your expertise.

[@Klausjp.ontheroadagain]

so I asume you don't know shy layers, it took me 10 years to found a tutorial to show my where are all my hidden assets are [ I had to of example projects, but never found the rest of the assets in pre comp

[@Aychan091]

Is there a way how i can "update" a composition, when i did changes on the composition in a different project? something like the "replace file" button, just for a whole project.

[@GuichetStudios]

thanks a million

[@altcurrentmedia]

Awesome! Thank you sooooo much!

[@WrenchMonkey91]

Thank you! Don't know if this is just for windows, but make sure to select "Import Folder" (which was not in an obvious spot for me) as opposed to just "import" or it won't let you move the premade folders.

[@surrealvisuals3234]

Thankyou this was really helpful

[@sathishm8202]

Awesome dude this video will help me a lot

[@bazzauk2020]

is there a way to change the font size on the workspace (i have trouble seeing the fonts in the panels)

[@liorliv3Gaming]

Bless you, thank you! :)

[@lofenoialof5320]

Do you recommend generating these folders on an external hard drive to save source computer space? Thanks

[@just.do.something]

Hey Josh, thanks for all your vids! Do you have any advice or a video that deals with when your AE file goes off line when dynamically linked to Pr? Also, after doing alot of tutorials and practice, I was blown away to see how much hard drive space AE accumulated on my computer. Any thoughts towards managing this better? I feel like especially when I was practicing some content aware fills, a huge amount of space was being taken up on my drive. Thanks Josh! Always appreciate your help.

[@QuillWorks]

7:15 How did you do that? Where it's like you have a composition within a composition that you can double click and edit? Looks like it almost operates as a folder and that's exactly what I'm looking for.

[@goowhite]

Ya, pre-compose behaves exactly like a folder. You can pre-compose any layer or bunch of layers into as many nested folders as you want.

[@pebre79]

Great tips

[@Brandon-vb2pc]

I always just work off files on my desktop and when done for the day go to file > dependencies > collect files. This packages all your used assets in one folder for you. Quicker than manually organizing. :)

[@YhelloWish]

Thanks for the tip man I'm gonna try that :)

[@praiseoyebamiji]

Just solved a major problem. Thanks fam

[@tristan3177]

Okay I know now but is it possible to "tidy" an old file and still precompose ?

[@armandarellano4605]

Can you do a tutorial on how you set up your workspace in after effects? that would be awesome

[@ianmeizoso2072]

Great. Do you have or recommend a motion graphics course for an beginner-intermediate animator working in advertisement (I don't illustrate or make graphics, those are handed to me)

[@arieltafel4155]

can you do a part 2 on efficient consolidating a project that has assets scattered in different locations.. thanks!

[@OttoOome]

I made around 200 vids and the most important is organisation of the used files and the compositionfiles and renders. I do a similar organisation of my files with Pinnacle. I am just starting to explore after effects. I wish, I had done it long ago. So fantastic that organisation of the assets is quit similar But what about rendered files and the temp files AE uses and so on. At the end of this video at thought yes he is going to show it. But than there is the end of this video.

[@zaveer297]

What is your monitor?

[@faysalaslam1]

hey? how to minimise interface to see maximum layers?

[@sparklelee4368]

top - source files at the finish or earlier of project one can 'collect files' to get all the files that are associated w this project.

[@theonewhomadeyoucry1059]

So i am a learning AE and did few things and I was wondering how to improve my workflow and organization 1. I compile any moving elements in my main comp 2. Add folders depending on how many footage am I using and how many composition's I have created. 3. I always collect my project files using dependencies And if there anything you guys want to add to my steps please comment and share your way of dealing with multiple compositions and footage's in 1 project

[@illoprin]

More to say, you should do this with all the files and projects you do on your PC It helps to increase organization and structure, and is very helpful to the workflow At least for me, as a perfectionist, this is very important

[@aigarszemits8731]

Plese make other video editing tutorial. Cool video. Realy help. like:)

[@ayylmao6113]

these are good tips, the only thing i might say could potentially bad is copying stock footage because sometimes you might use a lot of it and that can take insane amounts of space even for your hard drive. copying 5 GB of the same files over and over to different folders is not a good idea...

[@SonduckFilm]

Yes, that might be an exception depending on the file size.

[@AjinkyaMayekar]

how can i ungroup a folder?

[@manage.creativity]

I just dump everything intro the project folder or on my desktop lol

[@Ocer.]

how do i make my timeline longer

[@DavidLindgren89]

[Ocer//OcR] right click on the composition tab above the timeline and click ”composition settings” and then go down and change ”duration”. 🙂

[@mohamednaflan4361]

This is insane

[@user-wb2uk5qm1r]

i need 2d tutorial :)

[@Bingleheimer]

.xX. U L T I M A T E .Xx. Tip: Number your folders as well to make things a bit easier. Here's what I do : 00_Assets 01_Audio 02_Compositions 00_Final Shipping 01_Current Precomps 02_Previous Precomps

[@zaveer297]

Bro! The most important thing that inspires to work is a good environment! I mean it seems like you have a great mac setup and you like doing your work but for me.. A crappy old laptop doesn't inspire me to work! Great Video!

[@YourStoryTeam]

This video should only be 5 mins, tops!

[@zaveer297]

I want a tutorial on creating a 2d intro

[@zaveer297]

Yeah!

[@mohamednaflan4361]

I need a tutorial abt making a 2D intro

[@markuslangeland418]

yeah that would be amazing

[@zaveer297]

Yea! Me too

[@SonduckFilm]

I might do that for my next tutorial ;)

[@gavlang]

Some of this is ok, but really it's far from ULTIMATE.