not really software "playing" but lets see

[amikhchi]

I've had my dv camera for a while but never really used it much until i actually got my dvd burner. Now that i do use it, i've been trying to add special effects to my home videos... I had a 17 second funny clip of my friend dancing then getting hit in the head with a cell phone, and i wanted to make it look cool, i heard adobe after effects was the best program for effects so i bought it and it's really confusing. After capturing to a dv avi file through firewire, i converted it to a ntsc dvd compliant file using the ntsc thing from tmpgenc plus wizard. After i did that i couldn't load up the newly created mpg file into after effects, i could load up the avi file, but not the new file... a few questions

1: are there any online guides (user-friendly) that could teach me a few things about after effects?

2: anyone know why it wouldn't load? I had the basic options when i encoded it, ntsc 16:9 (recorded it in widescreen), full screen keep aspect ratio, those were the only real settings i could think of changing...

thanks in advance

[bugster]

1) Don't know about that, sorry.

2) After effects is for editing and adding effects to Avi files, not mpeg. So edit/add effects. Render to DV-AVI, then convert to mpeg.

[theDruid]

I'm no expert on After Effects, or on DVD authoring for that matter...

But in general, you're much better off editing (DV) avi, rather than encoding to MPEG first, then trying to edit afterwards.

Have a look at the Glossary on this site to see the difference between MPEG video, and avi with little or no compression.

That's probably why After Effects didn't want to load up your MPEG file.

Edit first, then encode once you're happy.

cheers,
mcdruid.