Software versions and exercise files - After Effects Tutorial

- Throughout these After Effects Apprentice courses, you'll find that Trish and I focus on core concepts of using and learning After Effects, not specific tricks that only work with certain pieces of footage. Therefore, if you don't have any exercise files or if you want to use your own footage, you'll still get a lot our of just watching these videos. That said, studies have shown, the best way to learn something is to actually do it. Therefore, for the optimal learning experience, we suggest you do get access to the exercise files. There's two ways to do that. One is to get a lynda.com Premium Membership. That will allow you to download the files for After Effects CS4, CS5, CS5.5 or CS6. These are the same files we're using when we record these videos. The other approach is to get a copy of our book, After Effects Apprentice. The third addition covers CS5, 5.5 and 6. If you're still using After Effects CS4, then get the second edition of the book. Those files are pretty close to the ones we use throughout this video course. Whenever there are differences, we'll note them as we teach. Now, either way, we think it's a good value. If you get the Premium Membership to Lynda, you get access to exercise files for hundreds of other courses. If you get one of our books, you've got some additional text explanation for each of the features we discuss and you've got a desk reference next to you all the time. Now, throughout these lessons, we're going to be using a combination of After Effects CS5, 5.5 and 6. Don't be thrown off by any minor differences in the user interface. Most of the functionality of After Effects is identical across all of these versions. If there are differences from version to version, we'll note it in a little caption that runs along the bottom of the screen. But all that said, we really hope you have a lot of fun with these courses learning After Effects. It's the application we've been using for ages now. We have a great time with it, we hope you get the same enjoyment out of it that we do.