Columbus Day was cloudy and cold this year, so I thought it might be fun to stay inside and learn some new software.

That’s the kind of nerd I can be.

But I’m not talking about AJAX, ColdFusion, or anything as dry and tedious as that. If I’m going to do it in my spare time it’s going to be something much more fun. Something like Adobe’s fantastic video effects application, After Effects!

It’s not easy to explain how much you can do with this program, but I’ll give you an idea. After a day of playing around, I created motion graphics  (objects, titles, people), replaced colors, stabilized sequences, and tracked motion.

Tonight, time permitting: sound!

I found some great free tutorials, courtesy of the wizards at Video Copilot. They’ve produced some amazing materials: very comprehensive and relatively fast-paced, compared with other training videos I’ve seen. Browse around their site and check out the kinds of things a real expert can do with After Effects. Here’s a taste: