Oh hallelujah. I think I finally worked out how to make After Effects work for me...just enough. For now. The main thing I need AE for at this time is its simple wire removal tool. My problem is the "basic" video tutorials out there don't seem to be basic enough for a noob and a knob like me.
But, still, ten thousand thanks to
Matt Hampton for his excellent tutorial on using the wire remover.
His tutorial was enough for me to manage to get it to work. But then I was like, okay, how the heck do I get my fixed video out of AE? I'm used to simple photo editors in which all you have to do is "save as" and choose where you want the new file to go. But it can't be so simple in a sophisticated program like AE, I guess. So...much aggravation.
After some stumbling around,
this article with the video, The Adobe Media Encoder, helped. Though it still wasn't comprehensive enough for me, with some more fumbling and struggling about I figured out you have to encode and export your new video. The tutorial is also a bit dated, apparently, so things aren't quite the same.
Anyway, once you've made your edit to your video, you click on "Composition," then "Add to Adobe Media Encoder Queue." Then in Media Encoder, under Output File, you click the blue linky thingy to chose where you want it to go. Then you click the little green arrow up at the top and the encoding begins, after which it is shipped out to the location you chose. Yay!
Of course the Creative Cow tutorials are really nice for introducing you to other features too.
I know you experienced guys are probably wondering why I think I need to describe all this here.
I'm just thinking it could possibly help another noob/knob out there like me, maybe save them a little grief.
It was more of a struggle than I wanted it to be. But oh, man, I am so glad it looks like I figured out what I needed to figure out. It's so nice to have those stuck pixels gone and exported videos I can actually do something with, like share.
