Play Your Videos on a Widescreen TV Using After Effects

Effects/Concepts Used
Masking with the pen tool
Duplicating Compositions and renaming them
Drop Shadow

1. Open up After Effects and create a new composition. Shortcut apple n or composition new composition.

2. Import the picture of the lcd screen TV I gave you or download a front view picture of a TV that you want. File import or apple I .

3. Drag your TV picture to the "create a new composition button" found at the bottom of your project panel to the left of the 8bpc text. The button looks like a square filmstrip. This will create a composition the same size as your picture file.

4. Our picture of the T.V has a stand and we only want the monitor part to show up so we will now define the outside of the TV we want to show up by defining a mask. We will make this by using the pen tool. Shortcut g or pick it from the horizontal toolbar at the top of your workspace.

5. With your pen tool selected define the area around the television by clicking a point at the top left then bottom left and follow it around your television and close it back on the top left point. If you did this correctly only the television monitor should show up not the stand.

6. Select your layer in your timeline and hit m to bring up our mask properties. Select Mask 1 and hit enter to rename it to "border".

7. We will now create a mask for the screen part of the tv. This is where I video will play. Make sure your picture layer is selected in the timeline. Select your pen tool and define the screen area like we did in step 5.

8. If you look at your masks in your timeline you should see a new mask has been created called Mask 1. Hit enter on Mask 1 and rename it to screen.

9. To the right of your screen mask layer change it from add to subtract this will hide the screen so our video will show up underneath it.

10. Select your Screen mask layer in your timeline and hit m m ( the letter m twice) this will reveal all the mask properties.

11. Change the following settings.
Mask Opacity: 84%
Mask Expansion 1 pixel

12. At this point save your file somewhere on your computer.

13. Import a video to be played on your TV screen. Apple I

14. Drag your video clip to be underneath your tv pic layer.

15. Select your video clip layer and hit "s" to bring up your scale property. Scale the image so that it will fit on your screen.

16. Now your video should play inside your tv screen when hit the spacebar to play.

17. Select your TV pic layer in your timeline and put a drop shadow on it.
Effect>Perspective>Drop Shadow
Leave the setting in your effects control panel at default for this effect.

Now we will make another video play but do it in a way so that we can save time.

1. In your project panel find the comp we just worked on lcdtv and select hit.

2. Hit the shortcut apple d to duplicate it. It should have named the copy lcdtv2.

3. Double click on lcdtv2 comp to open it up.

4. In this new comp delete the 2nd layer which should be your video layer.

5. Import another video to be played on screen and drag it to your timeline underneath your TV pic layer.

6. Select your new video file layer in the timeline and his "s" to bring up scale properties. Scale it so that it fits on your screen.

7. Do steps 1-6 again from this part of the handout to make numerous video monitors
When you have created as many video monitors as you want create a new composition NTSC DV preset and drag the various lcdtv comps to the timeline and scale to fit screen.

Make it 3d.

You can make your tvs look like they are in 3d space. This may sound like a complicated thing to do but is rather simple especially if you are already familiar with a 3d program such as Maya or 3d Studio Max.

1. Create a New Composition with the Preset NTSC DV.

2. Drag 3 of your lcd comps that you made to your timeline.

3. Scale and place the monitors in different positions on the screen your choice.

4 In your timeline select your lcd comp layers and turn them into 3d layer by doing the following Layer>3d Layer.

5. Now that they are 3d you will see an X Y Z axis appear similar to what you would see in a 3d program. Hit r on any given layer to bring up its x,y,z rotation properties. Change these numbers around and or move the x y z axis in your comp window to move the layer and position it in 3d space.