How to Package Adobe After effects projects

What are After Effects Dependencies?

You must know how to accomplish this if you work with more than one person, especially if you operate remotely, as most individuals and freelance editors do.

After Effects File Collecting is the process of storing your project’s file, together with all of the assets used in it, into a single folder that can be packaged and distributed to someone else.

That way, when they open the project, they’ll see all of the files you used, and they’ll be able to make changes and re-export it.

After Effects Dependencies is a tool for packaging and collecting files for Adobe After Effects projects.

For every, After Effects user, managing media or (File Collecting) a project is an absolute must-learn. And, in my experience, it is far easier than media managing a premiere project.

Using After Effects dependencies to send a project out or clean it up is something I believe every AE user should know by default, but it wasn’t something I learned until I worked in a professional setting where it was required.

Below are some common reasons you might run into this.

Why would you need this?

• Archiving your projects for a client

• Sending a project to another editor

• Removing unwanted bloated files

• Combining all the files you used into one location

• Cleaning up your project

Archiving After Effects projects

As you add more projects to your portfolio, you’ll ultimately need to remove them from your existing hard drive.

You’ll eventually fill up your hard disk and be unable to add additional videos or projects without deleting anything else. I’ve had to do this before, and when you’re in a hurry to make a decision, you could delete something you don’t have a backup for.

When you’re finished with a project, archive it to tidy it up and make sure it’s secure somewhere else. It won’t take up as much space as it did before because it’ll just contain the media used in the project.

Sending your project to someone else

When you’re working on many projects with other people, or even different customers, a typical request at the close of the job is for all the working files so they may make changes to what they’ve already paid for without having to rebuild anything or go to another outside editor.

In this example, you’ll compress and file collect your project, then zip it and send it to Dropbox, OneDrive, or any other service you use.

Removing unused files

This is probably my favorite part of the process; hitting a button and having all of your unneeded clips and duplicate files deleted from the project is fantastic.

When dealing with stock footage/VFX assets, I pull in all of my files and clips to get what I need, thus being able to clean out the hundreds of unnecessary ones is a great tool. It’s both mentally and aesthetically appealing.

Collecting files across multiple drives

This isn’t very frequent if you work alone most of the time, but it’s quite useful if you work alone and aren’t particularly organized. When you file collect your project, it will create a duplicate of all of the files used throughout your project and compile them into one folder for you.