Importing footage

For this exercise, let us import a sample video that we will perform our operations on, for ease of learning in this chapter:

1. Open After Effects, and from the welcome screen, select the New Project option. Save the project to your preferred location by going to the menu bar and navigating through File | Save As | Save as…, as explained in Chapter 1 in the Saving the After Effects project section.
2. Go to File | Import | Lesson 2 | Sunset.mp4.
3. Now drag the Sunset.mp4 file from the project panel to the composition icon in the project window to create a composition based on the properties of the media and duration.

Figure 2.1: Creating a composition from sunset footage

Here is the final composition created:

Figure 2.2: Composition created from sunset footage

Now let us begin with exploring the Effects & Presets panel on the right side of the After Effects interface.