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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Help with audio and pre-comp timing

  • Help with audio and pre-comp timing

    Posted by Joshua Jorgensen on March 5, 2009 at 6:42 am

    I did a search and couldn’t find an answer to this question so hopefully it isn’t something that gets asked ever 3rd day…

    I’m fairly green when it comes to after effects so please forgive me if this question is basic. I hope I can explain it well enough.

    I’m animating a piece that I want to be synced with the beats in a piece of music. I have my music in the main comp then each of my seperate ‘shots’ are pre-comped (or is that nested, I don’t fully understand the difference). My question is, if I’m editing a piece in a pre-comp and I want to do a RAM preview to see how that part is working out, is there a way to have the music play in the RAM preview (when I RAM preview the pre-comp, the audio of course plays fine if I preview the main comp)? And have the music play from the point where the pre-comp appears in the main timeline and not from the beginning?

    If that doesn’t make sense, please let me know and I will do my best to explain it better.

    Joshua Jorgensen replied 17 years, 2 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
  • 2 Replies
  • Dave Johnson

    March 5, 2009 at 2:08 pm

    [is there a way to have the music play in the RAM preview (when I RAM preview the pre-comp]

    The easiest thing would be to copy your audio layer into your pre-comp, then just turn it off after you’re done adjusting. What I do with work layers like this is put layer markers with the comment “TURN OFF BEFORE RENDER” to remind myself. Layer marker comments show up in the timeline so they make it hard to forget.

    [have the music play from the point where the pre-comp appears in the main timeline and not from the beginning]

    In the time controls panel for RAM and SHIFT+RAM previews, there is an option check box that says something like “play from current time”.

  • Joshua Jorgensen

    March 5, 2009 at 4:27 pm

    My biggest problem (mainly a mental one) was trying to figure out what to do if my precomp started 5 seconds into the final comp. If I put my audio in my precomp it would start at 0. What I neglected to realize was that I can always have my audio in my precomp start at -5 for testing purposes, it doesn’t have to start at 0, right?

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