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Making an animation in a movie last longer
So I’ve run into this program a number of times, and was curious if there is a better solution then the one I’ve been using.
So I’ll have an extended animation, maybe some movie clips animating, some camera movements, and some text flying by. I finish my beta version, watch the complete animation, and then decide that It’d be better if some section in the middle lasted a little longer.
So my options are either I go through to that section, figure out how I want to extend it, and move those local movie clips. But now I have to move everything after it the same number of seconds over that I’m adding to the new area, which means a whole lot of manual moving of movie clips and keyframes (especially when I have to mess with the camera keyframes). In the end I end up with a longer animation sure, but it takes me way longer then I’d hoped for such a simple change.
My other option is to make the whole thing a movie clip and then enable time remapping and add a few seconds that way. Must faster, but I believe that doing this causes that area to have less FPS (frames per second) right? So that solution doesn’t seem any better.
I’m just curious, is there a way to accomplish this task easier? I wouldn’t bring it up if it hadn’t happened to me a number of times and brought my projects to a standstill.
Thanks for your help,
-David C
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4 Replies
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you got two options
– you can select many keyframes and then alt-click drag one end of them to anywhere you want. the in-betwenn keyframes will then behave like roving keyframes and move accordingly. like stretching.
– dont render out a movie and use time stretching. instead do it with your composition. AE will interpolate every animation up to the fps of your choice.
good luck,
payton -
Hmmm… Couldn’t you lengthen the Comp (Ctrl K and add time) then select the layers active in the section you want to add more time to, then Edit>Split Layer? All those layers will duplicate, then, all of them still being selected, “End” and then “Alt ]” to get them to the end. Maybe I’m confuded (nothing new) but you can also select as many layers as you want, when you drag them around, you don’t have to move them one at a time.
I admit splitting layers adds more to manage. Maybe someone knows of a good way to do what you want.
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dave,
i need to disagree. rendering out to an intermediate codec is a bad choice. this will mean loss of fps even in parts where AE did the animation. dont render, time stretch the comp and AE will interpolate what can be interpolated by itself.
payton -
Thanks for all the help. So far I’ve been using the pre-compose sections into movies and moving them as a unit that way, and then fixing what remains, it works besides the mess it makes (my project is short enough and only viewed by me, so its not as much of a problem, but its not a GOOD solution).
Is there any way to at least tell After Effects to add the empy seconds it adds to the FRONT instead of at the end? It seems silly to me I can’t treat time like a canvas in photoshop I guess… I guess they just want me to add time, and then grab everything but what I want longer at the beginning and shift it over…. :p
Still, thanks, I’ve def. tried the other methods out and will be using some of them in the future, though i think from now on any longer animations I make I’m going to split into ‘scenes’ so this isn’t as much of a problem. Easier to have the same object existing in 2 larger movie clips then have to deal with moving every little element to add time and all.
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