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Insert/subtract frames?
Is there and easy way in After Effects to goto a specific frame, and then add or subtract time there?
Flash has the very nice F5 feature, where if you have nothing selected, and click F5 it scoots everything after your time marker over 1 frame. Shift+F5 10 frames. F6 minus one frame. You can also select a set amount of frames on only certain layers, and adjust them with F5/F6. It makes it very easy to massage timing.
After Effects I find extremely difficult to edit timing, especially when I have lots of layers, some that span the whole length of the comp, with keyframe animation, while other layers just appear for little while. Currently I try to select all my short layers after my insert time, and Alt+PageDown them over, then select all my long layers Keyframes after my insert time and Alt+RightArrowKey them over, but it is often confusing and I tend to mess stuff up.
Is there a better way?
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9 Replies
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do you mean this from here: https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/keyboard-shortcuts-reference.html
Go forward 1 frame – Page Down or Ctrl+Right Arrow/Page Down or Command+Right Arrow
Go forward 10 frames –Shift+Page Down or Ctrl+Shift+Right Arrow/Shift+Page Down or Command+Shift+Right Arrow
Go backward 1 frame – Page Up or Ctrl+Left Arrow/Page Up or Command+Left Arrow
Go backward 10 frames – Shift+Page Up or Ctrl+Shift+Left Arrow/Shift+Page Up or Command+Shift+Left Arrow
Go to layer In point – I
Go to layer Out point – O
Go to previous or next visible item in time ruler (keyframe, layer marker, work area beginning or end) – J or K
and use the Shift key as you move the CTI to snap to keyframes or layer edges
do you need anything more?
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Thanks, but no.
I have my animation, on all sorts of layers, and at 14 seconds I want to insert 2 more seconds.
So what used to happen at 15 seconds will now happen at 17 seconds…Except what I really want is to be more flexible than that and easily play with the timing until it is just right.
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how about Go To Time – Alt+Shift+J and type +2. to add 2 seconds?
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if this is a Preview type of thing you need, you can preview your animation in Range: Play around current time and set preroll and posroll in seconds. maybe this is the flexibility you are looking for?
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in addition to what Dave said: Alt + Right/Left arrow moves your keyframes one frame. add the Shift and it’s 10 frames. Alt + Pgdn/up moves the layer 1 frame. add shift and it’s 10 frames. running out of ideas here 🙂
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[Ocean Byrne] “Is there a better way?”
No, there is not. Ae has no analogue to Flash’s timeline. You are already doing it the best way, and it is a hard, manual process.
As a script developer, I have looked into automating this. Adding/subtracting time is a much trickier problem than it seems at first, because there are so many corner cases. What do you do with keyframes contained within the time range? What do you do with footage? What do you with precomps? What do you do with time remapping?
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
if there’s a way to see exactly what you are referring to, I would love to see that. it’s been more than a decade since I touched Flash.
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Yeah, I get that it is tricky, and has a variety of potentials to be extra tricky – but Flash does a really good job of it.
99% of the time I am not asking to do anything weird, I just want to go to a frame, and push all actions (keyframes and layer start/ends) back by x frames. Even a dumb script that just did that would be super helpful…
Thanks for the thoughts guys.
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Even the simple case isn’t so simple. Ae scripting cannot actually move a keyframe; it must read the old keyframe, delete it, and create a new one at the new time. This means that any keyframe that uses a custom data type (like Levels with its Histogram control) cannot be handled with scripting, because its data cannot be read or written.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn]
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