mac book pro and after effects

[Brian Berneker]

I’d say get one of the new brushed metal keyboards (my favorite) and just run external. You could go out of your way setting up new hot keys or learning to use the menus, but that will just take away from the usability of After Effects.

You can also just buy an external num pad as well, which is smaller. There is an article on how to make sure it works here:

https://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080310030635237

Personally I’d just use the notebook for photoshop and other out and about activities, but save my AE work for times when I can sit in front of a big screen.. my 46″ 1920×1080 Toshiba.. Effects just seem more meaningful on a big screen to me, and enhance creativity.

You could set up a workstation to plug in to a full keyboard and monitor… I guess I’m getting way off topic by now…

Brian

[Steve Tarlton]

Are you using “fn” and the letter “m” which is the “number pad” equivalent to 0 on the mbp? I think that should work.

Steve

[Brian Berneker]

Yes, of course most notebooks have a key for toggling some keys on the keyboard back and forth into the numeric keypad, but then you get into overlap on those keys that have other functions when they’re not as numbers… like I said before.. it gets unwieldly..

Of course, it does answer the original question… how to do it…

[Steve Skazenski]

The newest MacBook Pros (and MacBooks and the new wireless keyboard) no longer have the fn numpad.

You can modify the keyboard shortcuts file found here:
~/Library/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects/8.0/Adobe After Effects 8.0 Shortcuts

Search for “Preview” (with quotes).

(Pad0) is the number pad zero key, try changing that to something else, maybe an F key?

[Steve Tarlton]

Agreed. It is definitely not preferrable. I use one of the older wireless keyboards at work, but I don’t haul it back and forth to my house, so I end up doing a lot of late night editing with the MBP keyboard. It is a pain.

Steve