Quick question about selecting effects in multiple layers

[Paul Conigliaro]

Your best bet for something like this is to create a master “Control Layer” for all the other layers, and link them with expressions.

For example, create a null and apply your filter to it (let’s say, blur).
Then apply that same effect to your layer you actually want to affect.
Option click on the blur level (in this case) keyframe button in your footage layer, then use the pickwhip (little swirly icon) and select the blur level in your null control layer.
Copy and paste the effect to all the other layers.

This way, when you make changes to the control layer, you can affect all the layers. This can be extremely time-consuming for complicated effects with many options, though. In that case, I’ll just link the few controls I think I’ll need, not all of them.

CS3, FCS2
[Note: Using Particular, 3-D Stroke, and now Form do not instantly make your designs “teh awesome.”]

[Tripo Vukovic]

Thanks man I’ll try it out. I really thought you could do such a simple process with just selecting since you can do it unrestrictedly until you de-select the layers. I’ll try this out, thanks again.

[David Johnson]

Although there are also drawbacks and limitations to this approach, you could also apply your effects to one adjustment layer above all the layers you want affected, precompose all the layers you want affected and apply the effects to the nested comp instead of the individual layers, or any combination of both.

[David Johnson]

Another option I just remembered …

You could use the “Uber” key (hit U on the keyboard twice) to show all the adjusted properties, then copy those property settings and/or keyframes from one layer and paste them to all the other layers at once. However, you have to copy and past the properties and keyframes from each plugin one at a time … you can’t do them all at once since AE wouldn’t know where to paste what and would, therefore, just duplicate all the plugins you have copied. It’s very hard to explain without being able to show someone so I hope that made sense to you. I’d bet the AE help does a better job of explaining how all that works.