Reusing clips in same layer

[Steve Roberts]

Video editing apps allow you to place more than one clip on a layer. However, AE, being at its root a compositing app, thinks more “vertical” rather than “horizontal”. As a result we have “one clip, one layer”.

If you want, you could apply time remapping to the clip. That will give you two keyframes: start and end. If you copy those keyframes then paste them somewhere else on the same layer, the same clip will start and play again. You see? So every time the clip plays, you see the start and end keyframe.

Does that make sense?

[Erik Pontius]

Couple of other handy things for dealing with many layers.
Pre-compose groups of layers that you will not be changing much. Precomposing, will create another composition with those layers in it and then nest the new composition into the original…essentially grouping the clips into one layer. To adjust these “grouped” clips, you would open the nested comp and adjust the clips and attributes there…changes are then reflected in the original comp.
Another handy thing is the “shy” switch. That little icon that looks like a guy peeking over a wall. Click this switch for layers you want to hide then click the same icon at the top of the timeline window to “shy” or hide those layers, toggle the switch back and forth to make them visable again.
Shy layers are still in the comp and they are still visible in the comp window, just not visable in the timeline. So if you have 25 layers and 15 of them you’ve already worked with and are already locked down, you can shy the layers and hit the shy switch and your visible timeline layers will be reduced from 25 to 10, making it easier to work with.

Erik

[Mike Clasby]

Don’t know if I read you correctly but here’s how to loops clips and comps.

1) Loop a Clip

If you want an individual file to loop like a sound file that’s a “beep”, then as soon as you import it, in the Project Window, right-click and Interpret Footage>Man> and ten, set the “Loop” to 10 or 20 or however many times you think you’ll need it to loop, then the clip will be 10 or 20 times longer with the sound… “beep, beep, beep, beep, beep… etc.

If that clip is already down in the timeline, you’ll see a pale extension of it off to the right, just drag the endpoint out to the right, you’ll see what I mean.

2) Loop a Composition

Say you have a comp with the 40 short clips that you then want to loop that comp.
Put that comp in the main comp (or select those 40 layers and then Layer>Precompose (move all attributes, Open comp (if you think you might need to make changes)).

Anyway with those 40 sounds in one comp, and you want to loop it, select the comp layer, Layer>Enable Time Remapping, then add this expression to Time Remapping (Copy the expression, Alt-Click the Time Remapping Stopwatch, Paste). Here’s the expression to copy/paste:

loopOutDuration(“cycle”)

Don’t move those two keyframes that were created by time remapping or you’ll speedup/slowdown the comp. The loop expression above loops any property with at least two keyframes.

Now you still have to drag that endpoint out to the right but that comp will loop indefinitely.

Is this what you’re trying to do?

For the low-down on loop expressions, there are four kinds I know of, see the comp named “Intro” in the downloadable project, here:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/ebberts_dan/layer_looping.php

Dan uses loop in animating a walk cycle.

[Steve Roberts]

I think our loyal reader may want the same clip to play at many different points in the timeline, but not in regular succession in the manner of a loop. If the clip looped, but beany wanted a gap between one playback instance and another, he’d have to split the layer, and creating extra layers is what beany’s trying to avoid.

I could be wrong … 🙂

[Mike Clasby]

Ooops. Methinks your right. I knew my reading skills were questionable. Well at least he has options now.

[Steve Roberts]

Options are good. 🙂

[Mike Clasby]

Here’s an expression for layer markers to trigger the time remapped sound layer.

Add this expression to the Time Remapping stopwatch, then drop markers wherever you want the sound to play. You need a marker at the beginning if you want it to play at the beginning. No marker, no sound. Put markers on the layer by hitting the “*” (asterisk key) on the Numeric Pad.

n = 0;
if (marker.numKeys > 0){
n = marker.nearestKey(time).index;
if (marker.key(n).time > time){
n–;
}
}

if (n > 0) t = time – marker.key(n).time + inPoint else t = inPoint;

valueAtTime(t);

This expression works for me anywhere in the timeline, the original needed to start at time zero, but this works from layer’s the inPoint.

This expression was hacked from a Dan Ebberts expression from here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/869363

[Steve Roberts]

Most excellent, Yikesmikes!

[Mike Clasby]

Whoah, Dude, thanks.

[Gareth Holloway]

No you are correct.
As I said it’s like a drummer. He may hit the high hat many times but not in immediate succession, and not necessarily in a repeated rhythm. I want to be able to repeat a clip when I want without having to create a new layer.

If a drummer need a different high hat everytime he struck the old one he’d have a huge drum kit to deal with.