[Adam Greenberg]

it sounds possible, but I think no one answered yet because its still not clear what you want to do exactly

[Adam Greenberg]

maybe your footage goes out of focus, in which case, sharpen would not really help

[Adam Greenberg]

this has been discussed before, here is a link until someone potentially rings in with a more concise answer,

https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/link-a-keyframe-to-slider-control-without-affecting-other-keyframes/td-p/9887407

[Adam Greenberg]

IMO, color grading is the last step, but sometimes you need to do both, so before and after. I can’t say if that will work with every case, but the fact is, sometimes you get footage that unfortunately was not shot optimally.

I can remember a specific case where we had no choice but to adjust the color in order to get a better key. And on top of that, the method we ended up using was quite complex, where we only used the result as a matte, etc. etc. etc… which gave us slightly more options than you can achieve using the standard method. Then when we were happy with the result, we tweaked the colors again to better match the footage we were keying on top of.

So, to conclude, you cannot really color grade the footage before the key, because changes to that footage, will likely affect your key result

1. adjust color if necessary

2. key

3. color grade

[Adam Greenberg]

great. Thanks so much Dan

[Adam Greenberg]

that is so clever, Dan,

so I have a follow up question, how would we re-write this for 3 colors for every 3rd letter, and so forth ( 4, or 5, etc… ) ?

[Adam Greenberg]

also, if you save the pngs in numerical order, and you import as a png sequence, they will automatically be animated at 1 png per frame when you play the timeline, then like Andy said, you can change the timing ( which you can do many different ways )

[Adam Greenberg]

I love your opacity expression, that will come in handy.

Also, I`m not sure if what I suggested is really what the OP needs, but I had a similar project already set up, so i just copy, reduced it and shared just in case it was

[Adam Greenberg]

2022-offset-time-animation.aep 90 KB After Effects Project Files - Click to view

• Copy Download Link

[Adam Greenberg]

but Dan, this could at least offset the animation with a slider

add to the position property of the layer

inpoint = thisComp.layer(“inpoint of animation”).effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”);

thisComp.layer(“animation”).transform.position.valueAtTime(time-thisComp.layer(“inpoint of animation”).effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”))

let me know your thoughts, Ill post the rig also