[Bryan Neff]

And I figured it out. The hold works really well, Roland – thanks. And the shortcut appears to be Shift+Alt+T, which is great. That all will save me time. Thank you all very much.

[Bryan Neff]

First of all, thank you all. I really appreciate all the responses.

Ridley, that helped tremendously, and gave me some information.

Here’s what I’m doing now : I’m creating opacity effects for the layers. Every time the number is about to appear on screen, I go one frame earlier and set a point where the opacity is 0%, then in the next frame, where it appears, I set it to 100%. This forces the change over one frame.

-Ideally- I wouldn’t have to put in two points for every switch, but I realize that After Effects would have no idea that I would want it at 100% until one frame before, and then do the transition suddenly in the space of one frame. Maybe there’s a way of changing the settings to not transition smoothly, but rather transition suddenly at the end – but I imagine it’s rather complicated. This works, but I’m always looking for more efficiency.

Roland, I’ll probably have to take some time to reread and study your most recent response and see if there’s value for doing that in what I’m doing.. It might be better, but right now it’s a bit Greek to me.

What I’m doing is obviously pretty simple – I’m just trying to figure out the most efficient way of doing it.

Oh – one more question on this point. Is there a shortcut for the ‘Add or remove keyframe at this point’ – specifically with opacity? Or is there a way to create one? Right now I have to move the mouse over and click the little button every time, and a shortcut key would be nice.

[Bryan Neff]

The hold would work, as it appears similar to Declan’s response – it even mentions that it’s similar to opacity, but more like a switch. It doesn’t explain how to actually perform this action, however. So I’m not entirely sure how to perform it, and even if it would really work. Declan’s idea of using opacity to 0% at certain points would work great, but it seems to change that entire layer to 0%. I can’t seem to just do segments within the timeline.

Also, here’s a better explanation of what I’m doing:

A camera runs down a pipe and videos it’s actions, but also posts data about the pipe that it’s in on the frame. If it runs into a problem, such as roots or a break in the pipe, the information on screen changes positions, and sometimes disappears.

Now, if the operator put in data wrong, such as the wrong manhole name (SAI0765 instead of SAI0565, for instance), I have to fix this. I do it by going into paint.net and creating a ‘5’, as in the example above, and then adding that 5 as a layer. I position the 5 over the 7, and let that layer run until the information on the feed moves to a different place, such as when a problem is identified. Currently, I am then hitting ctrl+shift+D and manually moving that 5 over the 7 again, going until it changes, then doing ctrl+shift+D again and moving the 5 over the 7 on the original location. Correctly moving that number cleanly over another over and over again is time consuming, and I’d much rather just be able to disable that layer temporarily and reactivate it later in the timeline.

Thanks Roland. Forgive my inexperience.

[Bryan Neff]

Thanks for the response Declan,

That would work, but perhaps I’m missing something. If I’m going to do that with a single layer, then I need to be able to set the opacity to 0 or 100% at different points along that layer. Kind of like Roland posted with the holds – like an on/off for that layer. His idea would work as well, though the link he posted doesn’t have instructions on how to do it.

In case it’s not clear, I’ll try and explain what I’m doing more clearly.

A camera runs down a pipe and videos it’s actions, but also posts data about the pipe that it’s in on the frame. If it runs into a problem, such as roots or a break in the pipe, the information on screen changes positions, and sometimes disappears.

Now, if the operator put in data wrong, such as the wrong manhole name (SAI0765 instead of SAI0565, for instance), I have to fix this. I do it by going into paint.net and creating a ‘5’, as in the example above, and then adding that 5 as a layer. I position the 5 over the 7, and let that layer run until the information on the feed moves to a different place, such as when a problem is identified. Currently, I am then hitting ctrl+shift+D and manually moving that 5 over the 7 again, going until it changes, then doing ctrl+shift+D again and moving the 5 over the 7 on the original location. Correctly moving that number cleanly over another over and over again is time consuming, and I’d much rather just be able to disable that layer temporarily and reactivate it later in the timeline.

The opacity idea would work for that if I could change opacity within the layer at various points along the timeline, rather than changing the entire layer throughout the timeline.