[Joe Kaye]

I’d forgotten about that, that’s a good idea! Probably the quickest way to do it (combined with a keyboard shortcut for turning clip gain on/off in the timeline)
Thanks!

[Joe Kaye]

haha, think i found the answer to my own question;

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/default-keyboard-shortcuts-cc.html?mv=product&mv2=pr#

[Joe Kaye]

thanks joseph, I think I know what you mean but that’s not the part of the audio mixer I’m talking about, and actually I couldn’t tell you when they went but the 4/8/16 track view toggle button isn’t in my audio mixer at all (along with the button to switch between the track sections)

My audio mixer has collapse traignle icons along the left side for showing/hiding things like group buttons, pan controls, insert effects etc. The icon at the top reveals a panel on the left with 2 sections labelled tracks (at the top) and groups (below).

It’s this part of the mixer I’d like to know more about – I’d love to know what people use these groups for (or even where there’s some documentation about this part of the mixer – there’s nothing in the manual)

[Joe Kaye]

For what it’s worth, if I was looking to create this kind of animation I wouldn’t be considering after effects… you might have more luck with a genuine 3d environment like blender or unity3d free (both free options).

[Joe Kaye]

haha, yup I have to admit I sometimes find myself wondering if AE is the best tool for this job but I think it still is… as far as any single app can be!

It’s a mixed bag of keying, 2d and 3d animating (often animating movement of the footage), basic grading – the only thing i’m not doing is sound. I do use illustrator to design 2d elements though

Again, thanks for the help

[Joe Kaye]

Thanks Dave – I agree, I’ll need to spend more time on organising my work in future AE projects. Naming and grouping comps based on the kind of content is top of the list – one name prefix for small subcomps that will definitely stay constant, another for animated objects that might have different actions in different scenes (but not always), another for comps with multiple objects that will definitely change per scene etc.

I started weeding out needless dupes in this project but the time it would take to get through the whole thing relinking and deleting is not worth the effort – if I ever revisit the project it will only be for small elements which can be reduced and organised on demand as you said.

[Dave LaRonde] “It sounds like you’re relying on AE to do ALL the work when it doesn’t have to.

You can render out individual scenes, import therm into Premiere Pro and cut them together there. LOTS faster!”

I’m already using premiere to keep a final render, then rendering the parts I update in after effects when i need to – is that what you mean? Or is there more I can do to speed things up in this regard?

[Joe Kaye]

haha, any suggestions are welcome – i got myself into this mess

The project is already reduced (but still pretty big).

To explain a little more, my main composition is about 7mins long with a bunch of scenes (each scene a subcomp) which have recurring visuals often with slight differences. Each scene goes roughly 6 subcomps deep (with a few different branches) and at the moment every scene and every subcomp is unique in my project. There are quite a few subcomps that get repeated through different scenes however that don’t need to be unique – that’s the part of my project I would like to reduce, ideally without having to do all the legwork myself!

[Joe Kaye]

I recently had a similar render issue and it was down to 1 layer buried down a few subcomps. in AE scroll the playhead along the timeline and look for a point (probably where the render crashes) where the display stops updating – if this is the case you need to look at exactly what’s going on in the sequence at that point and turn off layers until the display updates again. Then you will at least know what’s causing the freeze/crash and will have to find a way to replace the media/effects at that point

My particular layer I decided was probably just too big (it was a huge texture for the background in a 3d comp) so I used the scale comp script to halve the size and got things working again (i also unlinked it’s proxy file – it may have been a corrupted/too large image file)

[Joe Kaye]

[Richard Garabedain] “you will get used to it”
Ha, I wish – it isn’t happening all the time and I’m an editor so i spend half my time on programs like avid that do respond to start/stops reliably. I’m finding it really distracting to have to pause and wait for AE when I’m ready to work on something right by where the playhead was…

[Dave LaRonde] “my machine hasn’t been shut down or even restarted for a couple of weeks”
I can’t say the same for my machine – plenty of restarts and it’s been going on for a few weeks

I’ve sent a bug report

[Joe Kaye]

Yes that’s weird I tried to recreate it but didn’t get the exact same thing – A grid of 9 movs would line up perfectly as 2d layers, or as 3d layers with z set to 0, but as soon as the 3d layers were taken anywhere from 0 the bg would bleed through the cracks… but not those fuzzy edges – does that happen in after effects or only when you render?

Either way you’re probably best off bouncing the video or just splitting the footage for wherever they’re in the grid (using 2d layers), then only switching to 3d layers when they break apart. Kind of a faff but that’s AE