Feature Requests

Hello  As the new after effects beta allows requests for new features, I would like to request for a new shortcut tha allows for faster switching between compositions in the project im working in  I would greatly appreciate if you could add this. 

I am constanly centering the anchor point on text layers. I'd love to have the ability for AE to keep the anchor point centralized on the text layer regardless of adjusting the leading, basline shift etc. 

HEX is universal, way easier to memorise and use, I'd love to hover my cursor over any colour and see the HEX reading, not just the RGBA. Currently I have to grab a Color property from any layer or effect and actually sample the colour I want, before then opening the colour property and grabbing the Hex value. Hopefully it's a simple fix because it'd help a lot. 

When I'm tidying up my project window, I select some elements form the list of it (for example all the imported footage) then i press on the "create new folder" icon and I loose the selection. So I have to re-select all the elements form the list and drag it into the new folder which is annoying. This happens to me every time! When creating a new folder, I would love if after effects would notice that a bunch of stuff is already selected in the project window and put it all in the new folder. What do you think?

After Effects needs the ability to consolidate, trim down to used footage with handles, transcode, reduce project size, etc the way Premiere does.AE need some kind of equivalent to Premiere's Project Manager functions.

Hey! When closing a bunch of timeline tabs (but not closing them all, for which I would simply press cmd+shift+W), the "X" symbol used to close the tab ends up in a different position compared to the previous one, so you have to keep moving your mouse to a different position to close the next tab. Wouldn't it be cool if when closing a tab, the next "X" button for the next tab would position itself  on the screen in the same position as the previous one, allowing you to click quickly to close them.? Chrome does exactly that, I shot a quick video to illustrate.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfgYwmid9TQ 

Currently when you hold down shift to snap the playhead in the timeline, it snaps to the last frame of the layer (see image)On most occasions when I do this, I want the playhead to be at the very end of the layer, not on the last frame. For instance, if you snapped to the last frame, then used the [ key to align another layer to the playhead, you'd end up with a one-frame overlap. It's a small thing, but a minor annoyance that adds up to many extra button presses when using the software.I would like a preferences menu option to enable snapping to the very end of the layer, not the last frame.

When the 3D options are modified on one composition, these settings are retained on subsequent compositions. I find this very problematic because one may not always remember to check these options when creating a new composition. There are more and more hidden settings within compositions and no reset solution available. Do scripts have access to these settings? This would allow for creating a temporary solution until you can address it.

The number of times I've forgotten to plug in my external cache drive when launching After Effects is astronomical. Because the app automatically reassigns the caches to internal storage (first screenshot below) it's annoying and fiddly and time consuming to then attach the cache drive and go to the settings and re-assign the caches to the external drive. This could be avoided if After Effects simply presented a choice dialogue box when the expected cache is absent, something like the second screenshot below, which I've made in Automator to help me remember! Thanks,Tim  

I am using AfterEffects on Windows 11 and the timeline is too slow.When I hold down the mouse wheel to see the entire timeline, or when I move keyframes to different times, I only get about 4 fps, which is making me uncomfortable.Why doesn't Adobe improve this?

The 'Cast Shadows' option is not working in the Light settings. It works in the classic 3D option. I have confirmed 'Accepts Shadows' is on. I would like to understand the cause of this issue and find a viable solution for it.  

I just paid for aftereffects, it's my first time using it.It's really annoying that even compared to other adobe products, the text feature just lacks in several areas.There is no option to auto-size text to fit into your textbox, and there is no option to align it vertically, for example, to be at the center of your textbox. Why do i have to hunt down obscure user expressions from years ago that don't even work, just to have a chance at getting functionality that already exists in other programs?

Estamos em 2024 e queremos que o After facilita mais para inserir LEGENDAS !! obrigado de nada.

It's incredibly frustrating that autosaves won't occur if a manual save has been done. From working with many video and animation programs, saving often is important because of how unreliable they can be. Which makes it incredinly frustrating when they are and you lose your file. It's then made worse by the autosave function not triggering because you've tried to be careful, my autosave is set at 5 miniutes, and it's resulted in me losing 2 hours of work. It really should just trigger even with manual saves, it would then make it easier to have longer periods between autosaves

its time after effects got an inbuilt spell check feature

I would love it if there was an option to pin a layer (or multiple layers) on top of a stack of other composition layers. Benefit? If I worked with any of the layers below, I would still have as visible reference audio waveform, markers, keyframes etc.I've attached a quick demonstration of the desired behavior. 

The Mode and Track Matte colums in the timeline panel currently resize together, which can lead to a lot of unused space if trying to show longer layer names. Showing full layer names can be useful, as sometimes trying to parse them based on layer index can be harder, depending on the comp setup and number of layers. I'd like to suggest that either the two columns are individually resizable, or perhaps that the Mode column reads whatever the longest transfer mode name is in the UI language, and then stops at that point when the columns are being dragged out. That way the user could resize the Track Matte column to whatever they needed, and the Mode column would stop when it reached the widest it needed to be. Up until that point they behaviour could be the same as it is now. I understand that this is a non-trivial change to make - it would be nice from a UI point  of view 🙂 Cheers!

It would be helpful to have additional shortcuts (eg. Shift + [ and Shift + ]) to move layers as a selection group. Currently, if a selection of layers have different inPoints, and you press [, the inPoint of every layer is set to the CTI. It would be incredibly helpful to be able to add a modifier this shortcut, so that the earliest inPoint of the selection is set to the CTI, and all other inPoints remain relative to that earliest inPoint. Same with the outPoint, based on the latest outPoint.  Even better if this could also work for inPoint/outPoint trimming: if Shift is held (eg. Shift + Alt + [), inPoints/outPoints are trimmed with relative time, based on the earliest inPoint or latest outPoint.

I very rarely experience out-of-memory errors (other than AE's occasional self-imposed 2GB per frame limit, but that's a different issue) but when I'm using CC Power Pin with large images/video, an out of memory error during render is almost guaranteed. I am currently rendering a comp, which includes CC Power Pin, using Software Only (during render, AE gobbles up ALL of my 128GB RAM) because using GPU acceleration fails because my GPU has "only" 24GB VRAM, and the render exceeds this. The comp (it is an imported Photoshop 5-layered image) that causes the issue is 5464x10000 - a large comp but by no means insanely huge - dropped into a 4K 16:9 comp with CC Power Pin added. I'd have thought that 24GB VRAM should be enough to calculate the corner pin effect, but apparently not. May I suggest that either/both Corner Pin and CC Power Pin are updated to be more efficient?

Yes, I've been using Stream Deck devices that have dials for a while. I can use them to scroll through the timeline, move layers in the timeline, zoom in and out of the timeline. There are a lot of possibilities and these types of devices help a lot in my work.Currently, turning the dial works by pressing shortcuts. This is slow and unresponsive.Zooming is abrupt and very imprecise.You move the Time Indicator differently with the mouse cursor and differently by turning the dial.It seems to me that it is high time to introduce support for this type of device. 

As in the title. I can't believe that this feature hasn't received its keyboard shortcut for so many years.

I know it's partly my fault, but by 2024 I would have thought that AE would have an auto save feature running in the background from the second that a new project is created. If only for idiots like me who work on something for hours without creating that initial save, only for something to crash the project then realise that I never actually saved the project in the first place.Davinci has this built in, no saving ever. All aplications that use Apples API for auto save has this.I'm only getting older, and forgetting more things, so the chances of this happening more often is increasing!

Diese Fehlermeldung ergibt sich, wenn ein Redering ausgeführt wird, in der eine Json-Date verwendet wird, die dynamisch geändert werden kann resp. muss.Leider ist es seit Jahren bei Adobe After Effects nicht möglich diese zu deaktivieren.Diese Fehlermeldung macht absolut keinen Sinn.Das grösste Problem ist, dass der Rendervorgang unterbrochen wird und alles still steht, bis die Warnung quittiert wird. Somit werden alle anstehenden Rederaufträge nicht ausgeführt. ;-(

Right now copying and pasting layers is dependant on selection order. So if I select my layers from bottom and up, then pasting them will result in them being pasted in reverse order. I would like an option in the preferences to say 'Always paste layers in layer order' or something, so that copying and pasting never happens based on selection order and layers are always pasted in the order they are already in my timeline. Hope it makes sense. Thanks.

I had a conversation with some other people last night about how we wish there were an implementation of OpenType alternates in After Effects. I've been using the feature in Photoshop and Illustrator for years, and it's been very useful. I'd love to have the same ability in After Effects. With the right font and access to expressions to easily randomize the glyphs used, you could quickly create something like the LOKI season 1 opening. Here's a video of how it works in Illustrator from a demo of why I think it's cool in some fonts I've been working on. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ou4n7r9dy19vafao8h9jm/NoSys-Outlaw-Book-Condensed-Demo.mp4?rlkey=zu4riibraroyfdg31yjzvyz1i&dl=0