Request to Increase the Maximum Duration of After Effects Compositions

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In After Effects, the maximum composition duration is currently limited to 23:59:00:00.

However, in actual production environments, there are cases where filming begins late in the 23:00 hour and continues past midnight into the following day.

For this reason, we would like After Effects to support timelines longer than 24 hours more naturally by either removing the current 23:59:00:00 maximum duration limit or extending it beyond 24 hours.

Although this is a rare case, we have also encountered situations where a frame after 23:59:00:00, such as 23:59:05:15, needed to be used as the starting frame. However, After Effects was unable to support this.

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Impressive_protector4295

Participant

To handle video footage recorded late at night that crosses past midnight, you do not need to make the composition longer than 24 hours; instead, set the Start Timecode in your Composition Settings to match your shoot's starting time (e.g., 23:58:30:00). As long as your composition duration covers the required length of the clip, After Effects will automatically roll the rendered timecode over from 23:59:59:29 back to 00:00:00:00 for post-midnight frames. Furthermore, if you are attempting to edit a full project exceeding 24 continuous hours, you should switch to a dedicated Non-Linear Editor (NLE) like Premiere Pro, as After Effects is designed for individual motion graphics and visual effects shots rather than long-form editing.

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Rick Gerard

Community Expert

Are you trying to create a composition longer than 24 hours?

If you just want the comp time to start somewhere close to 24 hours, start with something like 23:58:30 and make the comp longer than 30 seconds. Now the timecode of the rendered file will go past 23:59:50:29 (if you have a 30 fps comp) and start again at zero. There are no more than 24 hours in a day so the clock can’t run past that.

If you are trying to create a movie that is longer than 24 hours then After Effects is not the right application for that. AE is designed to create shots with video effects and/or animations. It is not a video editor.

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system_9730Author

Participant

Thank you for the replies.
However, I think my question may have been misunderstood.
I am not trying to create a composition or movie that is longer than 24 hours, nor am I trying to use After Effects as a video editor.
My question is specifically about the starting timecode of a composition.
For example, I may have footage whose timecode starts at:
23:59:05:15
I would like to create a composition that is only a few seconds or minutes long, but set its starting timecode to 23:59:05:15.
So the issue is not the total duration of the composition. The issue is that I cannot set/use a starting timecode beyond 23:59:00:00 in the way I need.
I understand that After Effects can roll the rendered timecode back to 00:00:00:00 after 24 hours. However, that does not solve the problem of using a timecode such as 23:59:05:15 as the starting timecode.
I hope this clarifies what I am asking.

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Rick Gerard

Community Expert

After Effects is not a video editor in any way, shape, or form. It is an app designed to create effects and animations you can't make in a video editing app.

If you want to match the timecode of footage, open it in the Footage Panel, set an in and out point, then drag it to an empty timeline panel to create a new comp with timecode that matches the footage. The comp time will automatically roll past 23:59:19 and start again at 0:00:00.

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