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Participant
October 6, 2026
Open for Voting

Request to Increase the Maximum Duration of After Effects Compositions

  • October 6, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 6 views

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.

    1 reply

    Community Expert
    October 6, 2026

    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.