Visual “Active Animation Range” Indicators in the Timeline

After Effects currently shows where keyframes exist, but it does not clearly show where a property is actually changing over time.

I would love an optional timeline display mode that visually indicates the spans between keyframes where a property’s value is actively animated.

For example, if a Position property has four keyframes:

• Keyframe 1 to Keyframe 2: Position changes → show a colored bar or highlighted span.
• Keyframe 2 to Keyframe 3: Both keyframes have the same value → no bar.
• Keyframe 3 to Keyframe 4: Position changes again → show a bar.

This would make it much easier to open a complex comp and quickly understand where animation is actually happening, versus where keyframes simply preserve a pose or were copied forward.

A few useful details:

• The indicator could appear directly beneath or behind the property’s keyframes.
• Hold keyframes could use a different pattern or color than interpolated animation.
• It would be especially helpful if collapsed layers could show an aggregated indicator for any active animated property on that layer.
• A toggle in Timeline panel options would let users enable or disable it as needed.

In complicated comps, timelines often contain many keyframes that do not represent visible motion or change. A visual “active animation range” display would make timing, troubleshooting, cleanup, and handoff much faster.