Cannot bind Selection tool to 'A'?

[ah_photo]

Hi all,

Primarily a Premiere Pro user here (and prior to that, FCP 7). I've been dabbling with After Effects a bit at work which runs a 2015 build of After Effects. I've been getting familiar with the software and noticed there was no way to rebind keyboard shortcuts. Decided to try it at home now too with of course the latest build: 2019 (16.1.2)

Was pleased to see it had a customizable keyboard shortcuts UI a la Premiere, but was shocked when it wouldn't let me rebind the selection tool to "A" (like I said, come from a FCP7 background and have migrated that to my Pr and Ps workflow with no issue). Is there any particular reason why this is?

I noticed that the Anchor Point keybind is in that spot, and also cannot be removed. Does After Effects really not allow me to switch the binds? I'd love to trade the two: V for Anchor Point and A for selection tool. Am I missing something here? Seems to defeat the purpose of customizable keyboard shortcuts if I cannot in fact customize them the way I'd like.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[Kyle Hamrick]

While you can indeed customize most of the shortcuts, I believe a handful of the core ones are off-limits.

[ah_photo]

Alas. Thanks Kyle I was afraid of that. I guess I'll throw in a feature request and hope for the best!

[Dave_LaRonde]

Learning new keyboard shortcuts is necessary, but never fun.

[ah_photo]

Dave,

I partially agree, but also disagree. From professional-grade software, especially when the precedent to have full control has been established among many other Creative Cloud applications (such as Premiere and Photoshop) that are offered at equal or lesser cost, it should be a standard.

Since Premiere and Photoshop are incredibly customizable, I had no problem switching over from FCP 7 previously and tailoring the apps to my taste. In a working deadline environment including training several other staff members - the expectation of everyone to break down and rebuild their muscle memory at the cost of efficiency and potentially missing slot makes it not always viable, and with a switch to Premiere: it was all possible.

I get that some things will need to be re-learned, as After Effects is in fact different than Premiere but that's completely expected. The fact that I cannot bind a primary tool to a basic key without modifiers however, is a bit silly. That's what I expect out of iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, not professional software.

Either way, it is what it is for now, and persist I shall. However fingers crossed Adobe can improve the system further.

[Martin_Ritter · Accepted solution]

The shortcut system is still based on a simple text file located in (on Windows)

C:\Users\Martin\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\After Effects\16.1\aeks

You can give it a try to edit the key there. At least, that's how one used to personalized the keys back in the old days.

*Martin

[ah_photo]

martinr84659894​

Funny story, I thought about this while going to bed last night since I remember the preset name being saved as a .txt

I will be sure to backup my existing, try this, and report back.

[ah_photo]

martinr84659894​ Kyle Hamrick​ Dave LaRonde​

Well hot damn. It worked! I was able to verify the keychange. In the .txt file the "Selection tool" is labeled as "ToolArrow", who knew? The binding is justified even!

Of note, the change is reflected in the in-app Keyboard Shortcut editor, but is not reflected in the Tooltip. No big deal thankfully.

That said, I did find a strange bug maybe not even related to what I was doing. In preparing a backup file, I unbound the Selection tool from V. Then I noticed within the app's keyboard editor, Selection didn't even appear in the list of bindable actions anymore. To be honest I can't remember if it was still in the .txt file as ToolArrow (I assume it would be), but I rectified the problem via the backup before I even checked. Just a strange observation. It happened to me before earlier too with another action - where an action would simply be unlisted and therefore unbindable.

Thanks everyone for the help, very happy this was able to be changed. Cheers!

[ah_photo]

For the sake of information sharing:

I found a few more instances of in-app unbinds of commands purging the command from the list entirely. I double-checked into the .txt file and it does in fact remove the command line from the file entirely. I'm going to copy and paste some back in as a workaround, but for any Adobe folks who happen to stumble across this post, this is a thing that happens.

[Kyle Hamrick]

(Make sure to backup the existing file before monkeying with this.)

[Kyle Hamrick]

I haven't looked to see if something similar is already there, but this sounds like a great thing to post on the Uservoice:

After Effects: Hot (1827 ideas) – Adobe video & audio apps

[ah_photo]

Thanks Kyle Hamrick I'll pass it along.

Unfortunately, putting the command line back into the .txt, even ensuring the formatting and order is the same, does not appear to put the commands back into AE. It's almost like if the app purges the command, it's removed from the Keyboard shortcut ethos entirely. Thankfully nothing of huge importance was lost, and I can get by with buttons or toolbar commands for what was, but I'll definitely pass it along.

UPDATE: I realized backslash is typed out as such, this fixed the issue. So it is indeed possible to recover lost commands by adding in the command line.