Extending a timeline duration AT THE START of composition

[millionder]

Hi guys.

Does anyone knows how to Extend a timeline duration of composition AT THE START ??

Basically BEFORE the start of the timeline.

anybody ??

[Mylenium]

There is no such functionality. You have to actually shift the layers to a later point in time, with the help of specific scripts if necessary.

Mylenium

[millionder]

.. . they didn't think of makin it ???
Probably THE most important timeline option of them all ?????????
wooow..

Ok, thank you very much !!!))

[Mylenium]

Yeah, one of those old things where AE can't deal with negative time offsets even if they would be temporary. Perhaps they'll implement it one of these days...

Mylenium

[Rick Gerard]

I've been using After Effects since 1994 and I can't think of a single time that I needed to add time in front of a comp. I've shifted a lot of layer positions, but it never occurred to me to add a few seconds to something that I already started. Maybe it is because I never use After Effects to edit a movie.

[millionder]

@ Rick_Gerard 

Imagine you have your perfect compositions, that have layers effects on one another and can not be put inside precomp, since they'll lose the "effect".

And now, all of a sudden, you have to add another scene at the start, that fades into the current.
It also needs to have effects)

Add to it an unexpected FPS change request from client from 25 to 30 or vise versa - boom !
All the keyframes gone wild on the cut-border between scenes)) And of course- everywhere else ))

There you go)  Can't handle anything like it without moving all the layers and spend a few days on fixing the mess.

[Rick Gerard]

Keyframes are based on time, not frames so if you have a keyframe at 1.275 seconds and you change the frame rate from 10fps to 120, the keyframe will still happen at 1.275 seconds. 

Almost all my comps are one shot, I don't use AE to edit. Never have. Don't expect to start. I've never seen an effect that goes away when you pre-compose if you need to pre-compose, it's all a matter of workflow. 

If I have 100 layers in a comp and 50 of them are nested comps and I want to move everything forward 2 seconds I can select all 100 layers using Ctrl/Cmnd + a, move the CTI forward 2 seconds, hold down the shift key, pick any layer that had the in point starting at 0, and shift + drag to 2 seconds and nothing will go out of sync. Not one thing. 

Not saying that adding time at the head of a timeline might not save some users some time, but you can't add time at the head of a sequence in Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Avid, Davinci, or any other NLE I have ever used or heard of. You can't even do it with linear tape editors. All you can do in any NLE is grab everything in the timeline and drag it forward. 

[John Hepworth]

The situation I find myself in is that I have a lot of flying videos of talking heads.

The client wants talking head number one to talk longer.

So all my other talking heads have to start flying later...so I'd like to be able to add however much time to the head of each of them so all their key frames when they start flying don't need to be moved.

Am I misunderstanding your workflow?  Because what I'd like is to be able to only move the keyframes of my talking heads pre-flight earlier by however extra long talking head number one is talking?

The workaround I am imagining/about to try is pre-composing my flying heads and then duplicating it, then having the pre-flight section on one of them start earlier...

[fabien.L]

Yeah but when you have put many marker in the timeline, needed to trigger animation or as a visual ref, shifting all the layer will just mess all your marker. 
Sometime it's easy to just shift all layer but it would be much more to have the option to add 2sec at the start for instance. 
Premiere Pro, ... are much more easier to handel all the layer shifting, but it the same trick if you have markers for instance, ... 
It would clearly be a useful addon as many basic thing that after effects haven't implemented. Without the scripts from thirds party person, ... the workflow would be much more tedious in AE. 
I use it everyday, so it's from experience. 

[fabien.L]

Keyframe are base on time as you said but it still mess the keyframe to change your framerate after you have put manyframes as the keyframes fall in between frames and the consistency is lost. Changing frame rate is clearly not good when you are on fast, fine animation on 7, 10 frames at 25fps. Having the frames shifted inbetween prevent you to align new frame to the one that was set on another frame rate. 

So no it's not just a question of timeline playing at the same speed, it clearly put a mess in the keyframe IF you have to continue to animate in the new framerate. 

[BHazelton]

AE gives you the option to set the working area to a layer, and then set the composition to the working area. This 'crops' the timeline at the beginning and end (assuming your working area was somewhere in the middle). What if you want to go back? You can regain the timeline at the end but not at the beginning. Seems a pretty obvious functionality to me, and I've only been using AE since 1995 😛

[erik25824825fb8k]

Rick, probably Adobe should invest some time and money to recreate After Effects to meet modern needs. It looks like you are brilliant in one use case of After Effects since 1994, and that's perfect—a brilliant business plan. However, I have been using After Effects since that time as well, and each time I need different properties.

Imagine you are doing animation and cutting your nice camera footage elsewhere, but if you have brilliant keyframed animation and you need one second in front, that's pretty frustrating to move all those keyframes in precomps.

I really hate, for example, how After Effects depends on third-party special effects.