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Gorgosek
Participant
August 29, 2020
Question

First and last frame of a layer shortcut

  • August 29, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 5307 views

Ok so I'm new to after effects and I've been editing this anime episode (1080p 23.976fps) and whenever I make a cut with CTRL + SHIFT + D shortcut and delete the scenes that I don't want I then use the O shortcut to move my CTI to the last frame of the scene and then I move the next scene (right after pressing O) with the [ shortcut and for some reason a lot of the times the O shortcut doesn't seem to work since it jumps with my CTI to the second to last frame rather than the last frame of the scene and I just noticed it after a while and I don't know how to solve this or if I should even be trying to solve this but I don't really want any overlapping frames or audio. When I just manually go to the last frame with PAGE DOWN and drag the clip it works just fine but that takes waaaaay too much time. What do I do? 😢

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1 reply

R
Community Expert
Rick GerardCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 30, 2020

O always moves to the start of the last frame, not the end. If it moved to the end of the last frame then you would not see anything in the comp panel. There is nothing wrong, you are just not understanding that AE, and every other compositing and visual effects app I have ever used, always lets you see the last frame so you can line things up without backing up one frame. 

 

On the other hand, when you use a nonlinear editor and you make a cut the last frame is gone. In Premiere Pro the first frame cut is q, the last frame cut is w. If you are trimming a shot that is between two other cuts and you press w, you will see the first frame of the next shot, or if you do that on the last shot in a sequence, you will see black. Again, normal and expected behavior.

 

I can see from your screenshot that your CTI is already at 37 seconds, that you have at least 15 layers, and they are all the same shot. This makes me think you are trying to use After Effects and a video editor. AE is NOT a video editing app and you should not have anything in your comp that can be edited, color corrected, or have effects applied in an NLE like Premiere Pro. Only things you can't do in the NLE should be done in AE. My average comp is less than 7 seconds because the average shot in the movies I work on is under 7 seconds. I had a comp the other day that was 10 frames. Occasionally I will create short sequences in an AE comp but those sequences are always limited to one sentence of dialogue or narration or one phrase of music. On rare occasions, a sequence will be 10 or 15 seconds. You will work faster, get more done, have al lot fewer rendering issues if you use AE as it was intended and do your editing in Premiere Pro. A 5-minute movie with 30 or 40 shots that need color correction, titles, even an occasional transition or effect applied will render in about 1/4 the time the very same edit with the very same effects, transitions, and color correction will render in After Effects. 

    G
    GorgosekAuthor
    Participant
    August 30, 2020

    Thank you so much for the response.

    So from what I understand O moves to the start of the last frame so when I use the [ shortcut and it overlaps it doesn't really matter right?

    Also, I understand that AE is not made for cutting and stuff like in Premiere Pro, but let me walk you through how I tried to do things.

    I want to make AMV (Anime Music Video) here's an example of how that looks: https://youtu.be/CCMeVx-f6_Q

    Basically I've chosen some music and Anime that I will make it out of. The anime is made out of 24 episodes and every episode has a couple of scenes from different episodes of the anime as you can see in the video I posted here. I didn't really know how to do this so the basic idea was import an episode in AE cut the scenes that I like from that episode do this over and over with all of the episodes and then choose just a couple of scenes that fit the music well and start adding the effects, transitions etc.. 

    I don't know how else to approach this so basically these are the steps that I used:

    1. Import episode

    2. Cut scenes with CTRL + SHIFT + D (I use PAGE UP and PAGE DOWN to move to the first frame of the next scene and then I do the CTRL + SHIFT + D)

    3. Delete scenes that I don't want with DELETE

    4. Move the scenes together by using O and [

    5. Selecting and Pre composing all the scenes that I cut from that episode

     

    If I'm doing anything wrong or could do things better in different adobe programs and stuff let me know please and thank you very much for taking your time 😄

    Snakedogman
    Snakedogman
    Inspiring
    August 31, 2020

    As Rick said you could cut a sequence like that in Premiere. Then export that edit for adding further effects in After Effects. Or you can even import the Premiere sequence with Dynamic Link into After Effects your edit remains, well, editable.
    But then you wouldn't be able to do the transitions in AE because you would have no overlapping footage.

     

    That being said, sometimes it's just handier to do a little sequence like that in AE. People have different workflows and work on vastly different kinds of projects in AE so each person will have different ways of doing things. Looking at your example video I couldn't give you a straight answer if it would be best to make in Premiere or AE. Probably a combination of both:

    Animated title cards and other graphic animations made in AE, then combined with the footage and some dynamic transitions in Premiere.

     

    Doing dynamic titles, fx and graphics is usually easier in AE. Doing edits of footage and syncing with audio is usually easier in Premiere. But the two programs can easily work together. You can import AE comps into Premiere and Premiere sequences into AE. You can find (free or for sale) many cool transition effects for Premiere like you see in your example video on sites like Motion Array: https://motionarray.com/premiere-pro-templates/dynamic-transitions-35290

    Also for After Effects: https://motionarray.com/browse/after-effects-templates/transitions

    Of course you can also make your own transitions!

     

    If you want to get rid of the overlapping frames select all layers (start with the layer that you want to have at the beginning of the sequence) , then, from the top menu: Animation - keyframe assistant - sequence layers (and keep overlap at 0).

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