Known Participant

Question

layers not showing on the timeline

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
June 16, 2020
6 replies
27353 views

Hi,

see in the screenshot below, all layers at some point disappeared of the timeline. I tried to select all and click on u" to reveal properties and try to make them appear. It did not work. I still see they are there (on the left, the file is here) and I can see the elements in the video but I cannot control the layer to add keyframes... what happened?

thank you,

Error or problem

Natlilly

New Participant

I had the same problem... After thousands of layers, some bars disappear. What I did was pre-compose those layers that I can still see. When I pre-composed a few hundreds, some of the layer bars appeared. Then I pre-composed some more until everything showed. I pre-composed them in groups so it will still be organized in a way that I can understand their arrangement.

module+

New Participant

I also ran into this same issue: I have a comp containing several hundreds of layers. Any layer past 950 is not showing in the timeline anymore even though it shows in the viewer or also in the rendered file. I'm working on a GEOlayers map animation with hundreds and even thousands of realworld data each shown as a separate animated icon. I know about precomposing and I'd love to precomp these layers more efficiently but as far as I understand the way GEOlayers works, it's not possible to precompose these so called 'label' layers because of some complex expressions. As soon as I precompose these label layers the expression get broken and they lose their geo location on the map.

So my workaround is not to move the layers further up to show the layer in the timeline as described above (which works though). An easier workaround ist to just set some of the above layers that still show in the timeline to 'shy' and activate the main shy button. This way the shy layers disappear making space for the layers below to 'move up', showing these layers again in the timeline if you have to tweak them in some way in the timeline. Hope this quick workaround helps some of you guys.

Just to make it clear: If somehow possible try to precompose your layers in an efficient way because AE is really not made for so many layers in one single comp! Things also start to get funny with so many layers in a comp. For example: As soon as I change lets say the scale of these hundreds of label layers, the view doesn't get updated anymore until I close and reopen that same project. From that point on I can use AE normally till I change some parameters of these hundreds of layers. Wish there was another workaround for that problem besides closing and reopening the project...

jonas1024

Known Participant

Oh my god, this was giving me such a headache!! Thank you so much!

I usually pre-comp a lot but in this particular case I have one long camera pan out of an eye that is composed of the same layer multiplied by a thousand. If I would want to precomp, I would have to transfer the camera movement to each pre-comp. But I'll be mindful to not crack the 2000 mark.

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tatiluzmanı tv5C4E

New Participant

I was having the same problem, I couldn't see the layers after 964, best thing is work with compositions but I'm not used to it, the solution I could find is to compose the layers I can already see, after that i can see the invisible layers

, good work to you

J

jjatglobaltravelalliance

New Participant

Hi Melanied95, I'm having the same issue. I contacted Adobe for help today and ended up doing a screen share with him. I also shared screenshots with him and tried my best to illustrate the problem. The person helping me took control of my computer and tried a few things from his end. No luck, he was not able to help. He offered a few suggestions similar to other replies I see on this webpage. It was a challenging way to communicate and the problem is kind of hard to explain so unfortunately I had to try something else. This isn't the best solution, but I had to finish my project by end of today, so I just copied the layer that I wanted to edit and pasted it all the way at the top of the timeline, so it was above all of the other layers, and it worked! It also worked if I pasted the layer in the middle of two other layers that are still showing. For example based on your screenshot, if you copied 773 and pasted it right above 767, it would show up. That worked for me anyway. Give that a shot and let me know.

R

Rick Gerard

Community Expert

If you have a bunch of layers that don't show up, select the ones that do and Pre-compose them. When you do that your display should catch up and show you the layers that you could not see.

In practical terms, it makes absolutely no sense to have that many layers in a comp. Each comp should be a single shot or at most a couple of shots that have to be in the same comp because of a transition between them that you need to make. Look for places to cut. It's hard to convince people that AE is not a video editing app, but it isn't and was never designed to be one. The longer your comp and more layers you have in a comp, the longer it will take to render, the likelihood that the render will fail before it finishes wasting all of that render time goes up, and the more difficult it is to make changes to the comp that will give you a better product. If you are creating a 10-minute video filled with animations, different images, sound effects, different videos, you will be able to do a better job and finish the project in less time if you break the project up into 20 or 30 comps, each one expressing a different idea, and then you complete the edit from the rendered shots (sections) in Premiere Pro, or if your audio track is very simple, add all of your comps to a master comp and sequence them. Sequencing a bunch of nested comps is only a good idea if the render time is a few frames a second and not a few minutes a frame.

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ImissWinMovieMaker

Participating Frequently

Hi Rick,

so I'm having the same issue. Just updated to version 23.6 today and after duplicating my proxy video 2x I lost the ability to change the Visibility of my layers. I've tried pre-comping them but still no change. I'm trying to do a trendy flash cut edit with vintage photos overlayed on the videos. I'm placing the same video in each pre-comp because the center of the vintage photos doesn't "Screen" once it is pre-comped. I have made 2 layers of each vintage photo. One layer for the center to screen and the Second layer for the border of the vintage photo. Sounds Tedious I know. I generated these vintage photos from PS beta and was really hoping to make one of these trending edits. I'll downgrade and restart the project over to if the problem persists.

Any help would be great!

R

Rick Gerard

Community Expert

What are you trying to do with that comp? The first timeline screenshot shows layer 763 to 774 to all be the same image and the in and out points of the layers down to 769 appear to have their in and out point set about 1 or 2 frames apart. All the layers in that screenshot seem to be parented to layer 970. None of that makes any sense at all.

The second set of screenshots shows that you have at least 1104 layers in your composition. All of those layers also appear to be parented to layer 970.

You have far exceeded the ability of After Effects to properly display layer information. I've been working with AE for more than 25 years and I've worked on some incredibly complex compositions. I've created hours of animation, and I've never even come close to having more than 100 layers in a comp. The projects become unmanageable. A few years ago I did a presentation for a national conference where I needed to show a montage of 900 company logos flying through the street and then filling a stadium. I did it with one 900 frame image sequence imported as footage and 4 instances of particular. There might have been 10 or 20 layers in the incredibly complex comp.

Please tell us what you are trying to accomplish. Maybe we can help you figure out an efficient workflow. You are not going to be able to work with more than 1000 layers in a single comp on any system that I know of.

J

jjatglobaltravelalliance

New Participant

Hi Rick, I replied to melanied95, see below, I'm having the same issue. Great to hear all about your experience and history using AE. That logo project you did sounds fun. I'm wondering if you were able to help with the problem at hand, however. The project I'm working on only has a few hundred layers. I opened the project today like normal and the first 10 or so layers are missing from the timeline. They're in the comp, the keyframes I added still exist, everything shows up on screen when I render video, but nothing in the timeline right now today for some reason. You can read my reply to melanied95 to see what I did for a workaround. I only have 13 years of AE experience so although I submitted my project on time using my workaround I'm excited to hear from you what melanied95 and I should have done. Thanks so much!

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Nathan33865632nprg

New Participant

First smart mature reply here

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Byron Cortez

Community Expert

Oh, and if you need to add keyframes you must select them and then press P for position, A for anchor point, S for scale, R for rotation or T for opacity. Unless you have made a modification or added a keyframe, the letter U will work for you.

Byron.

M

melanied95Author

Known Participant

thank you, the thing is that some layers in the timeline are showing but none after 4 seconds (out of 36 sec) I am not sure what to do because I see the file but not in the timeline. do you know what is happening?