Repeating animations with different postions and elements (how can I make it easier and precise?)

[Puppetmaster79]

I am making an animated timeline and I am struggling to make it clean.

I have a straight timeline made in Illustrator with a little bubbles that indicated the date we are at. The camera then follows the bubble on that timeline kinda like a rail. I am happy with that part. At each stop, a video appears in the bubble along with a title describing the video. The video expands full screen for about 6 seconds then shrinks back to its original size and disappears. Doing one is fine but I have to create about 50 of these with different images and texts each time. Is there an easier and more precise way to make sure that each bubble, text and media to appear and all move identically? I could copy and paste the keyframes but they never seem to be right. I am open to try with scripts. 

[Kyle Hamrick]

If you're looking to repeat the same thing every time, it sounds like you can probably just precompose the timeline animation, so you're using an identical version of it each time. 

Look into Essential Properties, which will allow you to expose specific properties from your precomp as editable. You can  then create iterative copies, which will each use the same animation but can allow you to edit the images and text inside. 

Let us know if you need more guidance! 

[Rick Gerard]

It would help me help you if I saw your timeline with the modified properties of the problem layer revealed. Just press 'uu' to reveal all changes you have made to a layer and embed* a screenshot.

From your description, I would probably save an animation preset and use nested comps for the bubble animation. You could duplicate the bubble comp in the Project Panel, open it, then Alt/Option + drag the new video from the Project Panel to the selected layer in the duplicate nested comp (pre-comp) to replace it. I would also consider using a separate comp for each part of the timeline, then render them and do the final edit and composite in Premiere Pro or your favorite NLE.

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