Detect image change

[cwellems]

I'd like to know if there is a way to detect whether the appearance or actual pixel composition of a layer has changed between one frame and the next.

The use case for this is that I'm exporting a frame sequence out of animation software at 24fps but the drawings are typically held for 2, 3, or 4 frames. After export this will just be a sequence of dawings on 1s with a lot of duplicates. I have a composite layer with textures that I'd like to go to the next frame of whenever a drawing changes, based on the original timing and not counting duplicate frame contents as a drawing change. Is there some support for recognition of whether the contents of a frame have changed, within basic AE or some plugin out there?

Thanks!

[Rick Gerard]

You might want to try this: Magnum 3 aescripts.com

It might help. There is no built-in tool that will detect scene changes.