Adobe After Effects CS3 - Manual (Page 140)

AFTER EFFECTS CS3
User Guide
135
Create layers from footage items
You can create a layer from any footage item in the Project panel, including another composition. After you add a
footage item to a composition, you can modify and animate the resulting layer.
When you add a composition to another composition, you create a layer that uses the composition that you added
as its source. (See “Nesting, precomposing, and pre-rendering” on page 113.)
The Still Footage preference setting (Preferences > Import) controls the default duration of layers that use still
footage items as their sources. By default, when you create a layer with a still image as its source, the layer’s duration
is the duration of the composition. You can change the duration of the layer after it’s created by trimming the layer.
Note: By default, new layers begin at the beginning of the composition duration. You can instead choose to have new
layers begin at the current time by deselecting the Create Layers At Composition Start Time preference (Edit > Prefer-
ences > General (Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > General (Mac OS)).
Often, the next step after adding a layer to a composition is scaling and positioning the layer to fit in the frame. (See
“Scale a layer” on page 155.)
See also
“Working with footage items” on page 58
“Trim, extend, or slip-edit a layer” on page 141
“Shortcuts for working with layers” on page 645
Create layers from one or more footage items
When you create layers from multiple footage items, the layers appear in the layer stacking order in the Timeline
panel in the order in which they were selected in the Project panel.
1 Select one or more footage items and folders in the Project panel.
2 Do one of the following:
• Drag the selected footage items to the Composition panel, or press Ctrl+/ (Windows) or Command+/ (Mac OS).
• Drag the selected footage items to the Timeline panel. When you drag the item into the layer outline, a highlight
bar indicates where the layer will appear when you release the mouse button. If you drag the item over the time
graph area, a time marker indicates where the layer’s In point will be when you release the mouse button.
• Drag the selected footage items to the composition name or icon in the Project panel.
Create a layer from a trimmed footage item
You can trim a moving-image footage item in the Footage panel before inserting a layer based on that footage item
into a composition.
1 To open a footage item in the Footage panel, double-click it in the Project panel.
Double-clicking opens some footage items—including MOV and some AVI movies—in a media player window. To
open some kinds of footage items in the Footage panel, you must Alt-double-click (Windows) or Option-double-
click (Mac OS) them. (See “Working with footage items in the Footage panel” on page 59.)
2 Move the current-time indicator in the Footage panel to the frame that you want to use as the layer’s In point, and
click the Set In Point button at the bottom of the Footage panel.
3 Move the current-time indicator in the Footage panel to the frame that you want to use as the layer’s Out point,
and click the Set Out Point button at the bottom of the Footage panel.