Working with footage items in the footage panel – Adobe After Effects CS3 User Manual
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AFTER EFFECTS CS3
User Guide
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Rename and sort items
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To rename a composition, footage item, or folder, select it in the Project panel, press Enter (Windows) or Return
(Mac OS), type the new name, and then press Enter or Return again.
Note: The names of items in the Project panel can be no more than 31 characters long. The same is true for names of
layers, effects, and property groups in the Timeline panel and Effect Controls panel.
•
To rename the Comments column, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the column heading and
choose Rename This.
You can use the Comments column to create a custom sorting option. Rename the column, enter corresponding infor-
mation for each item (for example, camera number), and then sort by that column.
•
To sort items by entries in any column, click the column name in the Project panel.
Copy items
•
To duplicate or copy an item in the Project panel, select it and choose Edit > Duplicate or Edit > Copy.
•
To copy a footage item to Windows Explorer (Windows) or the Finder (Mac OS), drag the footage item from the
Project panel to the desktop.
Find and view items in the Project panel
•
To find items in the Project panel, choose File > Find, or click the Find
button at the bottom left of the panel.
Select Find Missing Footage to locate all footage items that refer to a file that has been moved, deleted, or renamed.
•
To find the next item that matches the most recently used search criteria, Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click
(Mac OS) the Find button.
Working with footage items in the Footage panel
When you double-click a movie in the Project panel, it opens by default in the Footage panel or in a player window:
QuickTime (.mov) files open in a QuickTime Player window; Video for Windows (.avi) files open in a Video for
Windows player window. Still images always appear in the Footage panel. Certain AVI files are not supported by the
AVI player window, and will open in the After Effects Footage panel. These include files created with Microsoft’s
DirectX DV codec and all files over 2 GB.
To open a QuickTime or Video for Windows movie in the Footage panel instead of a player window, Alt-double-click
(Windows) or Option-double-click (Mac OS) the footage item in the Project panel.
The QuickTime and Video for Windows player windows play the source file, not the edited and interpreted footage
item based on the source file.
You can use the Set In Point , Set Out Point , Ripple Insert Edit
, and Overlay Edit
controls in the Footage
panel to trim a footage item and insert it into a composition. This can be more convenient than adding the footage
item to a composition and then trimming in the Timeline panel.
See also