Let's go over all the quality of life with After Effects things that just make more sense.
Also check out: Multiple instances of After Effects blog post.
Alignment
Ctrl + Alt + Home to center the alignment of a layer.
Use Anubis Plugin
CC 2019 - CC 2022 removed Quicktime .mov support for alpha channel video exports.
You can use Anubis for this to add this support back into After Effects.
There's only 4 Alpha Channel Exporting options.
Quicktime - Reasonable file sizes with many codec wrapper options
AVI (Audio Video Interleave) - Large File sizes, created my microsoft, lossey
Prores - Apple Codec, Use 4444 for alpha channel support, 422
GoPro Cineform - Cross-platform intermediate codec designed for editing high-resolution footage, 10 bit color.
Apple Pro Res White Paper - https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/Apple_ProRes_White_Paper.pdf
Page 6 of the PDF describes how all the different sub version of Prores operates.
Page 10 of the PDF describes about what the difference is between 4444, 422, 420,411 is.
Unmult
Black video element? Don't like Screen / Add color blending modes? Unmult is a free effect plugin that you can add to any layer to completely retain the element but removes the black converts to the black to alpha channel.
Clearing Cache
Clear out your After Effects cache. Create a shortcut for this while working on your project to keep your performance of your computer up and from After Effects saturating your memory so much.
When you make 1 change to your comp and you cache your comp then make one change you clear out your preview. So with in a short amount of time you can eventually go from 2gb of cache to 50gb cache in no time that your not ing to be able to use later, unless your wanting keep your cache for when you relaunch your project.
Precomp shortcut
Ctrl + Shift + C
Select your layers that you want to precomp. Precomposed layers will increase the performance in your comp your working in. Your precomp's will stay cached and will increase the load preview timeline performance. if you use Red Giant Trapcode for instance then After Effects has to recalculate the preview each time you have to do a ram preview. If there's no changes to Trapcode while working on your comp then you can precomp that into its own comp nested so that it doesn't take as long to preview in the main comp your working in.
RD_Scripts
This is a free pack of scripts thats jam-packed full of useful stuff.
I discovered this when I was looking for being able to want to turn a mask into a shape object and it seemed near impossible and then with a bit of research I was able to find this treasure cove of 51 scripts that are extremely useful.
From Jeffrey R. Almasol - www.redefinery.com
Grouping layer groups
There's only one plugin that does this very well and it's a small plugin extension called "Sort it".
This small tool is an absolute saint! This is such a great tool why doesn't adobe natively have it within After Effects it just boggles the mind for real. This is very handy for when your working on a 300+ layer composition for an example. Non-affiliate link - Sort it
Single Key Shortcuts
Press P
Access the position to your layer that you have selected
Press U
On a selected layer to see the keyframes to adjust the timings and position of the keyframes
Press T
Quick opacity control
Press S
Quick Scale control on selected layers
Press J or K
J is for the Last keyframe
K is for the Next Keyframe
Spacebar Usage
Hold Spacebar to pan around within your composition while zoomed in. (this also works in other Adobe applications as well.
Ctrl + D
Duplicate selected layers, (You can Ctrl + C and the Paste with Ctrl + V but the fact of the matter is that Ctrl + D does it in one shortcut, I find it strange but its what it is. There's also this small modifier where if you select whatever it is you are trying to select then After Effects will and does invert that selection when you use the 2 shortcut way of Ctrl + C and then Ctrl + V, Ctrl + D is the way around without you having to re-organize your layers after you paste, so that's how you deal with that.)
Video CoPilot
Absolutely love this company they have created some awesome stuff.
Here's a bunch of freebies to help improve your workflow. Orb - https://www.videocopilot.net/orb/ - create 3d planets
Color Vibrance - https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/color_vibrance_plug-in/ - change color of black and white footage to colors.
Saber - https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/saber_plug-in/ - Light saber tool.
FX Console - https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/fx_console_plugin/ - Workflow improvement tool
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