Understanding Keyframes and Layer Adjustments

If I want something to hold in place, I need two keyframes that are basically the exact same number. If I don't want that, I can just like drag the layer any place I want or change the number. So now what it gets is up, down, and then sideways.

That's animation. It's the moment that stopwatch is blue. Anything that changes that property makes a new keyframe.

Now, here's the thing to understand about the numbers. By the way, J and K jump from keyframe to keyframe. The numbers you see here and in the properties panel are the current value where the current time indicator is.

This is the value for this keyframe right now. It doesn't matter what keyframe is highlighted. Aside from deleting and copy pasting, highlighting is irrelevant.

The numbers are showing me where the CTI is. The numbers are showing me where the CTI is. It means that over here, the numbers are showing me the current position.

That's going to keep in mind. So it doesn't matter what keyframe is highlighted, except, like I said, if you're going to copy paste it or delete it, obviously. Okay, so these numbers are wherever that happens to be.

J and K, or these arrows, jump from keyframe to keyframe. If you're going to update, edit a keyframe, make sure you're exactly on top of it. Because if you're even one frame off, you will make a new keyframe.

And you'll get that jerky motion. When you are zoomed out, it is very difficult to tell you're not on top of the keyframe exactly. It looks like I am.

Okay, but I'm not. I'm one frame after it. So a very common error in this program is to accidentally make new keyframes when you think you're trying to change something, you're actually one frame before or after it.

It's very common. Hence, J and K on your keyboard. Or those buttons.

They will make sure you jump from keyframe to keyframe. Okay, consider. Other questions? But yeah, it's like a lot of, like, little tiny things that you can accidentally do that's going to screw things up.

Until you get used to it. It's a very nitpicky program. Things have to be done in a certain order.

Otherwise, it will not come out the way you want. Okay, sometimes you can change the order. It's not going to hurt you.

Like, make a comp first or import things first. Who cares? It doesn't really matter in general. Okay, but animation is a very pretty strict order of those five things that are outlined on that page.

That last page of the section. Okay, and if you're animating here, Premiere Pro or Photoshop, same icons, same steps. Basically, okay.

Questions? Now, by the way, I only wanted these two keyframes. I did not want more than two keyframes. Okay, eventually we'll add things with more than two keyframes.

But this is just basically off, on, off, on. Eventually, we're going to move everything just, like, later anyway. So we'll add more keyframes, definitely.

Okay, other questions? Okay, so there's a shifting layers in time concept. It just means drag layers. That's all it means, okay? So right now, so eventually, by the way, there's going to be some text on there.

It's going to say, um, rock and guitar picks. But right now, based on what's happening, you never get a chance to see the four guitar picks in the background or read any text that will eventually be there. Because the moment the timeline starts playing, the photo covers it.

Okay, now it would be nice to have this text there to read if you had time to read the text, right? So we need that animation to start later. Now, we built it at the beginning, but we can change that. Okay, so when you add a new layer to your timeline, the program will start the beginning of the layer at the beginning of the timeline.

So like right there, okay? Now, image layers, text layers, and shape layers are assigned to be the length of the composition. That's like the default behavior of length. It's the entire length of composition.

An image layer, sorry, a video layer, an audio layer will basically come in and be as long as they are. Notice the audio layer literally runs off the side of the timeline. It's because it's longer than 15 seconds, okay? Now, when you add keyframes, they are part of the layer, which means if you drag a layer over to the right with your move tool, your selection tool, the animation will start later.

So notice, no photo, no photo, photo, okay? The selection tool can drag layers forward or back. Now, for the record, you could also drag it before the timeline starts. So you could literally have it dragged that way, and the animation happens before the timeline even plays.

Don't do that. That's not good in this case, okay? Now, so you could manually drag that wherever you want. However, the instructions would like you to start this photo at 2 seconds, 20 frames.

So I'm going to move my current time indicator to 220, return, okay? And yes, I can drag it, but there's a keyboard shortcut. The keyboard shortcut to move a layer so it starts where the CTI is, the current time indicator, the little blue wedge, is the left bracket key. It's the one next to P on your keyboard.

That slides a layer, so its beginning lines up with the current time indicator. So I could manually drag the layer forward or back with the move tool, or I can move the CTI, the current time indicator, to where I want a layer to start and press the left bracket key. Do not press the right bracket key.

The right bracket key does the opposite of that behavior. It slides the end of the layer to line up with the CTI, which means now it ends where the CTI is, which means not helpful at all. So left and right brackets move a layer.

They're the equivalent of picking it up and dragging it forward or back, okay? So either way works fine. That is shifting layers in time, just like moving layers, so they start later. Now I got that, and that happens, okay? That's it.

So layers physically are not visible before you see their color bar. When you drag a layer, as opposed to trimming it, when you drag a layer, the keyframes go with it. You can start a layer at any point in time and use that to control the timing of your animation, okay, like that.

So that was shifting layers in time. I'm going to save this in case it crashes, okay? Now, that was the first photo. What about a second photo? So the animation for this has both photos falling at the same rate and same time, and they're just different layers.

Here's my thing. If someone's going to animate the exact same way something else I already built does, I can duplicate the layer and replace its content, okay? So I don't have to, like— If someone's going to animate the same way something else does, I don't have to, like, build each of those individually. I can kind of reuse the animation, okay? Now, by the way, you can also technically copy and paste keyframes, which is another lesson we'll do, okay? This is called duplicating animated layers, okay? And then the next one after that is swapping out the layer content, okay? Why did I name this photo 1? Because I plan to have a photo 2, okay? I don't know which photo I want to use, so that's why I didn't call it the name of the content.

Okay, so I want to duplicate this layer so I get two of them. Again, this is not right-clickable. Keyboard shortcut, or it's on the Edit menu.

So I've got photo 1 animating the way I want. I like that. I want to duplicate it so I can get a photo 2 and then swap out its content.

Edit, duplicate, or that's the keyboard shortcut, Command-D, okay? It duplicates the layer. It duplicates the animation on the layer, okay? And the instructions want me to move this one so it starts at 410. 410.

I'll use the same keyboard shortcut I did before. Now there's two photos. One falls first.

That's photo 1. Two falls second, okay? When I duplicated it, it had a start layer. It moves the same way, same content, okay? Where's that coming from? Turn the audio off, okay? I want to see the keyframes for this layer. The keyboard shortcut to reveal keyframes is U. I don't know why, it just is.

It tells you in the book. That reveals any keyframes on the layer, okay? Notice where I duplicated, it copied everything about it. Duplicate a layer, all the keyframes, all the settings on it, all the effects get duplicated.

Like that, okay? But this photo is this one. I don't like this photo. So layers highlighted.

I want to replace this with blue and tan pick. Yeah, that's what I want. Notice my photo 2 layer is selected.

It's active. It's got that like bright highlight around it. Option or Alt on Windows, and I'm going to drag a new file from project into it.

Drag onto the name. It's a little plus sign here, by the way. I let go.

And it replaces the content. By the way, notice the keyframes hid. I'll press U again.

They come back. I don't know, it just does that. It hides them.

I don't know why. So now I have one photo that's this. It's not putting it inside of photo 2 for me.

Yeah, so here's the weird thing about this. Okay, so first of all. First of all, I have to have the target layer that I want to replace selected.

So name's got to be highlighted, okay? And then Option drag onto the name. If I don't have the layer highlighted, Option drag just does this. I did both and it still adds a new layer.

Still is doing that. So the other issue is you have to hold down Option until you let go of your mouse. Like that.

You have to hold down Option. So target layer is highlighted. Wait, you're on Windows? I'm on Mac.

It's all. So if you're on Mac, it's Option. If you're on Windows, it's Alt.

And then like drag onto the name drop. I can literally replace anything I want, by the way. So now the pink pic is here.

Now the four pics is here. So as long as the target layer is highlighted, Option dragging or Alt dragging something into the name should swap out the content. For the record, that's the only way I know how to do it, is the keyboard shortcut.

But notice I haven't let go. I haven't let go of the keyboard shortcut. I'm letting go of the mouse to drop it into it.

It takes a little practice. But I haven't let go of the keyboard. Because if I let go of the keyboard, it will stop doing the replace command.

So you got to be careful with that. Okay, back to you. I have a quick question regarding the time.

I know I duplicated photo one. So it copied to photo two. I know photo one was set at 2.20. And photo two, you wanted to set at 4.10. 4.10, yeah.

So when I changed photo two, photo one changes too. Oh, so if you're one other, that's a good question. So if you have multiple layers selected, be careful about changing things.

Whatever is selected is what you control. Okay, one more thing I need to change. I only have one selected, but both of them are changing.

That's the problem. Well, give me one second. Let me finish the demo.

And then I'll let you share your screen. So the last thing I want to do is this. I go to the second keyframe for photo two.

I'll change the rotation so it's the other way. 16 degrees. So otherwise, they butterfly like that.

That is a bit. And that's the last part of the lesson for that. So a couple things to be careful about.

Um, when you, whatever, you got to select it to affect it. So when you want to duplicate something, you got to select that layer before you can duplicate it, obviously. Same thing with keyframes.

Whatever you click on last is what it's going to affect. So the last thing you do is click on a keyframe. That's what you're going to duplicate, okay? Or that's what you're going to cut.

That's what you're going to paste. You want to make sure that it's the layer name you click on last before you duplicate. So keyboard shortcuts are often dependent upon what's active.

And in general, the last thing. So like if I press delete right now, I'm deleting the photo one layer. If I click on that keyframe and press delete right now, I'm deleting only that keyframe.

So you got to be careful with the keyboard shortcuts. It's always based on what's selected.