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Tutorial

20 Tips to Work Faster in the After Effects Timeline

These 20 After Effects tips and tricks will help you work faster in the timeline!

In this video:

0:04 - Find the distance between keyframes

0:34 -  Let After Effects do math for you

0:47 - Quickly unparent layers

0:57 - Quickly select certain layers

1:11 - Scroll to layer in timeline

1:22 - Open property in timeline

1:41 - Show or Hide properties in the timeline

1:58 - Color layers and select all layers with the same color

2:14 - Color keyframes and select all keyframes with the same color

2:36 - Stretch or shrink the distance between keyframes

3:21 - Retime a pre-composition or video

3:58 - Time Remapping

4:22 - Time Reverse Keyframes

4:45 - Time Reverse Layer

5:18 - Quick Offset layers - New in feature in August 2025

6:17 - Quick Offset keyframes - New in feature in August 2025

6:46 - Randomly Quick Offset layers - download free script to do this

8:02 - Sort Layers by In Point

8:24 - Copy & paste layers in the right order

8:44 - Reverse the order of layers in the timeline

Download script to randomize selected layers so that you can randomly offset them!

Jump to 6:46 in the tutorial above to learn how to install, set up, and use the script.

Download a cheat sheet of After Effects keyboard shortcuts.

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