Work Faster in After Effects: 20 Timeline Tricks

🎓 Learn how to create real-world animation projects. My course, After Effects, Explained walks you through 7 hands-on projects that build into an explainer animation: https://link.animationexplained.com/aeexplained11

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 (link below)
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 the script to be able to randomly offset layers with a keyboard shortcut: https://www.meganfriesth.com/freebies/randomizelayers

⬇️ Download a cheat sheet of After Effects Keyboard Shortcuts: https://link.animationexplained.com/aeshortcuts2

My website: https://www.animationexplained.com
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