Create layers from footage items
You can create a layer from any footage item in the Project panel, including another composition. After you add a footage item to a composition, you can modify and animate the resulting layer.
When you add a composition to another composition, you create a layer that uses the composition that you added as its source. (See Nesting, precomposing, and pre-rendering.)
The Still Footage preference setting (Preferences > Import) controls the default duration of layers that use still footage items as their sources. By default, when you create a layer with a still image as its source, the layer’s duration is the duration of the composition. You can change the duration of the layer after it’s created by trimming the layer.
Often, the next step after adding a layer to a composition is scaling and positioning the layer to fit in the frame. (See Scale a layer.)
Create layers from one or more footage items
When you create layers from multiple footage items, the layers appear in the layer stacking order in the Timeline panel in the order in which they were selected in the Project panel.
- Select one or more footage items and folders in the Project panel.
- Do one of the following:
-
Drag the selected footage items to the Composition panel, or press Ctrl+/ (Windows) or Command+/ (Mac OS).
-
Drag the selected footage items to the Timeline panel. When you drag the item into the layer outline, a highlight bar indicates where the layer will appear when you release the mouse button. If you drag the item over the time graph area, a time marker indicates where the layer’s In point will be when you release the mouse button.
-
Drag the selected footage items to the composition name or icon in the Project panel.
-
Create a layer from a trimmed footage item
You can trim a moving-image footage item in the Footage panel before inserting a layer based on that footage item into a composition.
- Move the current-time indicator in the Footage panel
to the frame that you want to use as the layer’s In point, and click
the Set In Point button
at
the bottom of the Footage panel. - Move the current-time indicator in the Footage panel
to the frame that you want to use as the layer’s Out point, and
click the Set Out Point button
at
the bottom of the Footage panel. - To create a layer based on this trimmed footage item,
click an Edit button at the bottom of the Footage panel:
- Overlay Edit
- Creates the new layer at the top of the layer stacking order, with the In point set at the current time in the Timeline panel.
- Ripple Insert Edit
- Also creates the new layer at the top of the layer stacking order, with the In point set at the current time in the Timeline panel, but splits all other layers. Newly created split layers are moved later in time so that their In points are at the same time as the inserted layer’s Out point.
- Overlay Edit
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