Increasing The Duration Of A Composition In After Effects

Question

I want to use a stock composition I downloaded. It is of falling leaves and was built in After Effects using Particular. Find it here!

I need to increase the time of the composition to match a musical number I am using as well (00:05:12:15). I have done the whole right-click on the composition and increase the duration value, but it is still playing for it's default length of time.

The final goal is to use the composition, with a different background, along with the aforementioned musical number for a menu in an Encore project. Thanks!

Answer 1

After further investigating into the issue, I discovered that my inability to increase the duration of the composition was due to the length of a video asset being used in two of the nested comps. To remedy this, I duplicated the video layer in those two nested comps and repositioned the clip on each subsequent layer until I filled the duration I needed. Problem solved!

Answer 2

If you're using the RAM preview, after editing the duration in the composition settings dialog, you will need to zoom out on the timeline (little mountain/big mountain slider at the bottom of the timeline), and make sure you've dragged the handles out on your work area to fill the length of the composition. You should be able to drag your current time indicator (playhead) further in time.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects/how-to-extend-a-composition-in-after-effects/td-p/7973571?page=1

Answer 3

Folks... I had this problem too. And as usual, when you finally discover the solution, you're like, doh! It seems so simple.

Here's the catch: When you open the Composition Settings dialog box, and you change the duration to extend the timeline, you have to make sure that your new duration has digits in all the fields, including the milliseconds!

In other words, it's not like a clock. It won't "assume" that you "meant" to put 2 zeros in the milliseconds field. If you don't type those zeros, it will automatically shorten your composition drastically.

That's what kept happening to me until I figured out that every digit needs to be there. The program doesn't assume anything.

So, for example, if your existing composition is 0:01:30:00 and you want to change that to 2 minutes, you can't just type 0:02:00 and hit ok. You HAVE to type 0:02:00:00 and THEN hit ok.

Make sure all the digits are there, or AE will mess with your head!

Answer 4

go to the frame, right click and then check time remapping under time options