Let us try something different at this point. Let us go back to the project window for a second and close up the photo shop files and let us scroll down the video and audio options.
Now, we have few video clips here but what we are looking for is a soundtrack. Now, this small AIF file in here called “Funky”. This contains seven seconds of music which is perfectly time to the duration of our composition.
Now, if we were to drag this in very much like we saw our second ago. Maybe we drag down and we let go at this point, we know it is going to appear at zero seconds because that is the default. But if we did not have to prefer set or we decided to drag along here and accidentally drop it further down the timeline maybe just two or three frames before the end. It is not going to stop until that point.
Now, I cannot tell you how many times in all the years I have been using after effects. I still do the same thing. I have the time marker at the end of the comp because I was previewing something. I drag a new layer in and drop it over here on the left hand side, it actually stayed over of the right hand side of the timeline.
Thankfully, the preference takes care of that mistake a lot but you will still run across this from time to time. One way that you would actually see if this was a problem if we decided to scrub the audio. So, we can actually here what the soundtrack is like. You can scrub audio in the timeline by holding down the command key or the control key on the PC and dragging the time indicator.
You notice that you cannot heat a single thing and that is pretty obvious at this point because the audio clip is all the way over here on the right hand side. If we were to command drag over here. You will notice that you can just pick out the sound of the audio scrubbing in the background.
Now, in order to time everything together, we do need to get back audio clip all the back to the beginning of the timeline and there are few ways that we can do that. The most natural thing that most people will do is pick up the layer by clicking on its color area and dragging it back along the timeline.
Now, you can see that you have to drag it maybe two or three times then you have got to try and line out to make sure is it at the start point and the finish point. Now, you maybe so magnified up on your timeline that you can’t even see where the audio clip fell.
We might only be looking at the first second in this entire view and therefore, you can even find it or instead let us just undo that. So, it goes back to its original position and maybe pickup the time indicator now and just drag down to one second, just for this instance.
And let say we need to snap this immediately to this time indicator. Only to do is simply hit the left square bracket on the keyboard and you will notice that the in point the whole layer and its end point shift and snap, exactly where we have the time indicator.
Now, this doesn’t get us all the way home but it does give you and idea that the left square bracket will move the in point of a layer. With that in mind if we were then to hit the home key and then use the left square bracket, we could effectively get our audio back to the beginning of the timeline.
But you might be in a situation. Let us just undo that a couple times again. you might be in a situation where maybe your current time indicator is out three seconds and you need it to stay there because you are trying to work around that point.
But you quickly want to get the audio all the way back to the beginning or any layer in after effects if you needed to start at exactly zero seconds. All you have to do is hold down the option key or the alt key on the PC and hit home. That will immediately return it to zero seconds no matter what else you are doing in the timeline.
The other cool thing is you could have 20 layer selected all in different positions on the timeline and again, applying the same shortcut would move them also they start at zero seconds.
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