Adobe 12040118 - After Effects Standard Tutorial page 52

Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels
The Project, Timeline, and Effects & Presets panels each contain search fields that you can use to filter items in the panel.
To place the insertion point in a search field, click in the search field.
To place the insertion point in the search field for the active panel, choose File > Find or press Ctrl+F (Windows) or Command+F (Mac OS).
To clear the search field, click the
When you type in the search field, the list of items in the panel is filtered, showing some items and hiding others. Only items with entries that
match the search query that you've typed are shown. The folders, layers, categories, or property groups that contain the matched items are also
shown, to provide context.
In general, only text in columns that are shown is searched for this filtering operation. For example, you may need to show the Comments column
to search and filter by the contents of comments. (See Columns.)
If one or more layers are selected in a composition, the filtering operation in the Timeline panel only affects selected layers. In this case,
unselected layers are not filtered out (hidden) if they don't match the search query. However, if no layers are selected in the composition, the
filtering operation applies to all layers in the composition. This behavior matches that for showing and hiding of layer properties by pressing their
property shortcut keys. (See Show or hide properties in the Timeline panel.)
Clearing the search field and ending the search causes expanded folders and property groups to collapse (close). Therefore, it's easier to work
with the items that are found by the filter operation if you operate on them before you clear the search field and end the search.
If the text that you type in the search field in the Project or Timeline panel contains spaces, the spaces are treated as and-based operators. For
example, typing dark solid matches footage items or layers named Dark Red Solid and Dark Gray Solid. In the Effects & Presets panel, spaces
are treated as space characters in the search field. For example, typing change color matches the Change Color effect, but not the Change To
Color effect.
Project, Timeline, and Effects & Presets panels accept or-based searching in After Effects CS5.5 and later. In an or-based search, a comma
denotes an or, with and-based operators taking precedence over or-based ones. For example, sometimes the name of the property that
determines the amount for a blur effect is Amount, sometimes it is Blurriness, and sometimes it is Blur Radius. If you search for Amount,
Blurriness, Radius, then you will see the equivalent values for all of your blur effects.
Project, Timeline, and Effects and Presets panels accept mru-based (most recently used) searching in After Effects CS5.5 and later. When you
type in a search field, recent search strings that match your input appear.
This search method also allows a way to save items you use often via a menu that opens when you click the search icon in the search field. The
search menu consists of two lists, separated by a divider. The top list contains the six most recent searches, with the most recent one at the top.
The bottom list contains saved search items. As you type, the top list filters to show matching terms.
To save a search item, Shift-click it in the top list of the search menu. Up to ten items may be saved.
To delete a saved search item from either list, hover the mouse over the the item to highlight it, and then press Delete or Backspace.
See this video on the Video2Brain website
Examples of searches in the Project panel
To show only footage items for which the name or comment contains a specific string, start typing the string.
To show only footage items for which the source file is missing, type the entire word missing. (This search works whether or not the File Path
column is shown, which is an exception to the general rule that only shown columns are searched.)
To show only unused footage items, type the entire word unused.
To show only used footage items, type the entire word used.
To show only Cineon footage items, type Cineon with the Type column shown.
Examples of searches in the Timeline panel
To show only layers and properties for which the name or comment contains a specific string, type the string. For example, type starch to
show pins created by the Puppet Starch tool.
To show only properties that have an expression that uses a specific method, type the method name.
To show only layers with a specific label, type the label name. (See Color labels for layers, compositions, and footage items.)
Click the swatch for a label to see the context menu that lists the label names. Alternatively, drag the right edge of the Label column
heading to expand the column to read the label names.
Scroll or zoom with the mouse wheel
You can use the mouse wheel to zoom in the Timeline, Composition, Layer, and Footage panels. You can use the mouse wheel to scroll in the
Timeline, Project, Render Queue, Flowchart, Effect Controls, Metadata, and Effects & Presets panels.
button that appears to the right of the text in the search field.
to learn about the new features for searching and filtering in panels in After Effects CS5.5.
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