Organize, view, and manage footage items in the Project panel



Compositions and footage items are listed in the Project panel. Unlike items in the Timeline panel and Effect Controls panel, the order of items in the Project panel has no influence on the appearance of the movies that you create. You can organize footage items and compositions however you like, including organizing them using folders. Solid-color footage items are automatically placed in the Solids folder.

Folders that you create in the Project panel exist only in the Project panel. You can expand a folder to reveal its contents, and put folders inside other folders. To move a file or folder to the top level of the Project panel, drag it to the gray information area at the top of the panel.

You can use the search field in the Project panel to find footage items that meet various criteria, such as those with missing source files. See Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels.

Scripts for managing footage items

Jeff Almasol provides a script on his redefinery website that automatically writes specified information about footage items or layers to the Comment fields for the respective items in the Project panel or Timeline panel.

Christopher Green provides a script (Project_Items_Renamer.jsx) on his website with which you can rename compositions and footage items selected in the Project panel. You can search and replace text in the names, append characters to the beginning or end of the names, or trim a specified number of characters from the beginning or end of the names.

Lloyd Alvarez provides a script on the After Effects Scripts website with which you can search an After Effects project and replace the file paths for the sources of footage items. This is convenient for swapping out source files, updating a project after moving sources, or updating a project after moving it to a different computer system.

Show information for items

  • To show information about a footage item or composition, select it in the Project panel. Information is displayed at the top of the Project panel next to the thumbnail image.
  • To show the file creator ID for a footage item, Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) it in the Project panel.

Create a folder

 Choose File > New > New Folder, or click the Create A New Folder icon  at the bottom of the Project panel.

Rename and sort items

  • To rename a composition, footage item, or folder, do one of the following:

    • Select the item in the Project panel, press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS), and enter the new name.

    • Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the item, choose Rename, and enter the new name.

  • To rename the Comment column, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the column heading and choose Rename This.
    You can use the Comment column to create a custom sorting option. Rename the column, enter corresponding information for each item (for example, camera number), and then sort by that column.
  • To sort items by entries in any column, click the column name in the Project panel.

Copy items

  • To duplicate or copy an item in the Project panel, select it and choose Edit > Duplicate or Edit > Copy.
  • To copy a footage item to Windows Explorer (Windows) or the Finder (Mac OS), drag the footage item from the Project panel to the desktop.

Reveal footage items

  • To reveal where a footage item is used in a composition, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the footage item in the Project panel and choose Reveal In Composition; then select the specific instance you want to reveal (composition name, layer name).
  • To reveal the source footage item for a layer in the Project panel, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the layer in the Timeline panel, and then choose Reveal Layer Source In Project.
  • To reveal the location of a footage item in Adobe Bridge, Windows Explorer, or the Finder, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the footage item in the Project panel and choose Reveal In Bridge, Reveal In Windows Explorer, or Reveal In Finder.

Refresh footage items

 To refresh footage items selected in the Project panel to use the current versions of the source footage files, choose File > Reload Footage.