Instruction Manual

Chapter 7 Basic compositing 226
•
Crop: An activation checkbox to turn cropping on and o. If a layer is cropped and this
checkbox is deselected, the layer resumes its original size, although the cropping values are
maintained. Reselecting the checkbox re-enables the cropping eect specied by the crop
parameters.
When the Crop checkbox is select, four sliders to modify the crop parameters become
available. Each slider denes the number of pixels to be cropped from the layer’s four sides,
relative to the outer edge of the bounding box that surrounds it. These parameters are similar
to the crop parameters in the Media Inspector (available when you select a layer in the Media
list). However, whereas cropping a layer via the Media Inspector crops all instances of that
layer in your project, cropping a layer in the Properties Inspector crops only a single instance
of the layer; duplicates of the layer remain uncropped. For more information, see Source media
parameters on page 178.
•
Timing: Value sliders to control all aspects of clip retiming. For more information, see Retiming
overview on page 246.
Make clone layers
In a motion graphics project, sometimes it is necessary to reuse a complex layer in other parts of
the project multiple times. Although you can duplicate or cut and paste any layer, if you update
the original, none of the changes you make are applied to the copies. Keeping track of these
changes can become a tedious and dicult management task. If you nd yourself applying
the same lters and masks to more than one copy of a layer, you should take advantage of the
Make Clone Layer command. Making clone layers has the additional benet of improving project
playback and rendering performance.
You can make clone layers out of images, video clips, groups, particle systems, text, shapes,
and replicators.
Create a clone layer
Do one of the following:
m Select the layer to clone, then choose Object > Make Clone Layer (or press K).
m Control-click a layer in the Canvas, then choose Make Clone Layer from the shortcut menu.
m Control-click a layer in the Layers list or Timeline, then choose Make Clone Layer from the
shortcut menu.
67% resize factor