Looping Video

After Effects: Looping Video

This guide will give you step-by-step instructions to looping video and image sequences in After Effects.

Guide

1. Right-click on a video or image sequence clip in the Project window and choose Interpret Footage > Main
2. Enter the number of times you want the clip to loop:
   
3. When you add the clip to a composition, it will loop for the number of times you have set.

Trimming a looped layer

1. If you increase the loop number for a clip that is already in a composition, the layer in the timeline will look something like this:
   
2. The layer keeps the duration it had before the loop number was increased. If you want to include more layer loops within the composition, simply drag the layer's out point:
   
3. You can drag it up to the end of the ghost bar to include all the loops. The ghost bar represents frames within the layer that are not currently included in the composition:
   

Tips

• You may want to edit your video clip in iMovie or Final Cut Pro before importing it into After Effects so that it has a start and end that will loop nicely.
• You can change the number of loops at any time by following the same steps again.

Links

Adobe TV video training for After Effects CS4
Adobe TV - where you can watch lots of videos on Adobe software
Tutorials on keying - removing part of a layer
Video Copilot video tutorials for After Effects
Adobe support for After Effects