How to delete a gap in an After Effects timeline

Question

...without having to carefully select everything after the gap, and shift it all up.

All articles/videos I see only talk about trimming the timeline at the beginning or end, but I can't find anything about cutting out a piece in the middle.

Basically, I want the inverse of Trim Comp to Work Area. I want to remove a piece of the full comp in the middle of the timeline.

Is that possible?

Answer 1

There's a script that does it for you (I just wrote it). You can get it (free, open source, WTFPL license) here on my blog. With the playhead in a gap, run the script and it will pull the layers after the gap along so the gap disappears.

BTW all care, no responsibility. It works on my machine, but I've tested it like, twice. Save before using.

Answer 2

The soluction for this question is Ripple Edit scripts (https://aescripts.com/ripple-edit/) with The functionality "Closes the gap betweenlayers sequentially".

Answer 3

1. Select all layers in timeline
2. Right click on any layers selected and click on "keyframe assistant" then select "sequence layers"
3. After open "sequence layers window", just click "OK"
4. Done!