I have a composition that is completely made and ready to go, but I need to add about 10 seconds to the beginning it. I have text that is part of the composition that will be continued during the 10 seconds that I need to add.
I am afraid of messing around with it because I think I will lose all my keyframes that I set up to make the composition work.

Does all this make sense? I am fairly new to After Effects and I am sure I am making this harder that it needs to be, but again, I am stumped. Any and all suggestions are welcome!

Thanks, Jon

Jon, from the sounds of it your problem has an easy fix. I hate posting answers to this kind of stuff, because there's a million ways to do something, and sure enough someone is going to post after this saying "no, you should do it this way" but here goes:

I'd take all the layers but the text layer, and precompose them. Now you have your text layer and your precomp all in one compositon. Open the composition settings and add 10 seconds to the length of your comp. Move your text layer and precomp layer forward 10 seconds in time so they are still in sync, then stretch out your text layer to the beginning of your compostion, and do whatever you want with it for the first 10 seconds. By stretching it to the beginning, you'll be sure to preserve the placement of any keyframes in relation to the precomp.

Hope that helps/makes sense.

Bert,

Thanks for the reply. I appreciate you taking the jump into the discussion and time to respond. I am going to try it out right now. It sounds exactly like what I need.

Cheers, Jon

Bert,

Your suggestion worked like a charm. I learned something new today and once again, I thank you for your help!

Cheers, Jon

Jon, glad to be of help. Btw, Chris & Trish Meyer have written several excellent texts on After Effects. The "Creating Motion Graphics" volumes are aimed at going deep into the program, but they also have a text called "After Effects Apprentice" which is more of an introduction, and a great text for getting started (I have all of their books).

Cheers,

Bert