Layers in sync?

Chris;

Could you make a shape and type the content into the box so you don't need to group it?  If you select the box and start typing it will fill in without adding another text box.  Then you can just place the shape on the timeline and don't need to show or hideusing triggers or layers it as it will just appear in the timeline.

Tim

Thanks for the reply. The only reason I was talking about grouping is because I want to use a button to control the visibility of the captions so the user can turn them on or off. I have several text boxes of captions (a few sentences per and the boxes appear and disappear in time with the video) and I was hoping to use one trigger to turn the whole group on or off. 

Later I tried using shapes on the main timeline, as you suggested, and then controlling the visibility of all those layers with several triggers on one button. That doesn't work either. I start each layer with the initial state set to Hidden. When the button changes the state of all those layers to Normal every layer displays even though they have staggered start and end times on the timeline, so I'm guessing the layer start and end times on the timeline is essentially setting state to Normal or Hidden.

So I'm back to trying to sync my layers. What makes a layer timeline start? I assumed all layers would run in sync with any media on the base layer.

I ended up shrinking my video a bit to make room underneath. Then I put all my captions under the video and use solid to cover up the captions. I have 2 buttons that hide or show that solid which show or hide the captions. Pretty low budget solution, but it works.

It would be great if we could just import a related caption XML file along with our mp4s!

Thanks for the update Chris and glad you were able to figure out a solution. Sounds like you may want to share that last part as a feature request.