One of the drawbacks to having a layer based compositor is that things can get a little crazy. The amount of layers, and the amount of the same layers that you can have in your After Effects timeline, could potentially bite you in the butt later on.
Of course the After Effects timeline’s stacking order is reflected in the viewer, so if you are playing with the stacking order visually (having an element hide and show behind and in front of other layers), then you are going to need to repeat that element in the timeline to variously levels in the stack.
Making changes to a composition like this can be a nightmare, as you have to manually sync all of them manually, even though technically they are the same layers being repeated.
This is where Layer Slayer can come in handy. Layer Slayer will sync layers across the layer stack, and it only takes a single click to do so. Check out the explanation for how it can be used.
Layer Slayer can be found on aescripts + aeplugins, authored by David Seitz for a price of $40.00.
