Problem with lower third template & modifying the text...

Question

I'm doing a top 10 type video, & I downloaded this lower third template & I had never used AE before; I figured out how to duplicate it multiple times through the video where appropriate... but when I modify the text on one template it does the same thing to all of them. How do I make them all separate?

Answer 1

Ok, think about what you have done to change the text for moment. You drilled down to a pre-comp or nested comp that contains a text layer. This makes perfect sense. Unfortunately that text pre-comp is also nested in a pre-comp. This means you need to find each of these pre-comps in your project panel and duplicate them there, open the duplicates and then change the text in the duplicates, then replace the original nested comps in the main comp.
I have another observation on your workflow. You've put a bunch of shots and transitions in a single comp which, in effect, tells me that you are using AE as a NLE (editing app). What I would have done is to put every one of your shots that you want to add titles to in a separate comp to simplify each comp. I'd then edit them in a NLE....
The other way I would do this project is to make a comp that is just the needed titles, one comp for each tltle overlay, render the titles with alpha channels, then bring the titles and the original footage into a NLE to edit and add titles.
Building extremely complex compositions with multiple shots in a single comp is usually not a very good idea, even for folks like me that have been doing AE for 20 years. AE is perfect at making shots, lousy at editing sequences so always, and I mean always, try to figure out how you can simplify your project to it's basic elements and build a comp on that. I've had 5 second animations with over a hundred layers, but I've never put 10 or 20 video clips in AE in a single comp and tried to create a sequence.