Learn how actions are reuseable.
The Action Window has tools to make an action reusable by more than one channel. This means that the actions are not owned by a channel. They can be renamed to any name, independent of any channel with which they may currently be associated. Actions can also be shared by more than one channel (Curve Tools > Paste Instance in the Action Window).
In the example above, imagine you want to use the car’s motion for a bicycle going down the road next to the car. You can use Curve Tools > Paste Instance in the Action Window to associate the same action used by the X Translate channel for the car to be used by the X Translate channel of the bicycle as well. Now the car and the bicycle animate together. The advantage of using the same action for both channels is that if you edit the action, then the motion for both vehicles changes.
If you want the car and the bicycle to stop at a house along the way at time 20, and then start moving to the street corner at time 30, you can add two keyframes to the single action, and the animation is modified for both bicycle and car.
