I have not seen APE autocrop images. It keeps whatever canvas size was originally used. Because of this, though, I autocrop all images I do within the graphics program because that makes smaller ZT images. However, that takes more time for animations that extend beyond the basic image because then each frame has to have its position adjusted individually. The Zoot tool as of version 1.1 allows adjusting the positions of individual frames. The Zoot tool also allows loading animations, but that is not necessarily any faster than APE since it does not create ".ani" files.