The Timeline panel

The anatomy of the Timeline: the header toolbar, the ruler bands, the label column, the frame grid, and how to move around it.

The Timeline is where time lives: one row per layer, one column per frame, and a red playhead marking where you are. Open it from Window ▸ Timeline; it is on by default and docks along the bottom of the workspace.

The panel only appears in Animate mode. In Edit mode it is replaced by the words Edit Mode and nothing else is drawn, because the construction frame has no timing to show. Press Tab to switch modes.

The four regions#

• The header toolbar across the top: layer buttons, Auto Key, keyframe navigation, view toggles, Onion Skin, Easing and Interval, Motion Blur, cell operations, exposure and zoom.
• The label column down the left: search, Attenuate, the per-row toggles and the layer names.
• The ruler along the top of the grid: the duration bar, the onion bar, the tag bar and the frame numbers.
• The frame grid itself: one aggregate row per layer, its sub-tracks underneath when expanded, and the playhead over the top.

Every control in the header is covered on the Timeline toolbar page.

The label column#

The column starts at 250 pixels and can be widened by dragging the divider between it and the grid. At the top sit a Search field and an Attenuate combo; below them, a strip of icon headers labels the per-row dot toggles: visible, locked, mask, alpha lock, motion blur and 3D.

Search filters layers by name, case-insensitively. While a search is active the hierarchy is flattened, so a match deep inside a group appears at the top level instead of hiding behind a collapsed parent. Attenuate dims every layer that is not selected in the viewport, at Off, 25%, 50% or 75%.

Each layer row carries a colour-group stripe, a type icon, a disclosure caret for its children and a second caret for its sub-tracks, then the six dot columns. Double-click a name to rename it, and drag a row onto another to re-order it: dropping near the top or bottom edge places the layer above or below, dropping in the middle makes it a child.

The ruler#

The ruler stacks four bands. The blue duration bar at the very top spans your Start frame to your End frame; drag either end cap to change them. Under it is the onion bar, drawn only while Onion Skin is on, then the tag bar holding your group markers, then the frame ticks and numbers.

Numbers appear at the Start frame and every sixth frame after it, with a larger second marker every whole second, counted from the Start frame rather than from frame 1. Frames past the end of the duration are dimmed but still drawn.

Drag anywhere in the ruler to scrub. Scrubbing stops playback, and dragging past the left or right edge of the grid keeps the playhead pinned at that edge while the view scrolls to follow. Small green and red triangles on the ruler baseline mark the In and Out points, and only appear once you set them.

The pre-behaviour gutter#

Between the label column and frame 1 there is a one-frame-wide empty slot running the full height of the panel. It holds the pre-behaviour icon for every row, and the playhead can never enter it. The slot starts collapsed: turn on View ▸ Show Pre & Post Behaviors to open it, and off again to give the width back to the rows.

Zooming and scrolling#

A trackpad swipe pans horizontally as well. Horizontal zoom runs from 0.4x to 5x, and below 1x the frames get narrower than their default width, which is how a few hundred frames fit on screen. The two zoom buttons at the right end of the header step it by 0.1, or by 0.5 with Ctrl held. There is no vertical zoom. Row height is fixed.

Selecting a layer on the canvas scrolls its track into view, opening any collapsed group above it first. It fires only when the selection changes and only when the row is off screen, so it never fights your own scrolling. The Timeline keeps its own collapsed state, separate from the Layers panel's.

The horizontal scrollbar under the grid covers your last keyframe plus ten frames of padding, so the track always has a little room past the end of your work. The vertical scrollbar appears only when the rows overflow the panel. Both accept a click on the track to jump as well as a drag on the thumb, and dragging a scrollbar by either end zooms that axis instead of scrolling it. A click on the track no longer moves the playhead with it.

During playback the grid follows the playhead, keeping it centred so a long take does not play out against an empty grid. It follows only while playing: outside playback the scroll is yours, and a timeline that already fits stays where it is.

What a row shows#

A layer row is a recessed lane holding a flat duration bar, with a light hairline along the bar's top edge and a dark one along its bottom, the pair that makes it read as a solid object rather than a painted rectangle. The bar is a muted blue-grey by default and takes the layer colour group's tint when one is assigned. There are no per-frame tick marks or cell outlines: frame-level precision belongs to the ruler and the playhead.

A layer with a cell strip carries that same colour through the strip below the bar: the ground behind the thumbnails is a deepened version of it, and the thin exposure ribbon along the strip's bottom edge is the colour itself. Tagging a layer therefore tints its whole band rather than just the bar above the cells.

A diamond sits on every frame that owns a keyframe on any of that layer's channels. Frames you explicitly cleared render dark with a diagonal hatch. Raster Cells and Vector Cells layers get an extra band of cell thumbnails under the diamonds, sized None, Small, Medium or Large from the row's right-click menu; Medium is the default.

Video and audio layers draw a clip bar instead, with the waveform inside it for audio. Expanding the sub-track caret opens the property tree underneath. See Sub-tracks.

Clicking the empty space below the last track, in the label column, clears the layer selection, the same thing clicking empty canvas does.