Keyframes: Add/Remove Time

Keyframes are something with which new users are usually unfamiliar. It can take a while to get one’s head wrapped around them before you can use them effectively. Hopefully this article can help shorten that learning curve. This is not really a tutorial nor is it an in-depth treatment of how to use them. However, it is a description of how to add or remove time from a keyframe (and thereby add or remove time from a slide without directly adjusting the slide time. This information is especially useful if you want to add time without affected other keyframes on the same layer).

IMPORTANT: Time is added or removed from a keyframe’s right side (see exception below).

• Move the cursor over a keyframe and right click. Select “Add/Remove Time from Keyframe” from the resulting menu.
  

  Add/Remove Time

• In the resulting dialog (see below), select the keyframe to/from which to add/remove time.
• In the Time:box,
  • ADD time with a positive number
  • REMOVE time with a negative number

    Add time to keyframe

  • Time is removed only from the region in which the keyframe exists (in other words, the transition in/out or slide time). See example below.
  • Removing time from the last keyframe (which is also firewalled to the far right), results in no removed time (since there is no time to the right of the keyframe to remove!)

    

    Add/Remove Time Region

  Use this information to remove unnecessary/unwanted time from a slide without affecting the amount of time between the layer’s other keyframes.

  Exception

  When there is no transition out time (to the right of the slide) and the last keyframe is firewalled to the far right, time added to this last keyframe is actually added to the keyframe’s LEFT side! If, however, the transition time is non-zero, time is added on the keyframe’s right side! This is odd, inconsistent behavior! Probably a bug masquerading as a feature.

  NOTE: As of this writing, this behavior is present up to and including Version 5.

  Caveats

  You can only delete the amount of time that exists between the selected and next keyframes.

  • If all time between two keyframes is removed, the keyframe that existed to the right of the keyframe from which time is removed will cease to exist (it’s replaced; the values of the resulting keyframe are those of the selected keyframe).

  Another limit is related to the amount of time between the keyframe and the point where the slidetime begins/ends and transition time ends/begins. If the amount of time deleted is larger than the available amount time to delete, all time (and only the time) from the keyframe to the demarcation (that is where the slide time ends and the transition out starts) is deleted. For instance,

  • Suppose keyframe 1 is located a the far left (firewalled on the left side) and the transition time is a total of 3 seconds. If the amount of time selected to delete is 20s, the entire transition time is deleted and the slidetime is unaffected.
  • If the time between the slidetime keyframe and the transition out is 3 seconds and 15 seconds are removed from the keyframe, only 3 seconds is actually removed.

  Removing time from a keyframe also results in time being removed from all other layers on the slide from the time at which the keyframe exists. As such, be careful that you don’t end up with significantly overlapped or removed (i.e., deleted) keyframes on those other layers. If you are removing time from a slide to shorten it and/or to remove excess/unneeded time, try to ensure that no important keyframes exist to the right of the time point on any layer above or below the layer from which time is being removed.

  IMPORTANT NOTE
  There is a bug in the public release 4.52.3053 of Producer (This bug may also be present in versions 3.2 through 4.1 since a similar, possible the same bug was present). This bug causes keyframes to jump into a position where they would not normally appear (such as from keyframe 1, 2, 3, and 4 to keyframe 1, 3, 2, 4). If time is removed from a keyframe that is not the last keyframe (on the current or another layer), 1 or more of these keyframes may land in front of a keyframe they should be behind!

  SLIDE TIME: Change it without Affecting Existing Keyframes

  • TO LENGTHEN
    In this case, two conditions are required. The keyframe to which time is added

  1. Must exist within the slide time,
  2. be the last keyframe on all layers before the start of the transition out region.
     Further, that keyframe must have at least 0.001 seconds of space between it and the start of the transition out region. That’s because, as given above, time is added to the right of the keyframe AND is added to the region in which the keyframe exists. Now, add the desired amount of time.

  • TO SHORTEN
    The assumption here is that the excess/unnecessary time exists at the end of a slide. Therefore, removed time must come from the right side of last keyframe (on any layer) (NOTE: see the Important Note above). Remove the slide’s extra time as given above. If necessary, add a keyframe at the point that will become the end of the slide and delete the desired amount of time. Then, delete that keyframe (if it’s no longer needed).

  2011/2012 Dale Fenimore

  that keyframe MUST be the last keyframe before the start of the transition outregion.T

  

  Adding Time