The Time View

The Time View is a tool for viewing and arranging your nodes over time, and also gives you a list of each node in the script. Using the Time View, you can select nodes, evaluate nodes, and load parameters as you can in the Node View. You can also set in and out points for your clips, as well as shift start and end frames to change the duration of your clip. Finally, the Time View also allows you to alter looping behavior on clips.

The Time View modifies parameters that are found inside each FileIn node. You can therefore modify timing parameters in the Time View, or by using the Parameters tab.

As soon as timing changes are made, an internal node called IReTime is associated with a FileIn node. The IReTime node is saved into the script, but is invisible in the Node View. IReTime's parameters are controlled by the FileIn node's parameters and with the Time View.


Viewing Nodes in the Time View

Only nodes that are Image or nodes with more than one input are listed in the Time View to help cut down on clutter. For example, with the following tree, the Pan node is not visible in the Time View:

 

The bus clip is a 41 frame clip. Because RGrad is generated inside of Shake, it is considered to have an infinite time length. When nodes are combined, as they are with the Over node, the longer clip length is assumed.

If you activate Select Group , only currently active nodes are be displayed.

Shifting Clips and In/Out points

When a FileIn is created, timing characteristics are attached in the Parameter tab. Additional nodes on that clip inherit the source clip's characteristics, but you can not adjust the In/Out points of following nodes. In the following illustration, Over1 has non-controllable clip ends. Both RGrad1 and bus2 have modifiable clip ends.

 

You can use any clip to evaluate a node, load its parameters, or toggle the ignore switch just as you would in the Node View. In this example, the parameters for bus2 are about to be loaded:

 

To adjust a clip location in time, drag left or right on any clip downstream from the node – both the start and end frames are shifted uniformly. All attached nodes are also effected. In the following illustration, if you drag Over1, all nodes above it in the tree (including the invisible Pan1 node) are being shifted. This means the frames of bus2 is shifted in time, and any animation curves on Pan1 and RGrad1 are shifted as well. If you just dragged on bus2, only bus2 would be modified in time unless Shift Curves was activated.

 

When Shift Curves is activated, all curves attached to the shifted nodes get shifted as well, so the animation is carried with the shift. If it is off, the curves remain locked where they are.

You can adjust individual start and end frames by holding down Ctrl and grabbing the end of a Source node. In this example, we see that the bus2 clip is telling us several bits of information. First, the clip endFrame has been extended to frame 60, meaning there will be some information until frame 60. This endFrame corresponds to the endFrame parameter in the FileIn under the timing subtree.

If you grab the end of a clip, you are setting the range over which is is expected to be active. For example, if you drag RGrad1's ends, it will set the boundaries for the RGrad. If you extend the end of bus2, a 41-frame clip out to 100, it will assume that there are more images on disk, which is not necessarily the case. Note how the clip indicates that it is expecting frames up to 138 (on disk) to be placed up to frame 100 (in the Shake script).

 

If you Ctrl+drag on an end, you instead extend the last or first frames of a clip to be repeated. In this example, we Ctrl+drag the end of the bus2 clip, which means that the last frame (80 on disk, 41 in the Shake script) is frozen out to frame 100 in the Shake script.

 

These controls are all stored in the FileIn parameters, with some of them under the timing subtree.

When you adjust the outer handles on a clip, you are adjusting the start- and endFrames. These determine at what frames the clip is visible.

When you adjust timeShift, you shift startFrame and endFrame as well.

When you adjust the inner handles on a clip, you are adjusting the first- and lastFrame parameters. These determine what part of the clip on disk is read. You can therefore choose to only read frames 10 to 20 of a 100 frame clip by adjusting the first and lastFrame parameters.

 

Notice that firstFrame and lastFrame reflect the frame range that is listed in the imageName parameter. If you change any of the parameters, the change is reflected in the other parameters.

 

Image nodes like RGrad and Ramp have no preset range because they are generated by Shake. When you see these in the Time View, they will have infinity symbols on the edges to indicate that there is no end. To limit these nodes, grab the handles as you would other Source nodes.

 




Changing Repeat Modes

You may have an endFrame that extends after your lastFrame parameter. For example, you may have a 20 frame clip that lasts from frames 1-100. The Repeat modes determine what happens in the extra 80 frames.

The behavior is controlled by the inMode and outMode settings, with inMode controlling frames between the startFrame and firstFrame, and outMode controlling frames between lastFrame and endFrame. The Modes are:

Black Black frames are inserted.
Freeze The first/last frames are repeated
Repeat The clip is repeated continually.
Mirror The clip is repeated, then reversed and repeated, with the cycle repeating until the clip's limits.
MirrorInc As Mirror, but doesn't repeat start and end frame.

 




Reversing a Clip

Here is one extremely hacky way of reversing a clip:

Start with an example clip, say 40 frames:

 

The easiest way to flip is to manually switch the firstFrame and lastFrame:

 

Yup, you'd think there would be some interactive way to do this.



The Out point

There are two different views on what the out point of a clip should represent. For editors (usually), an out point is the frame at which there is no more image, and is therefore black. For a clip of 50 frames, the out point is therefore 51. To people working with CG, the out point is the last frame they have to render, so the out point is 50. To add to the confusion, it must be kept in mind that even if you have 50 frames, you have meaningful information up to frame 50.99999..., because of motion blur calculations and field rendering.

With this is mind, there are different controls to handle the out point, as accessed by the Right mouse menu in the Time View:

Toggle Const Point Display

Toggles the display of the in/out point in the Time View. If it is off, it only appears when you click on the clip-end.

 

 

Toggle InOut Point Display If Toggle Const Point Display is activated, this toggles which frame is counted as the out point, either the frame at which is become black, or the last frame on disk.

 

 

Toggle FileIn Trim This controls what happens when you drag the endFrame and lastFrame pass each other (first image). In one mode, the buttons push each other together (second image). When it is on (third image), it continues past the trim point. This is good to keep the original frame range around as reference. I guess.