Keyframes, easing and the camera

A property with no keyframes holds its value for the whole composition. A property with two keyframes moves between them.

Recording a keyframe

Each Inspector row that can animate carries a diamond. Clicking it records the property’s current value at the playhead. The dope sheet at the bottom of the window then shows a lane for that property, with a diamond per keyframe.

Drag a keyframe along its lane to retime it. Delete it from the lane, or clear the property’s track outright to make it static again.

Keyframe times are composition seconds, the same clock the playhead and the ruler use.

Easing sits on the segment, not the keyframe

The shape of a move belongs to the stretch between two keyframes. Click the segment in the dope sheet, or the easing chip in the Inspector, and pick a curve from the catalogue.

That is why a three-keyframe move can ease into the middle and snap out of it: two segments, two curves.

Presets are a shortcut, not a layer

Applying an animation preset writes ordinary keyframes onto ordinary tracks. Nothing stays attached afterwards, so a preset you have applied is a move you can edit by hand like any other. There is no detach step.

One camera for the composition

The camera is not a node and does not sit in the tree. It belongs to the composition, and it has four keyframed tracks: zoom, centre X, centre Y and rotation. The dope sheet gives it its own lane.

The camera is applied last, once, folded into the stage’s transform before the frame is drawn. Two consequences follow:

A camera at rest renders exactly the same picture as no camera at all.
The frame is rasterized at output size after the camera transform, so a 2x push in stays as crisp as the wide shot. It is not a scaled bitmap.

Playback follows the sound

With no audio in the composition, the playhead runs on a wall clock.

With audio, the playhead is derived from the audio player’s own time rather than corrected towards it, so picture and sound cannot drift apart. Two things follow from that:

Play holds the first frame for about a tenth of a second on a composition with sound, because the player takes that long to produce its first samples. The alternative is a constant three-frame offset for the whole take.
Audio that stops before the end of the composition hands the picture back to the wall clock at that point, seamlessly.

Scrubbing during playback works: the transport notices the playhead moved and takes the sound with it.