Movie Playback

Scrub bar  |  RAM cache indicator  |  Frame indicators  |  Mouse controls  |  Keyboard controls

When movies or image sequences are displayed in the Cinema window, transport controls are provided below the window to help with playback and frame-by-frame control.

- Target frame-rate for playback. This menu contains the frame-rates available for playback for the current clip. Typically this is just the project frame-rate, although metadata available in some media formats can provide alternative frame-rates for playback.

- , , Cycles the playback mode between Loop, Bounce and Play once.

- Marks the current frame as the playback In point.

- Jump to the playback In point.

- Steps backward by one frame.

- Reverse play.

- Stop playback.

- Forward play.

- Step forward by one frame.

- Jump to the playback out point.

- Marks the current frame as the playback out point.

- The actual frame-rate being played back. A colour-coded "traffic-light" which indicates green if the target frame rate is being met; yellow if the target frame rate is nearly being met (frames are delayed by less than 3 vertical retraces); and red or unlit otherwise. This information is updated every few seconds.

All of the transport controls described here are bound by the In and Out playback points (which are separate to the in/out values for tracking or other processing operations). Unless otherwise set, the In and Out points are the start and end frames of the clip.

Scrub bar

The scrub bar is located at the top of the lower Workspace area and runs the entire width of the PFTrack user interface.

The scrub bar has many more uses over and above the usual functionality of positioning the play-head. It can also display useful information about the clip and RAM cache. Note that unlike the transport controls described above, the scrub bar is not bound by the In and Out playback points.

Current frame number or current timecode, depending on which mode has been set for display.

Cache the entire clip into RAM (or, if the clip is bigger than the RAM cache size, as many frames as possible starting with frames nearest the play-head). The button turns green if the clip is fully cached and amber if the clip is too big to entirely fit into the cache. Pressing and holding this button for 1 second will clear the current clip from the cache.

Reset the frame range displayed in the scrub bar to a particular value. By default, this is the start and end frames of the clip. Right mouse click on this button brings up a context menu which allows other frame ranges to be selected such as the playback in and out frames and a user-defined customised frame range.

Toggle between displaying frame numbers and timecode in the Scrub bar.

RAM cache indicator

The Cinema will cache frames in order to improve playback and interaction speed. The frames that are currently cached in RAM are represented by a green line in the scrub bar:

The green line is made up of fragments that are 1 frame wide which form a continuous region when adjacent frames are cached.

The amount of memory available for use by the RAM cache can be adjusted in the Preferences window.

Frame indicators

Colour-coded indicators are also displayed in the scrub bar to mark particular frames. These can include:

Play-head, i.e. the current frame.

Playback in and out points.

Bad frames. These show the location of problematic frames.

The start and end frames of the clip.

The processing start and end frames for the node.

If one or more indicator is present on a particular frame then they are displayed in the following order, with subsequent indicators overwriting earlier ones: processed frames, clip processing start/end, bad frames, frame markers, playback in/out, the current frame.

Mouse controls

- Left click in scrub bar to move playhead to the position of the mouse.

- Click and drag left mouse button in scrub bar to scrub through the clip.

- Click and drag middle mouse button in scrub bar to zoom.

- Click and drag right mouse button in scrub bar to pan;

Note that by default, the Cinema Window will update the media as the frame number is changed during scrubbing. This behaviour can be changed in the User Preferences to only update the media display when the mouse button is released.

Keyboard controls

- ←, → move backwards or forwards by one frame.

Additional keyboard shortcuts for playback controls are listed in the Keyboard and Mouse Preferences.