Original subtitles

So we've taken a look at manipulating keyframes in the Dope Sheet,

but what about our animated sequences or movie files?

Well, we can manipulate these as well,

much the same way you would in an editing package,

like Adobe Premier or Avid.

Repositioning, trimming,

or slipping clips becomes a pretty simple task within the Dope Sheet.

So let's get started by taking a look at a clip I've already created.

This is a still frame of the earth that I've added some camera shake to,

and then rendered out as a QuickTime file.

We have the file right here in the Read Node,

and if we hit Play on the timeline, you'll see this animation,

it's just 100 frames of the earth shaking.

Now if we switch over to the Dope Sheet,

you'll see this is the representation of that Read Node.

Back in the Node Graph you see that this is called ReadNode2,

this is ReadNode2, we can call this MasterreadNode to remind us of what that is,

and go back to the Dope Sheet and you'll see that it's

updated here: MasterreadNode Earth_CameraShake.

mov file.

So you'll see here, here are 100 frames.

It starts at frame 0 and it goes to frame 100,

so this is the total frame range of this animation that we're looking at here.

The same way you'd see it in a timeline in an editing

package you may have already used.

Now repositioning this clip is pretty simple, but what is repositioning?

Repositioning is changing the position of a clip,

but it doesn't change the content or the duration of the clip.

So it's important to know that when we're repositioning the clip,

none of the content inside of the QuickTime is changing.

The duration isn't changing, the speed isn't changing,

the ins and the outs aren't changing, and so if we hover over this,

we'll see a plus symbol that the cursor changes to,

and you can just left-mouse button click,

and you can slide this along.

And right now we're changing where the clip appears in the timeline,

just the same way you would in Adobe Premier or in an Avid for example,

and we get these little numbers.

You see a 50 on the left and a 149 on the right,

that's showing you where the new in frame is and where the new out frame is,

and when you release, it's just going to position the clip there.

So if I wind this animation back to the beginning and hit Play,

you'll notice that the earth is just still at the beginning of

the animation because it's just going to fill in these extra 26

frames at the beginning that it doesn't have right now with a

hold frame of the first frame, but we'll talk about that again in a second.

Let's say we want to change the duration of this clip.

So right now the clip is about 100 frames long,

and we want it to be 75 frames,

and we want to take those frames off the front or the back of the clip,

that's what's called trimming.

So if I hover over this and move the mouse over to the left side,

the cursor changes again to this little icon of a frame with an arrow,

and if I left-mouse button click,

the images changes and I can just slide this along and

shorten the duration to what I want it to be.

And it's also important to note that this bar where we've got the

cursor placed gets a little sticky to make it easier for us to know

where we want to put our frame ranges.

So in affect what we've done is we've removed these

frames from the beginning of the clip, and if we hover back over this,

we can just bring those frames back by sliding it the other way.

Likewise at the end of the clip,

the cursor's going to change and we can just grab the end and cut it in,

and then release where we want it to be.

So now if we set this back to the beginning,

we can see that the entirety of the animation is now only about 75 frames long.

Now,

it's important to know that we did not change the speed

of the animation within this clip,

all we did within this clip was trim off the last 25 frames.

So I'll go ahead and set this back to its full frame range.

Now the next thing that we can do here is we can slip the clip,

and if you haven't slipped something before,

what that means is we're just going to change the content of the

clip without changing the position or the duration.

So it's kind of the opposite of repositioning your clip.

So if I move the current frame to 50, and we see that this is the current frame,

so I'm going to trim 25 frames off of the front of this clip,

and I'm going to trim 25 frames off of the back of this clip,

and if you hover over the bottom of the clip,

you'll see this icon and this is the slip icon.

And we can left-mouse button click,

and we can just change what's happening inside of that range

without actually moving the clip itself.

So we know that the animation that we want will have to occur in

our timeline between frame 25 and frame 75,

but we want to change the content inside that frame range,

and you just do it by slipping the clip inside that frame range with that icon.

So I'm going to set that back to normal,

and now let's take a look at how it's filling in blank frames.

So, if I trim this clip, if I take away the first 50 frames,

and I hit Play from the beginning of this animation,

you'll see that the animation is still,

and that's because there's a hold of the first

frame through these missing frames.

So the computer's saying, these frames are missing, what do I fill them in with?

I'll just hold the first frame of animation.

Now if we look at the properties for this Read Node here on the right,

you'll see that this is the new frame range: 50,

you see that moves when I slide the trimming marker,

and the end frame is 100.

Now these little dropdown menus give you a couple of different

options on what to do with the help frames.

So right now we're just holding the first frame to fill in the blanks,

but we can pick black instead,

and it's going to fill those blank frames with black.

We can pick a loop or we can pick a bounce,

and what a bounce is,

the computer is filling in the information by bouncing

back from the frames that it has.

So, what it will do is since we started at frame 50,

what it's going to do is it's going to take frame 50 and play frames backwards

through the missing frame range until it gets to frame 0.

So it's just taking this clip, flipping it, and laying it in here backwards.

Loop is similar.

If we set this to loop,

what it's doing is it's taking this clip and it's filling in these missing

frames with what would happen at the end of the animation,

it's just taking a copy of this and starting it again

at the beginning of this animation.

So if I set the end to loop, for example,

and we play through, it's just going to loop the animation forever,

and forever, and forever,

and forever because it's just taking extra copies of this animation

and pasting it in here invisibly every 50 frames.

I prefer to work with black because that way if I have missing

frames in a production that I'm working on,

black frames will show up, and then you know that there is a mistake or an error.

Sometimes I will use loop and bounce if I'm just trying to cheat the animation.

You'll notice that right now I only have 50 frames out

the 100 frames of this animation,

but because all of our animation is just bouncing and wiggling,

you really don't notice a hitch when we cross over from 49 frames to 50 frames,

but there is a little bit of a hitch.

Likewise, if we do the bounce, there's going to be a little bit of a hitch too,

hitch,

and sometimes you can get away with lengthening animation by just

adding some frames that are loops or bounces in there,

don't recommend it though.

But it's just something to keep in mind when you're working on these things.

Now we can also keep our comp clean by using the Time Offset Nodes and the

Frame Range Nodes to do what I've been showing you here.

This is kind of a quick and dirty way of trimming or

editing clips inside of the Dope Sheet, but if you want to keep your comp clean,

you would use a Time Offset and a Frame Range Node to perform

these operations in a non-destructive way.

So, we'll take a look at those in the upcoming clips.