Is the playhead and edit cursor relationship working as intended?
Currently, a timeline opens very zoomed and with the playhead off screen.
When I play a timeline, the window does not jump to view playhead. The window does scroll but scrolls wherever the edit cursor was, not the playhead. the Lock playhead preference doesn’t seem to affect it.
I would expect that when I play the timeline the window would jump to put the playhead in view. In lock I would expect edit view and playhead to be locked.
Is there a button to jump the window to view playhead?
Yes, there is. If you press the F key, the Timeline Window should adjust to make the Playhead visible.
Regarding your other observations, when you open the project, the playhead is typically at the beginning of the Timeline, which means that when you open a Timeline, you should be able to see it right away. Is this not the case for you? Or do you perhaps have a scenario where the playhead immediately jumps to another position in the Timeline, making it hard for you to spot it?
‘Lock playhead during play’ just means that you cannot change the position of the playhead by clicking on it and dragging it somewhere else on the Timeline, like you could if the playhead was in Pause or Stop mode.
Since a lot of the time, our users are both running the Timeline and adjusting the layers that are placed at other positions in the Timeline (not close to the running playhead) we do not force having the playhead in focus all the time, however, I do agree that would be a good option.
Would a ‘Keep playhead in focus’ checkbox in the Preferences window be a good solution for you?
I’d agree that splitting playhead and edit view makes sense, but if the playhead is not visible, the window shouldn’t scroll.
Thanks for the F key - couldn’t find that in shortcuts.
I’d say (with my developer hat on) that tracking whether the user wants to see the playhead should determine whether you track. F key - track from there. Manual scroll of timeline window - stop tracking for now.
The edge case would be when playhead comes through the area they’re viewing - I’m not qualified to say but maybe ‘picking up’ the scroll makes sense.
Maybe it’s as simple as scroll if playhead in view and otherwise don’t.
On the other topic - I’m opening the ‘Utility’ timeline, that is paused. It opens with time 2:45 - 3:55 visible. That’s not the last place I was looking at. When I tap F it does go back to the playhead.
Hmm. I went back and forth 4-5 times and by the 4th is was displaying the time I expect.
Ak, OK. When you jump between timelines the window view is not jumping to the last time viewed (or playhead or a reasonable time) in the timeline you switch to, the window is staying at the same time you had in the timeline you were editing.
I.e. If I’m working in timeline 2 at 3 minutes, and jump to timeline 1, which only has 10 seconds of cues, I’m still viewing 3 minutes (totally blank on timeline 1)
EDIT - doesn’t happen always, but almost always
Best behavior - again I’m not qualified! But maybe jump to show playhead? I can see that some users may go back and forth to copy layers and paste them into the timeline so maybe going to the last viewed zoom and position would be safer?