Eyeon:Manual/Fusion 6/Time Ruler

Time Ruler

Current Time

The Current Time field (aka Current Frame) indicates which frame of the project is currently displayed. When tools are displayed in the views it is the current time which is rendered and displayed. Adjustments made to animated controls add keyframes at the current time. The text field at the top-right side of the ruler indicates the current time, and can be used to enter a new time. The Ruler also shows a marker to indicate where the current time is within the currently visible frame range. Left clicking in the ruler will set the current time to the time clicked on.

The following keyboard shortcuts are useful for manipulating current time :

[ and ]

Advance the current frame forward or backward in time by 1 frame

Shift - [ and ]

Sets current time to the projects Global Start or Global End Frame

Alt - [ and ]

If a tool is currently active then the Alt-[ and ] keys can be used to set the current time to the next keyframe for any animation curves attached to that tools controls. If no tools are active then this shortcut jumps to the next time with a keyframe on any of the animated controls in the composition.

Changing the Display Format

The current time is typically shown as just the current frame number, however this can optionally be configured to show current time in either SMPTE timecode or the film format Feet+Frames instead. To change the current format open the View menu at the top of the interface window and enable the 'Show Timecode' option. Use the 'Time Code Format' menu to select which display format is used.

The options in the compositions frame format preferences panel determine the framerate used for Timecode, or the number of frames found in a foot of film.

Note

Many Fusion edit boxes will evaluate mathematical expressions simple maths - for example, typing 2.0 + 4.0 in most edit boxes will result in the value 6.0. Unfortunately SMPTE timecode uses the + symbol as a separator symbol, so this edit box will not evaluate mathematical expressions which use the + symbol correctly, even when the display format is set to Frames mode.

Ranges

Global Start and End Range

The Global Start and End controls tell Fusion what the compositions valid frames in a project are. Video editors should think of global range in Fusion as the equivalent to the length of the timeline in an editing program. The current time cannot be changed to a frame outside of the global range.

Shift-dragging a tool tile from the Flow Editor to the Time Ruler will automatically set the Global and Render Range to the valid extent of the tool.

Render Start and End Range

The Render Start and End Range controls are to used to set the range of frames which will be used for interactive playback, disk caches and previews or final renders. The range is normally visible in the time slider as a grey highlight over the global time. Frames outside of the render range will not be rendered or played in the flow, although the current time can be changed to these frames to see what the image looks like.

Dragging a tool tile from the Flow Editor to the Time Ruler will automatically set the Render Start and Render End Range to the valid extent of the tool.

Visible Range Slider

The Visible Range slider found beneath the Time Ruler indicates what frames in the composition are currently shown in the Time Ruler. While most artists will leave this at the default value (showing the entire global range) there are times when it can be desirable to show only a small portion of the compositions global range. Dragging the left and right edges of the Visible range slider can adjust the visible range to focus in on a specific area of the composition in the Time Ruler.

Render Button

Clicking on the Render Button will cause Fusion to display the compositions Render Settings dialog, where the artist can confirm the render options and initiate rendering of the composition to disk (assuming the composition contains Saver tools). SHIFT clicking on the button will skip the dialog, using default values for the rendering (full resolution, high quality, motion blur enabled)

Playback Buttons

The playback buttons in the Time Ruler can be used to initiate playback of the composition forwards or reverse, to advance current time to the next or previous frame, or to jump current time to the start and end of the Render Range. In this context playback means that fusion will render the composition to display currently viewed tools at the current frame, then advance current time to the next frame (or previous frame) and repeat. There is no assurance of real time playback at the projects full frame rate, unless the frames are already cached in memory.

Right clicking on either the frame advance or previous frame buttons will display a context menu that can be used to set a frame increment. This increment will be respected by playback as well as the frame advance buttons and keyboard shortcuts [ and ]. This is often useful for rotoscoping on fixed increments, or inspecting a frame one field at a time.

The loop button is a toggle that determines whether playback will stop when the current time reaches the render start or end, or whether playback will loop.

Audio Mute

The Audio button is a toggle which can be used to determine wether the composition attempts to play back any audio associated with the clip. Additionally, right clicking on this button will display a context menu that can be used to select a wav file which can be played along with the composition, and to assign an offset to the audio playback.

Composition Quality Options

High Quality

When working with Fusion interactively to create a flow, the quality of the images in the displays is often less important than the speed with which they are shown. As a result, Fusion does not normally render images interactively at the same quality that is required for final renders. More complex and time consuming operations like area sampling, anti-aliasing and interpolation are skipped to produce results more rapidly. Enabling HiQ mode will force Fusion to produce a full quality render instead.

To enable the HiQ mode, click on the HiQ button at the bottom of the screen. Interactive processing will take longer but the image seen onscreen will be identical to that produced during a final render.

Motion Blur

When the Motion Blur button in the toolbar is toggled off then Fusion will ignore the motion blur options enabled on any of the tools in the composition. This can result in significantly quicker renders and previews, since the sub-frames required to produce motion blur will no longer be calculated.

Proxy And Auto Proxy

Proxy

For increased performance, the Proxy (Prx) button in the time ruler reduces the resolution of the images that are processed interactively. Enable proxy mode to force Fusion to process one out of every x pixels interactively, instead of rendering every pixel. The value of x is decided by right-clicking on the Proxy button and selecting a proxy ratio from the button's context menu.

If a lower resolution version of footage is provided in the Loader's Proxy Filename control, then this footage will be loaded when the Proxy option is enabled, rather than the full resolution footage.

Auto Proxy

The Auto Proxy button enables Fusion to interactively degrade the image while adjustments are made to controls, snapping back to normal resolution when the control is released.

For example, while dragging a center control, Fusion may only process the image at a third the resolution so that updates to the screen can keep up with adjustments. Once the center control is released, the image returns to full quality to confirm the change.

Set the auto proxy ratio by right-clicking on the Auto Proxy button and selecting it from the context menu.

Selective Updates (Some, None And All)

Interactively, Fusion normally renders only the tools that are needed to display the images in the views. The Selective Update button in the time ruler opens the render settings dialog to select the mode used during final and network renders.

There are three modes of Selective Update.

Some

During final renders, Fusion only renders the tools that directly contribute to the output saved to disk. This is known as the Some mode of selective update because only some of the tools in the flow are rendered. Some is the default mode.

None

None will prevent rendering of all tools in the flow, which can be handy for making a large number of changes to a slow composition. When None mode is enabled the display views will be highlighted with a red border to indicate that the display views are not being updated to reflect changes taking place in the composition.

All

All forces all of the tools in the flow to render. This can be useful when interactively adjusting small, fast compositions.