Time Pane

The Time pane of Motion Preferences contains settings for how time is displayed in the project, as well as for playback and keyframing options. There are three categories of controls: Time Display, Playback Control, and Keyframing.

Time Display

The controls in this section of the Time pane of Motion Preferences set how the time is counted in the Motion toolbar’s timing display.

Display Time As: A pop-up menu with two items:
- Frames: Incrementing frame numbers appear in the timing display.
- Timecode: Eight-digit timecode numbers appear in the timing display.
Frame Numbering: A pop-up menu that lets you choose whether frame counts begin at zero or one.

Playback Control

These settings in the Time pane of Motion Preferences control how Motion plays back your project.

Time View Updating: A pop-up menu that sets how the Timeline updates when you play a project. Menu items include:
- Don’t update: The Timeline does not advance as you play. This setting improves performance.
- Jump by pages: As the playhead reaches the end of the current Timeline, the Timeline track area jumps forward.
- Scroll continuously: The playhead remains static and the Timeline scrolls by behind it.
If Audio Sync Is Lost: Motion attempts to keep audio and video playback locked in sync, but if the project is too complex to play both audio and video smoothly, one or the other must be compromised. Choose from one of two options:
- Skip video frames: Audio continues to play, but video frames are skipped to keep up.
- Pause audio playback: Audio playback is temporarily suspended during playback.
Limit playback speed to project frame rate: Motion plays back your project as fast as possible based on the complexity of the effects and the processing power of your computer. When this checkbox is selected, playback rate never exceeds the frame rate of your project. This means you can watch your project play back at the same frame rate as your exported movie. When the checkbox is deselected, playback rate is limited only by your processor power and consequently might play much faster than the project frame rate.
Loop audio while scrubbing: When this checkbox is selected, the audio for the frames where you drag the playhead repeats. When the checkbox is deselected, the audio for those frames plays only once.

Keyframing

This section in the Time pane of Motion Preferences contains controls to lock keyframes in time and to enable sub-frame keyframing.

Lock keyframes in time in Keyframe Editor: When the checkbox is selected, you can change the values of keyframes in the Keyframe Editor, but you cannot move the keyframes forward or back in time. This helps prevent changing your animation timing as you adjust values.
Allow sub-frame keyframing: Select this checkbox to maintain smoother animations when recording during playback or when scaling a group of keyframes in the Keyframe Editor using the Transform Keyframes tool.