Timeline Basics in After Effects

Looking to get started in Adobe After Effects and not sure how to navigate around the interface? Check out this Timeline Basics video from Noble Desktop! We'll teach you how to navigate frames, timecodes, and more!

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Playhead Overview

1. The upside-down blue triangle is below the main Composition window (where the visuals are). This triangle is the Playhead.
2. Click and drag the Playhead left and right on the Timeline. Pay attention to the timecode, the set of numbers on the interface's left.
3. On the keyboard, hit PgUp and PgDn, respectively. These keys move the Playhead one frame forward and one frame backward for more minute time adjustments.
4. The timecode can be manually retyped to hone in on specific timestamps on the Timeline.

Adjusting the Timeline

1. Below the Timeline itself, there should be a slider with two mountain-like icons on either side of it. Click and drag the slider left and right.
2. Observe how the Timeline goes from counting by seconds to counting by frames.

Viewing Animated Keyframes

1. Select the animated object or layer to see any already animated keyframes on the Timeline.
2. Hit U on the keyboard to display all animated keyframes on that object or layer.

Video Transcription

Hey, guys. I'll be showing you how to work with the play head and the time on here and what the time code numbers mean. I'm also going to show you how to expand out the timeline so it's easy to see what frames you're working on. Finally, I'm going to show you how to determine the start and end points of your animation.

And if that sounds like gibberish, don't worry. The purpose of this tutorial is to familiarize yourself with those terms. So we're really going to be focusing over here like on this area, and this is the play head. And this is the timeline. So, yeah, let's get started. So I'm going to drag this up like that so we could get a better view.

So the timeline is where all the animation action takes place here. We're going to see what's been animated, what the timing is, and how long your video was going to be. So no external assets here. I'm just using this animation I put together here personally, but these techniques work on any project. So first things first. Like I mentioned, this is the plot.

Sorry, this is the play head. This kind of it looks like an upside down triangle. So this marks where you are in any given animation. You can move it around by clicking and dragging just like this. And you can also use if you have these buttons, page up, page down, page down will move it down the timeline, page up earlier, up the timeline.

You can also use a control command. I have a PC, so I'm using control. You hold on control or command and you hit the left and right arrows on your numpad. Oh, and you're going to change the time code, the time codes over here. So if I typed in, you know, 20 frames, it goes a little further than that.

So about the time code, it's an hours, then minutes, seconds and then frames. So the columns over here that shows it's if it's using a non drop frame. So that means the program is counting every single frame, it's showing you every single frame and semicolons which you can't see over here, but you can, you see where it's like, oh, you can show an alternate display.

So I'm not going to change it because I prefer this format. But if you change it, there's going to be semicolons. And that option is called a drop frame, which you usually use for TV broadcasts. And that, like the name suggests it's not showing you every single frame. So back to the timeline area over here. You can see that it's being counted by seconds.

One thing to note, the default display of the timeline may vary depending on the size of your screen. But overall, I mean, I would assume that everybody can see, you know, 0 seconds, 1/2, 2 seconds. So you see that it's divided up by seconds. But what if you want to work on individual frames, you know, like the still images in sequence that make up a video.

So you head over here, you see kind of looks like this mountain thing. It looks like a it looks like a mountain over here. And if I click and slide to the right, then I get to hone in on everything in a little frame. Over here you see 17, 18 frames. And if I go to the left, then it crunches everything down and it skips by twos.

Over here, generally in animation, 24 frames makes a second. That does change. You know, some forms of media wants 29 frames a second. Some of them up to 30 even some forms of media prefer 60 frames per second, but generally a good rule of thumb, like if you're working at home, it's 24 frames a second. But obviously that's going to vary depending on whatever project you're working on.

So double check, you know, if you're working on like a video game animation, something for TV, something for film, you know what the standard is for that. So like I said before, by the way, this is animated. So I'm actually going to show you how to see all my animated keyframes. So I'm going to stop that animation. I pressed spacebar.

That's the hotkey for that. And the ball is what's bouncing over here. So if I want to see all the animated keyframes over here, by the way, if you're not familiar with keyframes, we're also making a keyframe tutorial, so stay tuned for that. So toggle open with this arrow, you see. And once I toggle it open, there's a lot of options here.

Don't get intimidated. But you can see this blue line over here, the one that's got its bits highlighted in blue, has all these keyframes. These symbols symbolize all the keyframes. Now close that up. So what if you want to, you know, just see all your animated keyframes, but you don't want to have the toggling, so you click the layer that you want to show the keyframes.

You just hit your keyboard and it shows everything that's animated and hit you again and that closes it up. So yeah, that's how you navigate the timeline and after effects and you're going to be using this and pretty much any after effects project as you animate. So yeah, I hope that was helpful. This has been surprising for a noble desktop.