Shortcut key to have work area zoom to fill timeline view?

[lorilinstruth]

Hi all,

About a hundred times a day I select a work area and then want to zoom in so that the work area fills the timeline view. Have searched high and low and can't find a way to easily do this (keyboard shortcut or otherwise), It seems like such an obvious thing people would want to do, so I'm hoping I just haven't found the shortcut. Can anybody help me out?

Thanks in advance,

Lori

[Peru Bob]

Zoom in time	= (equal sign) on main keyboard	= (equal sign) on main keyboard
Zoom out time	- (hyphen) on main keyboard	- (hyphen) on main keyboard
Zoom in Timeline panel to single-frame units (Press again to zoom out to show entire composition duration.)	; (semicolon)	; (semicolon)
Zoom out in Timeline panel to show the entire composition duration (Press again to zoom back in to the duration specified by the Time Navigator.)	Shift+; (semicolon)	Shift+; (semicolon)

from here:

After Effects keyboard shortcuts reference

[lorilinstruth · Accepted solution]

Thanks for answering. None of these shortcuts do what I need, unfortunately. I'm finally motivated enough to make a feature request (to end the madness, haha).

[BGW5614]

I desperately needed this functionality, also, and finally found it. I need to zoom in for precise placement of masks, etc. but not affect the output zoom level of the display.

What to do:

In the toolbar just above the Project Panel, select the Zoom tool. In the Composition Panel you can click and drag to define a rectangle area that you wish to zoom in on and, when releasing the mouse button, the view will zoom to the area you selected. After zooming, use the Hand Tool to reposition the area in view as needed. To return to a standard zoom level, use the magnification dropdown list in the lower left of the Composition Panel to select "Fit" or any of the standard zoom levels.

[arthurb13470043]

Hey, did you actually read the question? lorilinstruth tells about zoom feature in the TIMELINE panel (it is where all your comps and animated layers stacked) and the Work area in this TIMELINE panel. Why did you posted about Zoom in Composition panel? It is different at all.

[petew17020128]

I know this is old but to trim the timeline to work area just right-click on the work area bar and select "trim comp to work area".

hope this helps

~ Pete

[jaydude-wb]

That's not the answer to the question. The OP does not want to change the duration of the comp.

[iaa1]

The absence of this feature has annoyed me since 2001 when I started using AE.  20 years, no solution.  I requested it years and years ago.

[Brad5E0E]

I agree. About 50 times a day, I agree. 

Especially if you are doing lots of keyframing to music track, like a custom lyric video. It would be great as you work your way through the timeline. There has to be a script to something that can be assigned to a hotkey?

[jaydude-wb]

In Logic Pro the Z key is king (it zooms to any selection). Maybe the Ae-people should look how other software deal with zooming.

[Brad5E0E]

I did a bit of a deep dive into this as a script, ChatGPT in tow, and after about 100 script attempts, we concluded that scripting can not affect the 'Timeline' zoom level. 

[Creative31032015t7hf]

I know this is an older thread, but there is the shortcut "Zoom to Sequence" that sets the zoom to the size of all clips in the sequence. This does what I was looking for, maybe also for you!