Resize / Scale Timeline around Time cursor instead of frame 0 ?

[ichbinmatthias]

I recently started working with Adobe Animate and while I love quite some features I am struggling a lot with the unintuitive User Interface. One thing I find particularly annoying is that whenever I want to zoom into the timeline, it scales around its origin instead of scaling around the current position of the time cursor. This means on a longer sequence I always lose the position of where I currently am and have to scroll back there before being able to continue to work.

This certainly must have been addressed a long time ago in a software which has been around for such a long time, right?  I am only missing the proper way to do it, right?  Right????

Any help is highly appreciated, thanks!

[kglad]

is this a camera issue with zooming?  or something you're doing in the interface?

[ichbinmatthias]

It's an interface thing, sorry I didn't make that clear enough. Hope the attached image helps to clarify..

[kglad]

i don't think that can be done.  you can scale up the entire timelne, but zooming a particular portion of the timeline is understandable, but not doable.

on the stage, you can do that with the magnfier by dragging a rectangle around the region you want to magnify.

[ichbinmatthias]

I still want to scale up the entire timeline, I just would like the scaling pivot to be at the current time cursor position instead of at frame 1, just the way it works in After Effects or - slightly different- Premiere. But I think you are right and for some reason in Animate it can't be done. Thanks for your feedback though! Here as well as in my other thread.

[kglad]

at the top right of the timelne you have zoom controls:

[n. tilcheff]

Hi mate,

Just to give you some context:

Animate is Flash and has completely different origins from After Effects and Premiere.

Historically the timeline could not be zoomed it at all. It only had 3 presets and that is perfectly fine.

The way the Flash timeline is used differs from the way Premiere/AE timeline is used.

I'm not saying that this kind of zooming you desire would be harmful if added, but it is not needed in any way.

I have been using Flash/Animate for many years for creating professional broadcast animation and never feel the need to zoom in or out.

Good luck with your projects!

[ichbinmatthias]

Thanks for sharing your experience! It's somewhat reassuring that an experienced user like you does not even miss that feature I am looking for. I will see if I can change my workflow somehow - currently I am used to creating my keyposes first and then adjusting the timing by moving keys around. It feels super fiddly though to select and drag keyframes, especially if the timeline is long and you want to move several keyframes on different layers at once - I always end on the edge of my seat with my nose pressed against the monitor.

Zooming into the timeline helps a bit there and I am quite used to doing that in other applications. Being able to nudge keyframes around with the help of hotkeys (select keyframes and push them to the next/previous frame by pressing a key) would also be a great help but I already realized I can't expect to just have the same convenient workflow I have in Maya or After Effects for example when moving to a new software.

[n. tilcheff]

You can easily nudge, i.e. add or remove frames with the [F5] or [Shift+F5] shortcut. 

I have changed that to [Z] and [Shift+Z] which is even easier to press.

You can press and hold, or press multiple times.

Without a selection this would work on the whole timeline. With a selection on the selected spans. If you select, for example, a block of 5 frames, 5 frames will be added or removed, and so on...

The timeline navigation may be a little different, but is fully-functional, so maybe if you do a screen recording in which you show the specific problems you face, users here would be able to guide you on the optimal way of dealing with them.