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Participating Frequently
March 8, 2015
Answered

How do you change the timeline duration in Photoshop CC 2014 and Windows 8.1?

  • March 8, 2015
  • 9 replies
  • 122736 views

There seems to be 5 second limit on the duration of the timeline in Photoshop version 2014.

 

How can you extend the duration of the animation? There's a timeline window, but no "animation" window as mentioned in many of the help files.

 

How do you change the duration in Photoshop  2014?

 

I'm using Windows 8.1 as my OS.

 

Thanks.

 

[Version numbers added by moderator.]

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer JJMack

Try dragging the right end edge to the right more to expand the duration.  In the timeline palette you can create a Frame animation or a video timeline.

9 replies

Participant
May 10, 2017

I know it's a pain, but you can duplicate a frame and then you have two 5 second frames that you can then adjust if you wanted somewhere between 5 and 10 seconds per frame.

Plippie71
Participant
August 31, 2018

IN PS 5C the option is hidden in  the little dropdown caret in the right upper corner of the timeline container. if you click on that, you get a list of options, one of them is 'document settings...' There you can set the duration, frame rate and fps. I believe this is also there on the later editions.

in the same dropdown you find a lot of other timeline related options, which you would normally expect to be on the timeline layers it self, for example with right clicking the layer on the timeline. Why they did it this way, i have no clue but i expect it to be patent related.

Participant
February 3, 2020

Just needed to add metadata to a still, then upload to youtube for a 360. The  '5 second duration rule' simple workaround, in the timeline click on '+' and drop another still, sequentially.

Participant
April 24, 2017

The duration is only as long as your longest layer. So just extend one of your layers and the duration should increase with it. Hope that helps!

cjtakeda
Participant
March 28, 2017
Participant
March 9, 2017

This work around is not necessary after all. Just unlock the background layer and you can drag it to any duration you like in the timeline panel. The only limitation is that any new blank video layers that are created can only have that duration length as a maximum. This should really be more intuitive. An actual timeline panel like the composition panel in After Effects would suffice.

Lightweave
Participant
November 2, 2016

It is really annoying that Adobe didn't come up with anything in CC 2017 to fix this. Sounds like it's not something they think is important.

Here is a workaround I just figured out. Give it a try and see if it works in your project:

1. create a new timeline

2. notice that it is only 5 seconds and pull your hair out

3. create a background layer, if one doesn't already exist

4. select the background layer in the timeline and stretch it out to the length you desire, ex. 14 seconds

5. convert the timeline to a frame animation (3 squares in the bottom left corner)

6. you should have two frames, "all layers" as #1 and "background" as #2.

7. Delete the background frame (#2), so that you only have 1 frame

8. Change the frame duration (the little number on the frame) to your desired length of time (to match). For me it was 14 seconds

9. then, convert back to timeline (timeline icon in the bottom left corner)

10. you should now have all of your layers on a 14 second timeline.

Let me know how it works

Participant
November 12, 2019

This was great! It saved my life. Thank you so muchhhh.

Known Participant
August 8, 2016

1,5 years have passed and the issue with timeline is still here. I have frame-by-frame hand drawn animation on a video layer of 5s long. Not I need to set it to 6s long — and I can't. I have a few static layers, I can extent all of them to 6 sec, but not the video layer — it is just locked at 5s duration!

I don't know if there is some hidden option that allows to solve it, but the whole flow with timeline is totally counter intuitive from the very beginning of video timelines in Photoshop, and nothing seems to change for the past two years.

Guys, you at Adobe have great After Effects product — can't you just inherit some minimal part of the experience from them? Why spend time on inventing new (and shitty) experience from scratch?

sppryor
Participant
September 14, 2015

I am running into this same issue. Specifically this part:

"Now take an animation scenario where you want to create something from scratch that spans longer than the default 5 seconds.  There is no option!!! No document settings, nothing that will allow you to extend the timeline.  I now have to click and drag each layer clip on the timeline to give it more time for the animation, one by one might I add (you can't even highlight multiple clips and extend them all at once, which is crazy).
"

I have a PSD file provided by a client. At which point I need to animated this file (think text flying in, not video). When I select to create a timeline video, you get a 5s timeline and each layer is now on the timeline. The timeline has 30 or so layers on it now. I need to change the duration of the animation to 6sec. I can click one of the layers in the timeline and drag the end of the clip over one additional second.

The issue is this. While I now have an animation that is 6seconds long, from 5sec to 6sec, the only thing visible is the one layer I extended. I need to now go back and individually extend all 30 other layers. As they mentioned above, you can not extend multiple layers at once (by shift selecting etc).

To be clear, I know I could make a frame animation and not a video animation, but that is not the ideal situation. Frame animations have limitations that prevent things I want to accomplish without doing tons of extra work.

Participating Frequently
August 21, 2015

Katherine001

I had been struggling with the same thing for quite some time but I believe that I finally have an answer for you.  When trying to drag your blank video layer it won't let you go past 5s because the timecode is based on the layer below.  In my case it was the background layer, all I had to do was extend the background layer to the time that I wanted.  I then went to the beginging of the timeline and created a New Blank Video Layer.  This then created a Video layer the exact length of my Background Layer.

I was only able to extend layers that were not video layers, so this works with any normal layer.

Hope this helps!

Best,

- David

Participant
December 25, 2020

you are a life saver, thank you!

JJMack
Community Expert
JJMackCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
March 8, 2015

Try dragging the right end edge to the right more to expand the duration.  In the timeline palette you can create a Frame animation or a video timeline.

JJMack
Participating Frequently
March 8, 2015

I have tried that. A double sided arrow appears but it only will move to the left to make it shorter.

JJMack
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 8, 2015

It is now not clear if you are using a video timeline or a Frame animation timeline.  Video timeline duration are increase in time by dragging the clips right edge may be by changing frame rate. I do not do video editing and changing the duration by changing the frame rate or duration I would think would mess up any audio the clip may have.  All thing in a video timeline need not be clips animated 3d objects are possible abt the total rendered video can has an additional audio track added. http://www.mouseprints.net/old/dpr/McAssey-CC.mp4

Where frame animations can be increase in duration by changing frame durations and|or  by adding frames to the animation. Frame animations do not have sound.

JJMack