Below each Graph Window is a timeline. You can toggle its visibility in Application Menu → View → Timeline.

Some of its properties can be controlled by the graph's toolbar:

• The playback settings control details like the current soundtrack.
• The Timeline format toggles the raster between bars, seconds, or frames (see below).
• The Loop playback toggle shows the loop (or work area).
• The Dope/Curve toggle switches between the two primary modes.

You can scrub the time in the lower shaded section of the timeline. (In the upper area, dragging will select objects like keyframes and time clips.)

You can use these keyboard shortcuts:

• Hold Shift to snap to the bar raster or other timeline elements.
• Space to toggle playback.
• Home to jump to the beginning.
• L to play.
• L again to play faster.
• J to play backward.
• J again to play backward faster.
• K to stop.
• . and , to jump to the next and previous keyframes.
• Shift + ← and → to step in 30 ms increments.

In the background, you'll notice the time raster. You can switch between:

• Bars (using the current project's BPM rate)
• Seconds
• F30 and F60 Frames

By default, dragging timeline elements snaps only to the bar raster. You can zoom in to snap to finer resolutions (beats and ticks) or zoom out (bars, measures, phrases).

Hold Shift to disable snapping.

You can adjust the timeline raster density in Settings.

The dope sheet view displays the keyframes of the currently selected operators.

You can add keyframe animations in the Parameter Window: click the parameter input while holding Alt to insert the first keyframe:

After a parameter is animated you can:

1. Insert new keyframes by modifying values.
2. Toggle keyframes by pressing the keyframe indicator in the parameter window.
3. Adjust keyframe interpolation with the context menu.
4. Adjust keyframe values by selecting a single keyframe.
5. Insert keyframes by holding Alt and clicking on the animation curve.

To remove an animation, either:

• Remove all keyframes.
• Reset the parameter by clicking the parameter name in the Parameter Window.

By default, only the keyframes of selected operators are shown in the timeline. You can enable Keep animated parameters visible in the toolbar:

This will keep parameters visible. If too many parameters are displayed, press Ctrl+Shift+K twice to clear the list.

To slow down or speed up an animation:

1. Select keyframes.
2. Hold Alt to show the stretch indicators at the bottom.
3. Drag the stretch indicators:

In the context menu, you can switch between interpolation modes. To control tangents, switch between Curve and Dope Sheet mode.

You can insert incremental keyframes by pressing Shift+C. This will insert a new keyframe incremented by 1 at the current time.

This can be useful for adding step markers while listening to a soundtrack. For example:

1. Add a soundtrack to your project.
2. Press Home or go to the timeline start.
3. Create a [Value] operator and animate its parameter in the Parameter Window (see above). Change its interpolation mode to Constant.
4. Press Space or L to start playback.
5. Press Shift+C on beats or key moments in the soundtrack. This will insert keyframes with values 1,2,3,4 etc.
6. Connect [HasValueChanged] and [TriggerAnim] or other operators to use this timing.

To recompute the keyframe values (e.g., after inserting or deleting keys):

1. Shift+Click on the keyframe row to select all keyframes.
2. Use Recount values from the context menu.

Some operators like [VideoClip] or [TimeClip] output "time clipping." These operators are evaluated only if the current playback time is within their Clip Time. Otherwise, they are ignored as if disabled.

If a composition has any time clips, the timeline displays a Time Clip Area above the Dope Sheet.

The primary operator for this is [TimeClip]. It splits the evaluation flow so sub-scenes render only while playback is within their time.

You can combine these clips with a [Group] as in this example:

The active clip will be highlighted.

You can drag one or more time clips with the left mouse button. They will snap to:

• The timeline raster (if in Bars mode)
• Other time clips
• The current playback time
• Other keyframes
• The loop area (if active)

Hold Shift to disable snapping.

Rename clips by pressing Return.

You can drag clips vertically to add layers if needed. These layers do not affect rendering order, so the name is slightly misleading.

Hold Ctrl+Shift while dragging vertically to adjust only the layer index.

An advanced feature is time remapping. Similar to [SetCommandTime], this allows the left side of the time clip to have its time speed and source remapped.

Consider this example:

Here, the second time clip remaps the source time to 500% speed. This is indicated by the red bottom bar:

Selecting a single time clip shows the mapping with two curves indicating the relation between clip time and source time:

Ways to edit time remapping:

1. Drag clip start and end times while holding Alt.
2. Slip-drag the source region by dragging inside the clip with Alt+Ctrl.
3. Select clips and choose Edit Clip Times from the context menu.
4. Select clips and choose Clear Time Stretch to reset the mapping.

You can select one or more clips and split them at the current playback time via context menu → Cut at Time. This will automatically rename the new clip and try to reconnect it to target groups.

If an operator symbol has an output flagged as time clip, instances of this operator will be shown in the time clip area. Unlike [TimeClip] operators, their source time is not linked to the clip time: When dragging such an operator, e.g., from starting at 0 to starting at 1 bar, its source time still points to the original 0.

This can be useful for editing [VideoClip]s similar to a video editing application. However, seeking in video files with high compression will lead to performance issues. If you want to use this feature, we recommend re-encoding video files, e.g., with the following ffmpeg command:

ffmpeg -i "input.mp4" -g 1 -c:v libx264 -preset veryfast -crf 18 output.mp4

You can use the Clip Timing Editor to edit the timing of one or more time clips:

If the selection has multiple values, the editor will indicate that with the shortcut NaN. You can replace this with a number to set the field for all selected clips.