Playback and Stage view
Playing, looping and scrubbing the timeline, solo, instance playback, and Stage view: the active frame alone, like a video player.
Description
A five-scene story ad in Animate, its frames side by side on the page. Shift+F turns on Stage view: the other frames and the page chrome go, and the frame the timeline is on fills the canvas, letterboxed like a player. Space plays it; Shift+F again brings the whole page back.
How to
Watch just the frame you're animating
Press Shift+F for Stage view. The other frames, their labels, prototype arrows, rulers and comment pins go, and the active frame fills the canvas, letterboxed like a video player. In Animate the active frame is the timeline's frame, or the open composition's stage; in the other modes it's the selected frame or slide. Press Shift+F again for the whole page.
Stage view is also in the top bar's More menu, the zoom menu on the bottom toolbar and the command palette. It's
remembered per mode, and the agent can switch it (set_stage_view).
Play a section over and over
Set a work area with I and O (see Keys and the timeline), turn on Loop and press Space. Go to start jumps back to the work area's start.
Look at one layer on its own
Hover a layer's row on the timeline and click Solo: only it (and any other soloed layers) show while you animate. Click again to stop. Solo is only a view: present mode and exports show everything.
Reference
Playing
| Do | To |
|---|---|
| Space, or Play | Play or pause. Playback follows the frame rate's clock, or a composition's sound when it has any |
| Home / End | Go to the start or the end |
, / ., Shift+< / Shift+> | Step a frame, or ten |
| Drag on the ruler | Scrub (it pauses first). In a composition, Scrub audio plays a snippet as you drag |
| Loop | Loop within the work area, or the whole timeline; off plays once |
The playhead and every seek snap to frames at the timeline's frame rate (24, 25, 30, 50, 60 or 120 fps).
Ways to make something loop
The timeline's Loop button only repeats playback while you work in Animate. To make a piece loop when it's presented, exported or published, pick the loop that fits:
| You want | Use | Where |
|---|---|---|
| A layer's own keys to repeat (a bob, a spin, a walk cycle) | Loop: cycle, ping-pong, offset or continue on the property | The property's Behaviours button. See Behaviours |
| Motion with no keys at all (a wiggle, a spin, a pulse) | A behaviour | Behaviours |
| A whole stretch of the frame's timeline to repeat (an idle loop, a game's Play state) | A state with Loop ticked | State machines |
| A reusable animated piece that repeats wherever it's placed | A motion component, with the instance's playback set to Loop or Ping-pong | Motion components |
| A sprite's frames (a coin spinning, a character blinking) | Nothing: a pixel canvas with frames plays them over and over by itself | Pixel art |
| Background music | Loop on the audio clip | Audio |
| A whole deck or film to start over | Loop the show (a deck) or Loop in Present (a composition) | Presenting |
Where else it plays
- Present mode and prototypes play each frame's timeline as the frame is shown: see Presenting.
- Motion component instances play their component's timeline on their own clock, with their own start, speed, loop and trigger: see Motion components.
- Template and library previews loop on their own whenever they're on screen, on a phone or iPad as well as a desktop, and hold still if you've asked for reduced motion.