Play playback range

[NathanOtano]

Yop!

Basically what i want is to be able to select a playback range, maybe with different presets for each clip, to be able to work on a zone only of my animation and if need to quickly switch beetween different playback ranges. We already can do that by "selecting" an area before playback, but we lose the current frame where we were drawing and also we have to select the range each time we want to playback. Another option is to set bookmarks and use them as a limit for a flip option but we also need bookmarks for other things while animating. I want to select a range once, and use space to playback this range then come back to my current frame.

It's different than the In/out points. When we use the in and out points to time a sequence, also using sound for a lipsync, we may offset the sound and also change the timing of the whole sequence.

I think a script can maybe remember those positions on different buttons, and a specific playback button can play this range only by modifying the marks in.out then put them back to their position.

Nathan

[NathanOtano]

Ok i made a simple panel, not really user friendly, but that's a beginning. I'll post it in the right section when it will be clean to share.

How to :
- Set your real mark in and mark out of your current clip
- Make a selection on a layer, it will be your future playback range
- Click on the set playbackrange button

Then when you press
- The toggle button : your marks switch between your selected area and your original mark in and mark out.
- The play button : you playback only the selected range by moving your marks in/out then they come back to their original position.
note : if you toggle then play, you playback the entire clip.

You can also duplicate the buttons and change the numbers of the userstrings in the scripts (1 here) to make multiple buttons for selecting multiple playback ranges.
And link them to your basic playback shortcut + modfiers.

Could be nice to have a popup menu with those different playback range to set/choose the one you need to playback, + some icons. I'm rushing an animation now but maybe for christmas when i'll figure out how menus work.

But sadly i still have the problem of the offset sound and i don't think there is a way to resolve this.

EDIT : Added undo comands to each script to avoid multiple undo clicks
EDIT2 : Fixed playback range that lasted 1 frame more than the original selection
EDIT 3 : note that you can't playback the entire project this way, in project view

[NathanOtano]

Another more simple way to do it (why was I trying to use imagemarks?...).
This version uses selections only. So now i can playback my sound without offset or changing my clip limits. And i can playback from the project view without problems...

How to use the button:
Just select a range of frames and hit the button, it will playback the range as expected.
But now every time you will hit the button without having selected any frame, it will select again the same first range and playback it from the beginning. After the playback it comes back to the current frame (but you can change the shortcut in the middle of the panel to your usual shortcut if you want)
Each time you launch it with a new selection, it remembers this new selection.
Select one frame or all the frames to playback the entire timeline.

I'll try in the future to separate the "set range" (with a popup menu to store and select multiple remembered ranges) and "playback range"