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What do you animate ? ants ?

If you watch the end of the animation you will see a crowd of tiny people.
But it was just an example to show how it could be handy to zoom more into your timeline. I have this problem all the time...

Don't worry, I was just kidding you
Now, I clearly understand your needs and why zooming is so important for you

Sewie wrote:

Joost wrote:...
It would be really handy to be able zoom further into thumbnails of your layer window so you would be able to see what you have drawn in every frame.
Now I see just a lot of white frames with some pixels in it. If you compare the layers to the project window you can see the difference. In the project window you are able to see what you have drawn, in the layer window it's impossible.

+1.
I have often find myself wishing this option was available, especially when working with tiny details on different layers. Like eye blinks for example.

+1 for this again. I would greatly appreciate the feature that Joost is proposing.

maybe the layerpreview could be cropped around the area of the frame, which is used. By the way I love the 2012 KLIK festival leader, I never noticed it's from you Joost.

In the to do list (but don't wait for it soon, any change in the timeline takes ages)

+1

any news about this tvpaint "problem"?
It would be nice if this could be taken care of soon. For example: I'm working in a 5000 pixels * 1080 pixels project now, and I can't see anything in my layer window. I have to guess in which frame I have drawn...

Joost wrote:any news about this tvpaint "problem"?
It would be nice if this could be taken care of soon. For example: I'm working in a 5000 pixels * 1080 pixels project now, and I can't see anything in my layer window. I have to guess in which frame I have drawn...

as Elodie explained, this request needs time and is not the current first priority.

Back in the days of paper animation and Amiga penciltests, we were used to see only numbers on the exposure sheet, and nothing more - cause we knew our animation by heart! So I don't even try to look at the timeline to see images. I actually don't think there is even such a thing as a sufficient zoom level of a thumbnail, cause there will always be a small detail that you won't see. Scrolling through frames and watching them in the scene view normally is so easy in TVP, that I don't see any benefit for additional view options....
I do agree though, that there is some wasted space in the timeline and some limitations, like not seeing long layer names

I can zoom into a layer in Vegas and the screen print below shows what it looks like. I placed a copy of the same layer on top of itself; the top one being normal size, in which you can't see much of what each frame depicts but you can see the entire length of the clip.

Below that is the blown up layer, which shows a clear enough picture of what individual frames contain, except you can see only two of the frames out of the entire clip because, well, it's a zoom in.

At the top left is the project window, which shows a clear picture. So of course the zoomed in layer is useless if I am looking for a specific frame, and so is the zoomed out layer useless if I am hunting for a specific frame. Only by scrubbing across the layer can I really find the frame I am looking for in the project window, and this would apply to TVP the same way.

I have sort of an idea for that: when hovering over the frames in the timeline, and holding the right-click button (or any other hotkey) a popup would appear just above, to show a zoomed in preview of a frame. This way we could go through frames fast with a mouse just by hovering, until we find what we are looking for. Also this would save us from moving the slider from our current frame. Example in the pic. What do you think?

Not a bad idea at all, particularly if this magnifying glass effect would keep on going if you took your mouse up or down a layer or two or more. Realizing now that you would be seeing just one frame within a whole stack of frames would help locate a certain position of a drawing within a multitude of layers.

Paul Fierlinger wrote:Not a bad idea at all, particularly if this magnifying glass effect would keep on going if you took your mouse up or down a layer or two or more. Realizing now that you would be seeing just one frame within a whole stack of frames would help locate a certain position of a drawing within a multitude of layers.

Exactly what I mean - sorry I didn't do a very good example - made it in a hurry

if it's enough for you guys, I think it could be done more easily than the other proposals. (needs to be confirmed by the dev team though)

I have sort of an idea for that: when hovering over the frames in the timeline, and holding the right-click button (or any other hotkey) a popup would appear just above, to show a zoomed in preview of a frame.

It is great that you try to help to solve the problem. But:
This is exactly NOT what would help me. Why is this better than the way it works now?
My problem now is that I very often can't even see if I have drawn in a layer. Because the thumbnails are too small. a 150 percent zoom-in would help. But a pop up window wouldn't solve this problem. I can't see why this would be better than the way it works now. The thing is that I would like to be able to see in my timeline where something is drawn and where an frame is empty.