Preview
Contents
Introduction
Rendering a long or complicated animation can take a while. You may need to do several renders before you are happy with your finished animation. Therefore, before you render your animation, it's a good idea to preview all or just a part of it at lower quality to save time.
You may also find that working on your animation by looking at a render in a normal media player is not very useful. You will see time displayed in fractions of a second instead of as frame numbers and moving backwards and forwards (scrubbing) can be difficult.
Synfig Studio has a very flexible preview tool that solves both of these problems.
Previewing an animation
There are two ways to preview the animation in your current canvas:
- You can press the canvas window toolbar Preview button
, or - you can open the Canvas Menu using the Canvas Menu Caret button and then select "File → Preview".
If you do either of these things the Preview Options dialog will appear.
The Preview Options Dialog
The Preview Options dialog looks like this:
This dialog will allow you to set the following parameters:
General Settings
Zoom
Increase or decrease the size of the previewed animation.
Frames per second
It's a good idea to have a lower number than what the final FPS will be. This will speed up the rendered preview.
Time Settings
Begin Time
At what frame or second you want the preview to begin.
End Time
At what frame or second you want the preview to end.
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Note To use a begin or end time, you must check the corresponding box next to each one. Also, to specify a starting or ending frame, use (f) after the number. For time, use (s).
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When you are finished setting the parameters, click Preview.
The Preview Window
When you click "Preview" in the Preview Options dialog the preview will start rendering and the Preview Window will appear:
Once the preview has rendered (the time after Last Rendered should equal your End Time), you can now preview your animation. Take a look the following icons under the Preview image.
Previous frame
Play
Pause
Next frame
Loop
Don't loop
Halt render
Re-preview
Erase rendered frames
The slider above the Preview icons can be moved back and forth to scrub through your animation.
TODO You can re-size your Preview by resizing your preview window.
TODO You can begin to play your preview before it has finished rendering.
You can close the Preview window at any time by pressing Escape, pressing Alt and F4 or clicking the close icon at the top right hand side of the window.
