All language subtitles for 1. Introduction to the Dope Sheet

In a previous module, we took a look at keyframes.

We know what they represent, we know how to add them,

we know how to delete them,

so now let's go ahead and take a look at the Dope Sheet.

The Dope Sheet gives you access to all of the keyframes you've created,

and it provides an easy way to view and edit them in real time.

Most of the time you'll end up using the Dope Sheet to

reposition or perfect your keyframes, but you can also use it to trim clips,

or to slip Read Nodes the same way you would in an editing package.

Certain time-based nodes also provide information here as well.

I've set up a comp file for us to take a look at some of these features,

but let's get more familiar with the different parts of the Dope Sheet.

On the left side of the Dope Sheet,

you'll see what's referred to as the Hierarchy View.

If a node is selected and its properties are visible,

and it has keyframes associated with it,

it will appear in the Dope Sheet.

So if I double-click on this Merge Node,

and make its properties available, it appears here in the Dope Sheet,

but a neat little trick if you don't want to have the node selected and

viewable in the Properties Window is you can go into the Node tab of any

one of the nodes that you're taking a look at,

and you can click this button here.

Let me slide this over to the left so that you can see it better,

it says Dope Sheet,

and if we click that on it will appear in the Dope Sheet

even if the properties aren't selected.

So I can just close this out and go work with another node,

and you'll notice that this merge still exists down here in the Dope Sheet.

So if I go back to that merge, uncheck that,

and close out the properties, it's going to disappear.

So that's a neat little trick.

Now I'm going to slide this over a little,

and you'll see this Read Node here represented here

on the Dope Sheet as a gray bar.

Any Read Nodes that have their Properties panel open,

display as gray bars in the Dope Sheet.

Now I have attached a couple of Time Nodes here in the Node

Graph to this Read Node just to show you what Time Nodes look

like when they're in the Dope Sheet,

and right here you see the frame range Node represented here by this gold bar,

and a Retime Node represented by this gold bar here.

These Time Nodes are used to manipulate the frame ranges and the

timing of a specific clip that you're working with,

and they become really powerful,

but we'll take a look at that a little later on in this module.

Now if we move this over a little here,

you'll see these little purple icons that are associated with

animation being applied to each one of these nodes.

So I'm just going to double-click on one of these to

bring it up in the Properties panel, and you'll see animation on these,

and those keyframes on these different attributes are appearing

as tick marks down here in the Dope Sheet.

Now you'll also notice a gray bar at the beginning of the Dope Sheet right here,

and a gray bar at the end of the Dope Sheet,

here.

Now these just represent the beginning and the end of our animation.

So if you click on the Node Graph and hit the S button,

it's going to bring up your Project Settings in the Properties panel,

and if we scroll down,

you'll see that the frame range for this comp is between frame 1 and frame 200,

and that's what represented here in the Dope Sheet.

You might also have noticed this orange line right here,

and what this is is just a representation of our current frame.

So if we move the frame slider in our Viewer,

you'll see that this bar also moves along to tell us what

frame we are looking at in the Viewer,

and now let's take a look at these buttons at the bottom of the Dope Sheet.

This first little button that looks like a lock is called the synchronizer,

and if you hover over it, it'll say, When activated,

keeps the frame ranges on the Curve Editor and the Dope Sheet synchronized.

Well, what does that mean?

There are two different ways to look at your timeline: there's

the Dope Sheet and there's the Curve Editor,

and this button just keeps the view in the same frame range when this

button's clicked between the Dope Sheet and the Curve Editor.

So if I go up here and just add a Curve Editor really quick,

you'll see that our frame range here is between frame 0 and frame 100,

and if I go back to the Dope Sheet, you'll see that it's also from 0 to 100,

but let's say I'm working in this frame range,

between frame 9 and frame 28, well if I've got this little lock button activated,

and I go to the Curve Editor, I've got the same frame range here,

9 and 28.

If I go back to the Dope Sheet and I turn that button off,

and I zoom out, the Curve Editor will remain at 9 and 28.

So,

I like to keep that button on so that when I'm going back and

forth between the Dope Sheet and the Curve Editor,

I know that everything is pretty standard.

I should also point out that I'm moving this timeline

around by just middle-mouse clicking, and sliding the timeline,

and you can zoom in and zoom out just by using the scrollbar on your mouse.

Navigating around in this window is just like navigating in the Node Graph.

The hotkey I end up using the most though is the F

button that just frames things.

The same way it frames things in the Node Graph.

So if I'm working with these keyframes, if you hit F on the keyboard,

it'll bring those keyframes into view on the timeline,

and then you can just use the scroll wheel to zoom out,

select all the keyframes, hit F again, and get back to that range.

So you can highlight on any given piece of this that you

want by just hitting F on the keyboard,

and it's going to zoom right into the thing that you're looking at.

You can also select a whole chunk by just picking

something out of the hierarchy on the left,

like this Read Node, and hitting F, and it's going to show you the full length.

So if I click on this Retime, which is longer than the Read Node and hit F,

it's going to show me the full range.

The Dope Sheet can get kind of confusing sometimes when

you're working with a lot of nodes, so I promise,

you'll be using that F button quite a bit when you're working in the Dope Sheet.

The next button here to the right of the synchronize

button just displays all of the Read Nodes.

So this current Read Node is visible to us because it's

selected and it's in the Properties panel,

but we have another Read Node in this comp that's not visible right

now because we don't have any keyframes on it.

So if I click this button, all the Read Nodes will become visible.

So this is useful instead of hunting through your comp to look for the Read

Nodes that you would like to be displaying in the Dope Sheet,

you can just hit that button and all of your Read Nodes will

be populated in the Dope Sheet for you.

Now last but not least, we have this move button,

and this is very useful because a lot of times you'll be moving

these keyframes around by very small ranges,

so if you left-mouse button drag to select these keyframes,

you can left-mouse button click and just drag them

to any other frame that you want.

But the mouse is a very imprecise device,

and you don't always get the frame that you want,

so if you know that you want to move these specific keyframes 10 frames forward,

you can just go down here and you can type +10 in

this box and click the move button,

and it will move the keyframes to where you want them to be.

Likewise, I can just change this to -10 and move those keyframes back,

and this is very useful when you've got a very specific

place for these keyframes to land.

In the next clip, we'll take a look at looking at audio in the Dope Sheet,

and we'll take a look at funky view things that happen when you're

dealing with nodes that have multiple branches.