Cannot change speed/duration of animated stills videoclips!

[Sargon63]

Hi.

I built up an animation containing several layers of animated elements in my video timeline - only to realize that the animation's overall duration is way toot long.

It looks like there is no way to select all the video tracks and stretch the duration of their clips simultaneously. To make things worse, one cannot even change one clips Speed/Duration - this option only seems to be available for real video clips! So, does this mean that I will have to select and stretch the keyframes for every individual track, hoping that they will stay in sync with one a another.

The only way around this is probably to export the whole animation first as uncompressed video - then re-import it to the timeline again and then change it, but I'm sure all will agree this would be an unproductive way of doing it.

It is almost unthinkable that there is no easier way to do this.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

To me it seems you mix up terminology in such a way that I cannot say for sure whether you are talking about Frame Animation or Video Timeline.

Posting a meaningful screenshot might have clarified that right away.

[Sargon63]

O, I thought it would be clear by referring to the "video timeline" instead of "frame animation".

It is the video sequence timeline indeed - here is an attachment.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

I thought it would be clear by referring to the "video timeline" instead of "frame animation".

Well, the lack of understanding may be entirely mine.

But it seems unfortunate to me how few posters appear be willing to simply show what they are writing about.

As for the issue itself: Photoshop is a sub-optimal tool for video editing and if you are serious about the task you may want to familiarise yourself with applications more suited to it (Premiere, After Affects, … or some non-Adobe applications).

Have you tried changing the frame rate via »Set Timeline Framerate« from the Timeline Panel’s fly-out-menu?

[Sargon63]

I appreciate your help!

Yes, I realize that Premierre would be the better option. However, I am using currently Photoshop to create Gif animations, so P or AE won't help in this case. I did not check my time units, so, instead of making the animation 7 seconds, I made it 7 minutes long!

Changing the Timeline frame rate:

Unfortunately, changing the frame rate for animated layers only seems to change their playback smoothness, not the clips' duration as would be the case with real video.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Unfortunately, changing the frame rate for animated layers only seems to change their playback smoothness, not the clips' duration as would be the case with real video.

Right, dang.

But if you know the factor by which you want to speed it up you could, as a workaround, decrease the frame rate accordingly, Render Video to »Photoshop Image Sequence«., import in a new file and »Create Frame Animation«.

Sorry, this is probably no more efficient than the workaround you mentioned in the original post.

[Sargon63]

Yup. It's unfortunate, isn't it? Let's hope Adobe considers to make this aspect easier for Photoshop in future.

Thanks for your input.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Convert Frames > Convert to Frame Animation (best on a copy of the image) allows to change the frame rate without having to export but the resulting gif might get unduly big.

[Sargon63]

That's a good idea - I will try this and see if the file is workable.

Thanks

[Sargon63]

Nope - looks like the only way is to export the video and re-import again.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

One more option might be the Frame Animation conversion, then using a Script to remove every x-th frame.

Though creating the Script would likely be more work than your originally described workaround.

[Sargon63]

Now THAT would be the answer! Too bad my math sucks. Hopefully someone would be so kind to create a small plugin.