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Preview a reel

The viewer on a reel tab plays the reel as it will export: fitted to the reel's frame, with each clip's scale, fades, cards, overlays and music. The viewer and the exports draw the reel through the same code, so what you watch is what you get, frame for frame. At a cut the viewer shows the clip's last marked frame and then the next clip's first, never a frame outside a shot's in and out points, and playing to the end parks on the reel's last frame.

Play and move around

The transport sits under the reel timeline, and it is the same row a shot selects tab has: the playback range slider with its fields, then Back to the start, Jump to the previous cut, Step back, the loop button, Play / pause the reel, Step forward, Jump to the next cut, Jump to the end, a readout of the playhead's position, and Full screen. The buttons wait until the preview has loaded. Every box on the row, and the readout, show frames or timecode as Show times as under Reel Settings says.

The row under the reel timeline, left to right, a 0, the playback range start field, the range slider, the range end field, the Timeline length field, then Back to the start, Jump to the previous cut, Step back, the loop button, Play, Step forward, Jump to the next cut, Jump to the end, the position readout and Full screen.

The transport row: the playback range with its fields, the Timeline length, the nine buttons and the position readout
Key Does
Space Plays or pauses. At the end, it plays again from the start. While looping a section, that start is the loop's.
K Pauses.
L Plays forward. Each further tap doubles the speed, up to 8 times, then goes back to normal speed.
Left or Right Steps one frame back or forward.
Shift+Left or Shift+Right Steps ten frames.
Home or End Goes to the start or the end of the reel, or of the loop while looping a section.
Alt+Left or Alt+Right Jumps to the previous or next cut. Shift+Alt+Left and Shift+Alt+Right do the same on a reel tab.

There is no J: ShotWork does not play backward. See Hotkeys for every key.

With the mouse:

  • Click or drag on the ruler, or the shelf above it, to move the playhead and scrub. This also clears the selection.
  • Drag the playhead's flag, or its time readout, to scrub.
  • Scroll over the reel timeline to step one frame per notch.

Tip

Press Jump to the previous cut twice in a row and it keeps going back: from just after a cut, it goes to the cut before that one.

Loop a section

The playback range slider under the reel timeline zooms the reel timeline to a section, and the loop button decides whether playback stays in it. The loop button, or Ctrl+L, cycles through three modes, the same three the source timeline has:

Mode Does
Loop: off (plays the whole reel) Runs to the end of the reel, ignoring the playback range.
Loop: playback range Wraps from the end of the range back to its start.
Loop: the clip the playhead is in Wraps back to the start of the clip the playhead was in when you last played, clicked or jumped.

To polish one section:

  1. Drag the slider's ends in to the section you want, or drag the window along the slider.
  2. Press the loop button until it reads Loop: playback range.
  3. Play. Playback loops between the range's start and end.
  4. Drag the ends back out to full width to clear the range.

The fields at either end of the slider show where the range starts and ends. Type a time into one, or middle-drag across it to move it a frame per step. The range is not saved with the reel.

The box after those fields is Timeline length, the same value as the field under Reel Settings; see Timeline length. On a source timeline that box shows the video's last frame and cannot be typed.

What you see

  • The reel's frame. Every clip is fitted into the reel's frame size the way export pads it, with its Scale applied. See Clip picture.
  • Fades darken the picture, while paused too.
  • Cards play as they will render. While ShotWork prepares one, a bar sweeps along it on the reel timeline.
  • Overlays draw over the shot under the playhead and update as soon as the shot's details change in its shot selects. They fade in after each cut; see Overlay templates for what holds steady across a cut.
  • Music plays at each song's level, with its fades. See Music.
  • A clip whose video file has moved plays as black for its length, so the rest of the reel still plays.
  • A missing shot, one deleted from its shot selects, plays as black the same way. It still blocks export until you remove it or replace it.

When the preview does not play

  • An image card whose file cannot be read stops the preview until you fix or remove it.
  • Gaps and cards need ffmpeg to prepare. Without it, the problems list says the gaps cannot be previewed yet because ffmpeg is not set up. Open a video on a shot selects tab once so ShotWork fetches it, then reopen the reel.
How the preview stays on the frame

The reel plays as one virtual video made of its clips in order. Every timeline frame is seeked as the source frame it stands for, sampled the way the export samples it, so a cut lands on the same frame in the viewer as in the exported video, and playing to the end pauses on the reel's last frame rather than the frame past the last shot's out point. The preview reloads only when the edit changes, and comes back to where the playhead was.

Full screen

Choose Full screen at the right end of the transport, or press Ctrl+F, to play the reel across the whole screen, for showing it to someone in the room. Everything but the picture goes away; playback, stepping and the shuttle keys keep working. Press Esc or Ctrl+F to come back to the window exactly as it was. The same button and key work on a shot selects tab.

Guides

Not built yet

Viewer guides are not built.

Turn on guides to draw the title-safe and action-safe areas over the viewer, and outlines for other shapes such as 9:16 and 1:1, so you can see what a crop for a different delivery would keep. Guides are for you: they never export.