Animation Player¶

The animation player is a utility typically used for previewing rendered animations, supporting all image and video formats also supported by Blender. This is a convenient way to play back image sequences at the correct frame rate.

Usage¶

Reference

Menu: Topbar ‣ Render ‣ View Animation
Shortcut: Ctrl-F11

Launching the animation player opens a new window, playing back images or a video located at the render output of the current scene. You can also drop images or movie files in a running animation player. It will then restart the player with the new data.

Tip

An external player can also be used instead of the one included in Blender. To do this, select it in the Preferences.

Shortcuts¶

The following table shows the available hotkeys for the animation player.

Playback

Action	Hotkey
Start/Pause:	`Spacebar`
Start playback (when paused):	`Return`
Quit:	`Esc`

Timeline

Action	Hotkey
Scrub in time:	`LMB`
Step back one frame:	`Left`
Step forward one frame:	`Right`
Step back 10 frames:	`Down`
Step forward 10 frames:	`Up`
Manual frame stepping:	`NumpadPeriod`

Playback Options

Action	Hotkey
Backward playback:	`Shift-Down`
Forward playback	`Shift-Up`
Slow down playback:	`NumpadMinus`
Speed up playback:	`NumpadPlus`
Toggle looping:	`Numpad0`
Toggle frame skipping:	`A`
Toggle ping-pong:	`P`

Display

Action	Hotkey
Toggle Playhead (Indicator):	`I`
Flip image on the X axis:	`F`
Flip image on the Y axis:	`Shift-F`
Hold to show frame numbers:	`Shift`
Zoom in:	`Ctrl-NumpadPlus`
Zoom out:	`Ctrl-NumpadMinus`

Frame rate

60 fps Numpad1
50 fps Numpad2
30 fps Numpad3
25 fps Numpad4
24 fps Shift-Numpad4
20 fps Numpad5
15 fps Numpad6
12 fps Numpad7
10 fps Numpad8
6 fps Numpad9
5 fps NumpadSlash

Frame Cache¶

Image files are cached during playback for faster access.

While loading images isn’t always a bottleneck, there are situations where high resolution images may slow down playback causing frame skipping.