Can't move to frame 0

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
#1

Why Blender doesn’t let you go to frame 0 in any of the timeline windows? It seems to me that frame 0 should be the natural first frame. That way, if you want to set a keyframe at 1 second into the animation, you would set it at frame 24. If the frames start at 1, as looks to be the case currently, you would have to set it at frame 25.

I’m basing this on the fact that I can’t move the current timeline position to 0, although I can move the keyframes to frame 0 after creating them. This means I can’t see the the starting frame of my animation unless I make the animation start at frame 1. Has this been discussed already, or am I overlooking something?

#2

Hm? 24 Frames / second means, if counting begins at 1, that frames 1…24 are second 1, second 2 begins at frame 25. “Keyframing at 1 second in the animation” is a little unclear. If you mean “the animation already ran 1 second”, then 24 frames should have been shown, the key is to be set at the first frame of second 2 - which is the 25 frame, which now is labelled “25”.

#3

Yes, I concur. But it seems more natural to me that, after 1 second (24 frames have passed), the animation should be at frame 24. Also, I notice that the gridlines don’t match up to the frame rate. Instead you have gridlines every 5 or 10 frames, not every 12 or 24 frames.

#4

Hm… no. At frame 24 (i.e. the beginning of the time for frame 24) only 23 frames have passed. Frame 24 is the last frame of the 24 frames of the first second, only 23/24 seconds have passed then. 25 is the first frame of the 2. second.
A dozen of apples consists of 12 apples. The second dozen begins with apple no. 13.

You can set the frame rate to any rate you want, so this has not any value other than as guideline. And as we use the decimal system everywhere else, this is quite useful (but would be nice to be configurable*.) You can switch the view to seconds, if you prefer.

  • Reserved space for a foot note saying “D’Oh”.
#5

Yes, that’s the way it is now. But I think that it shouldn’t be that way (ie: frame 0 should be the first frame, not frame 1). Nevertheless, I suppose this depends on one’s point of view and since there’s already a lot of momentum towards frame 1 being the first frame, its probably best that it remain that way.

Thanks for the info about the gridlines. So its currently not configurable right? I agree that it should be. I suppose I could play with the source code if I’m that desperate (I’m not). :wink:

#6

Normally I would concur with you. If we were talking about time, I would say you should start on Zero seconds (which is one thing that bugs me about Blender’s video editor, which by default, starts on 1/25 of a second). But were talking about frames. Think about this, you have 100 still pictures in you’re house, you wouldn’t say this is my zero’ith frame to you’re first one. It’s like that for blender, which by default exports into still pictures.

#7

I even disagree.

At first counting frames begins at 1 naturally. Aside from arrays in computer languages I don’t know of zero-based counting*. Time offset begins naturally at 0 (seconds).

The problem is that a point in time has no extent while the display of a frame has.

So frame 1 at time position 0 seconds is true when the frame is first shown. But when the switch to frame 2 happens, the time index is at 1/24 second.

  • Astronomers do some interesting things when counting years, including a year 0 or doing not.
#8

Would you sit down for a moment and think what you just said.
What does “first” mean? In common numerical use. first = 1

So actually, in this case, it makes perfectly sense, even if you don’t like it since 0 != 1

#9

As a programmer, I’m quite surprised that blender doesn’t start at 0, I never noticed it didn’t.

[wow, look at all those negatives]

To me, it makes sense that it should start at 0, because it’s to do with time. Then again, it makes sense it starts at 1.

At 1, you are on frame 1, the first frame. Makes sense.
However, time wise, 1 means 1 unit has passed.

I suppose though, the first frame lasts until the first time unit has passed, and no longer.

TBH, I’m just procrastinating, this doesn’t make me lose sleep of a night.

#10

I agree. That is why you can switch between Time (0-based) and Frames (1-based) in the timeline pane (Hotkey: T). Hm… and trying this you can’t move the timeline bar to position 0 in time mode but only to 0.04 (25 frames/second). THAT is ugly, there you have the off-by-one error again.

Now I think there is a bug. Up to now it was just fun to discuss, but now I want a definite result…

#11

Please post questions in the proper Support Forums. Thanks.

BgDM