Changing the Duration of an Animation in the Animation Channel Editor

You can change the duration of an animation by scaling its channel horizontally in the Channel Editor. This allows you to change the number of frames it takes for an animation to play through, without having to move each keyframe manually.

There are three ways to change the duration of an animation in the Animation Channel Editor:

• Use the X Scale tool to scale the channel using any keyframe as the origin of the scale.
• In the Dope Sheet view, Drag the track handle to scales the track proportionally.
• Using the Duration field.

To change the duration of an animation in the Curves view:

1. In the Animation menu, click to display the Curves.

2. From the Tools box, select X Scale.

   

3. Select the keyframes or channels you want to scale.

4. Click to frame the curve.

5. Click the keyframe that will act as the centre of the X Scale. Drag left to decrease the value or drag right to increase the value of the other keyframes along the X-axis, relative to the selected keyframe.

   

   Using X Scale to change an animation duration

To scale a channel in the Dope Sheet view:

1. In the Animation menu, click to display the Dope Sheet.

2. Select the channels to scale.

3. Drag the either arrows to increase or decrease the duration.

   Note: To avoid moving keyframes between frames, select Snap Keyframes to Closest Frame to snap keyframes in the selected channel to the closest frame numbers.
   Tip: You can move the handle of a channel group to scale all channels in the group. For example, moving the handle of the Scene group causes all the folders and channels in the hierarchy to be scaled by the same amount.

To change the number of frames between the current and next keyframe:

1. Select a keyframe.

2. In the Duration field, enter the number of frames between the selected keyframe and the next keyframe.