Elements: Retiming Marks

This article covers retiming marks when using elements in Alight Motion. To learn more about Elements, check out this article.

Every element has an intro, a middle, and an outro. When an element is placed in a project, retiming marks separate these sections to ensure that the animations in the intro and outro are preserved, while the middle compensates for any changes in duration.

Retiming marks appear as small yellow ticks on the timeline. They will only be visible when editing the element, not when it’s placed into a project.

The behavior of the middle is determined by the value of Retiming, set in the Element Settings. Retiming can have the following values.

• Freeze: The last frame of the middle part is held as a freeze frame if the duration is longer than the element's original duration or cut off if the element's duration is shorter.
• Stretch: The middle part is stretched (slowed down) if the duration is longer or compressed (sped up) if the duration is shorter.
• Loop: The middle part is looped to fill any extra duration. If the duration is shorter or doesn't match an even number of loops, the last loop will be cut off midway.
• Loop & Stretch: The middle part is looped to fill any extra duration, but if any partial loops are left, they will be removed. The remaining whole loops are stretched out to make up the complete duration. Use this if you want the middle part to loop at approximately the same speed as the original but still match up seamlessly with the intro and outro.
• Blank: The intro and outro times are ignored, and the element duration is fixed. If the duration of the host project is longer, the remaining time is shown as blank (transparent). If it’s shorter, the element is cut off.
• Off: This option is usually unavailable but will appear when you convert an element to a group. Disabling re-timing will result in normal group behavior. For example, adding layers to the end of the group makes the group longer.

If retiming marks are not explicitly set, it is assumed that the intro and outro have a duration of zero seconds, meaning that the middle section comprises the entire element duration.