Smoother Previews

When you stop to look at something in the editor, you’re usually looking at the frames around the playhead. A second before, a second after. That’s where you check whether a name fits or a logo lands where it should.

Until this week, the preview only cached forward. Park the playhead in the middle of your video and the green line grew to the right. If you wanted to see the moment just before, you waited for the whole rest of the video to cache first, or moved the playhead back and started over.

Both ways at once

Now the cache grows out from the playhead in both directions. Stop anywhere and the green line spreads left and right together, a little at a time on each side, so the part you’re looking at fills in first.

In our tests, the two seconds around the playhead cache about two seconds sooner than before. The bar glides out in both directions and never jumps back.

Press Return and it still plays from the playhead on, the same as always.

A faster first preview

The first preview after you open the browser used to be slow. Your browser takes about five seconds to get its video encoder going, and the first preview waited for it every time.

We switched to an encoder that starts right away. Now that first green shows up about five seconds sooner. On our test template, the first bit of green comes in about a second after the preview loads. Clips look just as sharp, and the files are smaller.

Nothing to turn on

Both changes are live for everyone. Open a template, stop the playhead, and watch the line.

The Creating previews guide covers caching, the work area and playback, and Editing the timeline explains the cache line.