Preview video and animations

Do one of the following:

• Click the Play button  in the Timeline panel.

• Use the spacebar to play and pause the animation.

The animation is displayed in the document window. The animation repeats indefinitely unless you specified another repeat value in the Play Options dialog box.

To stop the animation, click the Stop button  .

To rewind the animation, click the Selects First Frame button  .

To set the timeline duration you want to export or preview, do any of the following in the Timeline panel:

• Drag either end of work area bar.

• Drag the work area bar over the section you want to preview.

• Move the current-time indicator to the time or frame you want. From the panel menu, choose either Work Area > Set Start At Playhead or Work Area > Set End At Playhead.

To remove the portions of the timeline not in the work area, choose Trim Document Duration To Work Area from the panel menu.

Do any of the following:

• In the timeline, drag the current-time indicator.

• Use the playback buttons at the bottom of the Animation panel Timeline panel.

• Press the spacebar to play or stop playback. For additional shortcuts, see Keys for the Animation panel in Timeline Mode.

With Timeline panel in timeline animation mode, choose Allow Frame Skipping from the panel menu.

Connect a display device, such as a video monitor, to your computer via FireWire (IEEE 1394).

With a document open in Photoshop, do one of the following:

• If you don’t want to set output options for viewing your document on a device, choose File > Export > Send Video Preview To Device. You can skip the rest of the steps in this procedure.

• To set output options before viewing your document on the device, choose File > Export > Video Preview.

The Video Preview dialog box opens. If your document’s pixel aspect ratio doesn’t match the aspect ratio settings of the display device, you will see an alert.

Under Device Settings, specify options for the device that will display the image:

• (Mac OS) To specify an output mode, select NTSC or PAL. If the output mode and the device do not match (for example, specifying NTSC for the output mode and connecting to a device in PAL mode), black patches appear on previewing.

• To specify the aspect ratio of the display device, choose either Standard (4:3) or Widescreen (16:9) from the Aspect Ratio menu.

Under Image Options, choose a placement option to determine how the image appears in the display device:

Places the center of the image at the center of the screen, cropping the portions that fall outside the display edges of the video preview device.

Displays a 4:3 image on a 16:9 display with the center of the image at the center of the screen and gray bands on the left and right sides of the image. This option is available only if you chose Widescreen (16:9) for the device aspect ratio.

Displays a 16:9 image on a 4:3 display with the center of the image at the center of the screen and without distortion by cropping the left and right edges of the frame that fall outside the display edges of the video preview device. This option is available only if you chose Standard (4:3) for the device aspect ratio.

Scales a 16:9 image to fit on a 4:3 display. Gray bands appear on the top and bottom of the image due the difference in aspect ratio between the 16:9 image and the 4:3 display. This maintains the display aspect ratio without cropping or distorting the image. This option is available only if you chose Standard (4:3) for the device aspect ratio.

Displays a widescreen image cropped to a 14:9 aspect ratio with black bands on either the top and bottom of the image (when viewed on a 4:3 display) or on the left and right sides (when viewed on a 16:9 display). This maintains the display aspect ratio without distorting the image.

Choose an option from the Image Size menu to control whether the document pixels are scaled to the device display:

Applies no vertical scaling to the image. The image is cropped if its height is greater than that of the video display.

Increases or decreases the image height and width proportionally to fit in the video frame. With this option, a 16:9 image appears on a 4:3 display as letterbox, and a 4:3 image appears on a 16:9 display as pillarbox.

Select the Apply Pixel Aspect Ratio To Preview check box to display the image using the document’s (nonsquare) pixel aspect ratio. Deselect this option to display the image as it appears on your computer (square pixel) monitor.

By default, the Apply Pixel Aspect Ratio To Preview check box is selected to maintain the image’s pixel aspect ratio. In general, you would deselect this option if the document’s pixel aspect ratio is assumed to be square and you want to view the image as it would appear on a computer (square pixel) monitor.

Click OK to export the document to the device display.