The timeline is the entire length of you composition. Your work space area is the length of your movie. This is also called the redering area. When I hit the play button for previewing my movie it happens within that space. This can be trimmed and edited. In order to trim your work space area:
- Move your time indicator to the desired spot on the timeline
- Press the letter N to activate the shortcut to trim the work area
There are usually more than one way to do something in After Effects. To manually trim your workspace:
- Move your mouse to the beginning the timeline and hover over the blue bar. This is the start of your work space area.
- Drag this bar to the right to trim your work area.
You can drag either the start or the end or the work space area. Trimming this shortens the duration of the comp. This is useful for previewing your movie or previewing a small section of you movie. Remember when you export or render your movie this workspace need to be trimmed to reflect exactly what you want exported. The duration of the workspace is the only thing that will be exported or rendered:
