The big stage is where you watch what you’re making — the movie someone opens on a phone after dinner. Import lives in the Library; order and trim also use the Timeline.
Hit Space. Scrub. Nudge. Does the toast land before the song swells?
- Space or the Play/Pause control
- Click or drag the playhead / time ruler to scrub
- Hover the ruler for a ghost preview before seeking
- ← / → nudge; ⇧ for larger steps
- ⌘→ / ⌘← next / previous slide; ⌥⌘← go to start
The clock is current / total. Beside it, 1 of N counts every photo card (including each seat in a group).
Workbench ambilight (color on the chrome) is display-only. Soft color from the playhead slide lights the title bar, Timeline bed, and Inspector seam — never the photo, never the export. The title bar settles a beat later (one flat color only).
Edit wants instant. Share wants smooth. Export wants the file.
| What it is | |
|---|---|
| Live preview | The stage while you edit. Motion, Looks, and captions update immediately. Can hitch on a heavy show. |
| Scrub | Drag the playhead or ruler. Hover the ruler for a ghost frame before you commit. After a bake, scrub uses that smooth pass; moving the playhead drops any paused cover so the head stays honest. |
| Baked (smooth play) | A pre-encoded pass so Space and scrub stay fluid. Finished segments stay on disk; reopen restores them if nothing changed. Play switches to this pass as soon as the first slides (or the whole show) are ready — it should not stay on the live, laggy preview. |
| Export | The H.264 MP4. Same choreography, framing, and audio as the baked show (preview seed matches export). Ambilight is not in the file. Format in the Export dialog can differ from the live preview swatch. |
MemoryString does not bake in the background while you edit. Edits appear live; style and framing keep updating the live stage while a bake catches up.
A heavy anniversary album should not stutter for the person who matters.
Essential warms automatically when you press Play, and shows Stop while a warm is running.
Studio adds controls on the transport row beside the slide counter:
- Auto-warm on Play (off by default) — start warming from the playhead when you press Space, without blocking the workbench
- Warm Now — bake only segments that are not ready yet (already-warm slides are skipped). Blocks the workbench with a progress dialog until those dirty segments finish, or until Cancel / Esc. Disabled when everything is already warm
- Stop — cancel an in-flight warm (Play warm or Warm Now)
A champagne working-status pill under the preview covers, in this order:
- Export — Edits paused while creating memory
- Bake — Warming k/n (Play / Auto-warm / Warm Now) or Updating k/n (a look/edit refresh of a finished bake)
- Asset / Loading music…
k/n matches the slide counter (every photo seat). Quiet stage means ready — no idle “Smooth play ready” message. Silence is the compliment.
See Essential and Studio.
The small round ring on a paused photo is center of interest — where motion aims so faces stay framed, not cropped at the ear. Originals never modified.
Auto (on import): every photo and video gets one — largest face (near the eyes), else main subject, else middle of the frame. Videos sample several frames in the trim window. Full order: Auto detection.
Manual override: pause and click (Tap photo to set focus). Ring jumps; status shows Focus · 62%, 38% (example). Drag pans and leaves focus alone. Each change its own ⌘Z.
Reset Center of Interest (right-click the paused photo) drops the override, re-runs detection, restores the import pick.
What it aims: Ken Burns and punch-in end here; blurred backdrop follows; Photo Stack, Carousel, 3D Ribbon, Perspective Pair, Filmstrip cards use it too. Depth dissolve, card flip, slide rotate, spiral-in, and reveal from depth show the whole photo — they ignore it.
On the intro, a single click on the still (or title) sets the same aim; double-click the title to edit text. Framing aim, not caption position.
Sideways phone photos happen. Fix here; originals stay untouched.
Right-click the paused photo or video (not the intro) → Rotate Right / Rotate Left / Flip Horizontal / Flip Vertical. Hidden while playing.
Paused on the intro: Set Intro Title, Set Background Image, Disable Intro Slide, and (Studio) Lens Effect.
While paused, double-click intro text to edit inline. Captions: single click selects; double-click hands off to the caption field. Captioned slides get a small blue speech-bubble badge on the Timeline.