Move playhead to cursor!

please allow a customizable shortcut that when clicked playhead moves to wherever cursor is in timeline.

It does that now.

Can you please tell me how to do this? I've been searching for over an hour without any luck and would super appreciate the bump in my workflow.

Just click at the top of the timeline. (This is pretty standard NLE behavior.)

Yes it is...but that’s not the feature the person writing this was requesting. The idea is that you don’t have to go to the top of the timeline. Your mouse can be anywhere in the timeline and you have a hot key that will bring the plAyhead to wherever your mouse is without having to go to the bar. I know it seems small, but it saves a ton of time once it’s mapped to a multi mouse and you don’t have to think about where the play head is or where the top bar is, you just click a button and it’s where you need it to be.

Would love to see this feature added in resolve!

Other NLE's my do this, but I have come to really appreciate the Resolve way of handling this. Simple reason: your selected clips don't get deselected as you move around the timeline header. That's also a real time saver.

A lot of things in Resolve may appear slower at first, but are faster in the end because the workflow is more precise.

premiere doesnt deselect clips either (unless you have that boxed checked and lumetri color open), and resolve could add the toggle as premiere does to maintain your workflow.

This is probably a dead thread, but I did make this function using AutoHotKey and it can be applied to any application with a timeline. If you're on Windows and are willing to google how to use AutoHotKey a little bit, you should be able to adapt this function for your needs. Download this folder from my Github and check out the example. Basically the function searches for an image that remains the same distance away from the timeline in the y direction, clicks on the timeline and moves the mouse back down to the original position and holds the click until the assigned hotkey is let go. It does have some optimization to make it faster than searching the entire screen everytime the function is called too. If this is confusing I can make a lil vid on how to set it up.

Download folder here:
https://github.com/UnBOlievable/TimeLineClick

What this looks like in action:
https://imgur.com/a/x5BYCVJ

It does that now.

How? In Pr I have made it Ctrl+Tab And wherever my cursor on timeline is - there goes the playhead. I have of course mapped that one of the extra buttons on my mouse. The most useful hack. The biggest time savor of them all.

God bless you UnBOlievable, that AutoHotKey script did the trick! Sweet! Except I changed the hotkey to ALT-Z as K was part of the JKL trio that I already use to play fwd/bckwd. For anyone else looking, this is how I changed the hotkey to ALT-Z (it's the "!z::" below):

#IfWinActive ahk_exe Resolve.exe
{
!z::
timelineClick([A_ScriptDir . "\Resolve\ImageSearch\EditPageTimelineSettings.png", A_ScriptDir . "\Resolve\ImageSearch\FairlightClock.png", A_ScriptDir . "\Resolve\ImageSearch\CutPageSplitClip.png"], [[27,17],[14,15],[17,25]], [45,30,45])
Return
}

@UnBOlievable
can you make a little vid on how I set this up please..tried to follow the instructions but I can't seem to make it

@UnBOlievable
can you make a little vid on how I set this up please..tried to follow the instructions but I can't seem to make it

I can't post links on here now, but just search "Auto Timeline Click" on YouTube. Hope it helps!

But back on topic, it would be really neat to have this shortcut in Resolve!

This is one of those features that I am really missing in DaVinci Resolve. Now we are talking about version 17.1 and this is not implemented and yet Premiere Pro and Final Cut both have this for ages? I truly hope this `Move Playhead to Cursor` would be added.

With that I also hope that Blackmagic would start a `UserVoices` page that is not just like this forum but instead a site where users could vote on things and `BMD` can comment, give us a status update the way Adobe has been doing for a few years now.

Other NLE's my do this, but I have come to really appreciate the Resolve way of handling this. Simple reason: your selected clips don't get deselected as you move around the timeline header. That's also a real time saver.

A lot of things in Resolve may appear slower at first, but are faster in the end because the workflow is more precise.

You don't seem to understand...This here idea implies that the clips still wouldn't be deselected. But at the same time you would have way more room to aim the cursor and jump through the timeline. This proposition is a win win really.

Say you set CTRL for this... Then everytime you hold down CTRL, you could just click anywhere inside the timeline in order to go to that point. Doesn't matter if there is a clip there, since you have the CTRL pressed, that clip would not get selected when you click.

This is actually a great idea and I really hope they implement it.

Plus one for this feature from me.

I'd point out:
Up and Down Arrows: Jump to begining of prev/next clip
Left/Right: Move playhead 1 frame
Shift +Left/Right: Move playhead 1 second

Bump

i like the current behaviour.

Bump.

i like the current behaviour.

I don't think the current behavior would change. They're just asking for a new shortcut that would move the playhead to wherever the mouse is in the timeline. The behavior of clicking the top of the timeline with the mouse to move the playhead would not change.

This idea could even be taken further, like a shortcut where you could play the timeline from the playhead postion to the mouse cursor location. If the mouse cursor is to the right of the playhead, it would play forward. If the cursor is to the left of the playhead, it would play in reverse.

And another shortcut that would play from the mouse cursor position back to the previous playhead position.

+1
I would love to simply hit strg to make the playhead move to the current mouse position.

I managed to create an AutoHotkey script to do this.

I just hold down/click the 'mousewheel ' to the left with my index finger and the Playhead follows it everywhere I go. This script does an image search for the Playhead, takes bout 111ms to take action.

I tried using it without the script and I cant' believe I used to edit without it. I find it impossible without it now haha.

I managed to create an AutoHotkey script to do this.

I just hold down/click the 'mousewheel ' to the left with my index finger and the Playhead follows it everywhere I go. This script does an image search for the Playhead, takes bout 111ms to take action.

I tried using it without the script and I cant' believe I used to edit without it. I find it impossible without it now haha.

Are you willing to share it with us

+1 for this keybinding. Also: let us bind it to a mouse button.

+1

In Fusion's Spline and Keyframes panes, Control+Alt (Cmd+Option) + click will jump the playhead to the cursor point. Adding that would both increase Edit functionality, and be more consistent across the app.

+1

The request is quite similar to the "Edit Selection Mode" in Fairlight, which doesn't needs a shortcut, but is the "Play/stop" key the shortcut to lead the playhead to the mouse pointer.

I love Fairlights' "Edit Selection Mode" .

In fact I give +1 to implement "Edit Selection Mode" on Edit Page (and Cut page, even Color Page timeline panel)

[/quote]Are you willing to share it with us [/quote] Give me a week or so, I'm a bit busy till I finish a project. Do you have a PC and a left-clicking mouse wheel?

+1 for keyboard and/or mouse

+1 Would love this

+1 please implement this feature, this is essential for fast editing

I hate to drum this up again, but it's still missing and I would still love to see this added. No clue why there is no movement on these relatively trivial things.

All the performance gains of DaVinci Resolve are not really worth much if we have to change completely how some of us like to use our NLE.

Finally, I had some free time and was able to implement a solution for myself with Hammerspoon (which is kind of like AutoHotKey for macOS).

Here you can see how it works in action:

davici-resolve-move-playhead-to-cursor.gif (819.75 KiB) Viewed 22650 times

This is far from perfect and I probably need to make it a bit more robust over the coming weeks as I use it myself. But it's already pretty good in terms of performance.

The solution works like this:

• When you open or switch to Resolve, Hammerspoon runs a Node.JS script in the background which takes a screenshot and locates the Timeline View Options Icon (this is done on window activation rather than on click / keypress because at this time, this opencv script takes about 1 second to load).
• Once the position is determined, you can click into any empty areas of the timeline and the mouse will jump into the time area to start dragging and then it already comes back to the starting position so you can simply move it left to right (I determine that the cursor is in the timeline by color matching).
• Alternatively, I can press "s" as a keyboard shortcut to make the playhead jump to the mouse pointer.

This idea was heavily dependent on something I already was doing with Premiere Pro for the past year or so, but there I did not have to "locate the time bar" and instead was just able to call the "Move Playhead to Cursor" keyboard shortcut.

I would obviously still prefer this to be actually implemented, but long and behold, there are solutions now for Windows and for macOS.

Let me know if you are interested in this and I will try to make it available on GitHub in the coming weeks.

Very Cool! Chris thats a great work around. definetly wish they would just add a shortcut. Is it dependent on the timeline view options in a certain place or can it be in any orientation as long its visiable somewhere?

interested in more details how to do this fully

Hi cire30a, this is basically searching for a specific icon on the screen and then estimates the timeline part where to click based on fixed values.

The clicks are recognized based on the fact that the color is found in an array of colors and additionally, only clicks which are below the timeline (with the time marker numbers are).

I will try to work on a video explaining how to set this up when I get to it.

+1

+1000 here i actually reinstalled PowerDirector again to see what the default behavior is, for sure when you click on a clip the playhead will 'auto-locate' to the object start. This is such an ingrained workflow to me now i forgot how useful that is - until i tried Davinci! especially once you get into bigger projects with many clips and edits. if you need to find something quickly this is the only way, who wants to click in the timeline 4000 times a day! not me! let computers do what they do best.
I see that Blackmagic indeed already has the code to auto-locate the playhead. just press the up/down arrows and wella! the playhead auto-locates to the object start! but - only in consecutive/adjacent clips - not random access like when you're trying to quickly nav to a different part of the project. This is where i don't want to be clicking in the timeline all day. so - Blackmagic if you're listening, *please* add this. a shortcut key is fine, it should most definitely be a toggle as many users have pointed out- this behavior is for locating and auditioning purposes, not for when doing micro-editing as that would mess up trying to do other selections where the playhead needs to stay put. so, for 'Auto Locate Play Position to Object Start' - it would need to be easily switched on & off. Maybe an icon in the transport area where you could see when it's enabled. Or just a custom shortcut so the users who need this can activate it, and others who don't will never know it's there. the short name would be something like 'Play-Locate'. long name: Auto Locate Play Position to Object Start on Object Click().

+1

To me this is related to:
"How do I get back to where my last edit was?" viewtopic.php?f=21&t=157594

Another editing convenience that many other NLEs have and that would make Resolve more pleasant to use.

Chris this is exactly what I need to set up on my mac. Any chance you could share a video of how you set up that hotkey function?

Thank you for bringing this issue up! It is the most used hotkey in my arsenal.

Hi cire30a, this is basically searching for a specific icon on the screen and then estimates the timeline part where to click based on fixed values.

The clicks are recognized based on the fact that the color is found in an array of colors and additionally, only clicks which are below the timeline (with the time marker numbers are).

I will try to work on a video explaining how to set this up when I get to it.

Would be amazing!!

+1 on this idea, and if I get brave enough, I may try and install one of these bindings.

I would go further and say tie the Command + Scroll Wheel zoom should also be considered as part of such an improvement to the UI.

In Photoshop or Affinity Designer, you can use the scroll wheel zoom mechanism to move around the entire composition without having to be locked onto a particular layer or portion of the composition. This behavior does not require the user to change the tool either. I can do it from anywhere to quickly move around and select a new element to work on.

I find myself doing this in DaVinci Resolve all the time -- I moved my playhead to the end of a long timeline, but then I back out with the zoom to find another part of the timeline on which to work. The minute I zoom back in, I'm back at the playhead instead of where I REALLY wanted to zoom to. This could absolutely be coupled with or made complementary to a dynamic playhead position on click (the hotkey fixes that people have built and mentioned in this thread).

+1 on this idea, and if I get brave enough, I may try and install one of these bindings.

I would go further and say tie the Command + Scroll Wheel zoom should also be considered as part of such an improvement to the UI.

In Photoshop or Affinity Designer, you can use the scroll wheel zoom mechanism to move around the entire composition without having to be locked onto a particular layer or portion of the composition. This behavior does not require the user to change the tool either. I can do it from anywhere to quickly move around and select a new element to work on.

I find myself doing this in DaVinci Resolve all the time -- I moved my playhead to the end of a long timeline, but then I back out with the zoom to find another part of the timeline on which to work. The minute I zoom back in, I'm back at the playhead instead of where I REALLY wanted to zoom to. This could absolutely be coupled with or made complementary to a dynamic playhead position on click (the hotkey fixes that people have built and mentioned in this thread).

You can also fix this behavior with timeline>zoom in to mouse cursor

Do you mean Playhead snapping with the mouse cursor like in Final Cut Pro X?

I hate that and I don't understand how to work with it in the timeline. The playhead must stay where I placed it when I work with the cursor in another part of the timeline. So, for example, I can use Extend edit and other great functions from the Edit menu.

The Timeline Viewer must also show the place where the cursor is and not frantically show every movement of the mouse cursor. This is a headache when working for many hours every day.

I understand that the feature can be turned on optionally, but I prefer to learn the standard work in the timeline than the innovative experiments from the crazy FCP X or NLE from the Adobe world.

Do you mean Playhead snapping with the mouse cursor like in Final Cut Pro X?

I hate that and I don't understand how to work with it in the timeline. The playhead must stay where I placed it when I work with the cursor in another part of the timeline. So, for example, I can use Extend edit and other great functions from the Edit menu.

The Timeline Viewer must also show the place where the cursor is and not frantically show every movement of the mouse cursor. This is a headache when working for many hours every day.

I understand that the feature can be turned on optionally, but I prefer to learn the standard work in the timeline than the innovative experiments from the crazy FCP X or NLE from the Adobe world.

Just because you don't want to use a feature doesn't mean it shouldn't be an option.

Do you mean Playhead snapping with the mouse cursor like in Final Cut Pro X?

I hate that and I don't understand how to work with it in the timeline. The playhead must stay where I placed it when I work with the cursor in another part of the timeline. So, for example, I can use Extend edit and other great functions from the Edit menu.

The Timeline Viewer must also show the place where the cursor is and not frantically show every movement of the mouse cursor. This is a headache when working for many hours every day.

I understand that the feature can be turned on optionally, but I prefer to learn the standard work in the timeline than the innovative experiments from the crazy FCP X or NLE from the Adobe world.

Just because you don't want to use a feature doesn't mean it shouldn't be an option.

For me, it's good that Blackmagic hears that not everyone wants to have this feature in DaVinci.
I wrote above about the solution that the feature can be optional.

This is a very needed and super basic feature. I can't believe after all this time it still doesn't exist. I'm new to Resolve with way too much to learn so as it is, I really hate that I have to fight a nonsensical play head on top of all that! I think premier is the only other program I used that worked like this and I really hated that too! I just don't understand why anyone would want to constantly move around a timeline ruler at the very top of the timeline verses just simply clicking anywhere around the media itself for simple easy playhead placement. All work is done on the timeline where the media is located, why on earth would I or anyone want to click somewhere else just to move the playhead? It makes no sense to me and it is a painfully slow way of doing an otherwise simple thing.

Wherever I click, that's where the playhead needs to show up. Doing this simple thing any other way is just uncivilized!

Cheers

it seems this thread is losing the initial request. The idea and hope for myself and others is resolve will add the ability to add a keyboard shortcut so when pressed with cursor anywhere over the timeline (or program source monitor too if they could), the playhead would jump to that cursor. and if you hold that hotkey it basically will drag it the playhead around (if it worked i quoted someone who demonstrated a homebrew fix hack). its a very fast and snappy way to move around when you have 30 sum layers of audio tracks and 8 layers of video, especially when using a tablet, it gives another level of precision. its one of the few features from premiere that i had to change my workflow with and still miss greatly.

Finally, I had some free time and was able to implement a solution for myself with Hammerspoon (which is kind of like AutoHotKey for macOS).

Here you can see how it works in action:

davici-resolve-move-playhead-to-cursor.gif

Do you mean Playhead snapping with the mouse cursor like in Final Cut Pro X?

I hate that and I don't understand how to work with it in the timeline. The playhead must stay where I placed it when I work with the cursor in another part of the timeline. So, for example, I can use Extend edit and other great functions from the Edit menu.

The Timeline Viewer must also show the place where the cursor is and not frantically show every movement of the mouse cursor. This is a headache when working for many hours every day.

I understand that the feature can be turned on optionally, but I prefer to learn the standard work in the timeline than the innovative experiments from the crazy FCP X or NLE from the Adobe world.

Just because you don't want to use a feature doesn't mean it shouldn't be an option.

For me, it's good that Blackmagic hears that not everyone wants to have this feature in DaVinci.
I wrote above about the solution that the feature can be optional.

I don't understand what you are saying. Having the feature would not change anything for those who wouldn't want to use it.

For me, it's good that Blackmagic hears that not everyone wants to have this feature in DaVinci.
I wrote above about the solution that the feature can be optional.

I don't understand what you are saying. Having the feature would not change anything for those who wouldn't want to use it.

This is an golden answer for the "feature request" forum

For me, it's good that Blackmagic hears that not everyone wants to have this feature in DaVinci.
I wrote above about the solution that the feature can be optional.

I don't understand what you are saying. Having the feature would not change anything for those who wouldn't want to use it.

This is an golden answer for the "feature request" forum

Could you explain what do you mean?

I don't understand what you are saying. Having the feature would not change anything for those who wouldn't want to use it.

This is an golden answer for the "feature request" forum

Could you explain what do you mean?

Many times FR are misunderstood. Why new "options" requested are understand as the new "only" way of doing ?

So what you are saying is that people here are under the impression that new features will be a replacement not a stand alone addition... right?

Well then all I have to say is how hugely counter-productive is that? We are far behind in "evolution" simply because we fail to communicate concisely