Timing and motion
Reveal and animation
How candles and annotations draw themselves in — styles, easing, durations and delays.
Two separate systems that share one clock: how the candles come in, and how each annotation comes in.
Candles
Settings → Motion → Animation controls the chart itself.
Turning reveal off puts every candle on screen from the first frame. Your annotations still arrive on their own timing — this switch only governs the candles, which is what makes "finished chart, annotations building on top" a one-click format.
With it on:
- Style is how a single candle draws itself: growing from the open, wiping up, fading.
- Easing is the speed curve, and unlike style it applies to candles and annotations. Setting it here sets it everywhere, which is what keeps a video feeling like one piece.
Annotations
Each element carries its own reveal on its Animation tab:
| Field | Unit | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Style | — | Fade, wipe, draw, slide, instant… |
| Duration | candle-widths | How long the entrance takes |
| Delay | candle-widths | Wait after the appear moment |
| Exit duration | candle-widths | How long the departure takes |
| Slide in | direction | Where it comes from, for styles that move |
| Emphasis | — | A pulse on arrival |
Durations are in candle-widths on purpose — see how timing works. Change the tempo and every animation stays proportional to the chart.
Delay is underrated
Three things arriving at the same instant is a mess; three things arriving a beat apart is a sequence. Giving each a slightly larger delay is the cheapest way to make a busy frame readable, and it costs no extra time in the video.
Emphasis
A pulse driven by the scene clock, never by wall time — so the preview and the export pulse identically and scrubbing does not desynchronise them.
Use it sparingly. Emphasis on one element per video is a signal; on five it is a tic.
Glow
Settings → Appearance → Style carries a single glow control, and it is one bloom pass over the finished picture rather than a per-element effect. Candles, levels and lines glow together.
Preview and export run the same pass, so the intensity you set is the intensity in the file.
Off is pixel-identical to a project that never had glow at all.
Glow costs render time
It is a quarter-resolution blur once per frame, not a shadow per element — so its cost does not grow with how much you have drawn. It is not free, though. If an export is slow, this is the first switch to try.