The Director's Chair: Scrub, Speed & Reverse

Part 2 pressed play on a cinematic. A real director does more than that. They call for a slow-mo replay, freeze on the hero shot, skip to the climax, and ask "where are we in the take right now?" The Cinematic Sequence device exposes its entire timeline to Verse — so all of that is just a few calls away.

The director's controls

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Director Controls

On top of Play/PlayReverse/Stop, the device gives you a full editing desk:

Cine.SetPlayRate(2.0)          # speed dial: 1.0 normal, 0.5 slow-mo, negative = backward
Cine.SetPlaybackTime(0.0)      # teleport the playhead to a time in seconds
Now := Cine.GetPlaybackTime()  # read where the playhead is now
Cine.TogglePause()             # flip between playing and paused, keeping position
Cine.GoToEndAndStop()          # snap to the final frame and stop

Two of these change how it plays, two of these jump or read the playhead, and TogglePause is the freeze-frame. Combine them and you can script any "director" move you've seen in a montage.

A few things to internalize:

• SetPlayRate is a multiplier on top of the authored timeline. 0.5 is slow motion, 2.0 is fast-forward, and a negative rate plays it backward — another way to reverse, with speed control.
• SetPlaybackTime is instant. It doesn't animate to that time; it teleports the playhead there. Pair it with Play() to "start the replay from 0," or with Pause to land on an exact frozen frame.
• GetPlaybackTime is your sync hook. Read it to drive other systems: "once the camera passes 4 seconds, open the gate."

A four-button replay room

This device wires four buttons to four director moves over a single cinematic — a replay-room control panel you can drop into any island.

Read the four moves:

• Slow-mo — SetPlaybackTime(0.0) rewinds the playhead to the start, SetPlayRate(0.5) halves the speed, then Play(). A clean slow-motion replay from the top.
• Freeze — TogglePause() flips play↔pause and keeps the playhead exactly where it is. Press again to resume. That's your freeze-frame.
• Skip — GoToEndAndStop() snaps to the final frame and stops (and, from Part 2, fires StoppedEvent). Great for an impatient "show me the result" button.
• Inspect — reads GetPlaybackTime() and GetPlayRate() and prints them. In a real island you'd branch on that value to trigger other systems in sync with the shot.

This device is compile-verified in UEFN 5.8 (the whole project builds clean with it installed). Grab it as 03-device.verse and wire one Cinematic Sequence device plus four Buttons into the @editable slots.

Why "scrub" beats "re-author"

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Dynamic Timeline

Every move here works on one authored cinematic. You don't make a "slow version" and a "fast version" in Sequencer — you author it once and let Verse re-time, re-position, and re-play it however the moment needs. That's the whole point of putting the timeline under code: the content is fixed, the performance is dynamic.

Recap

• The device exposes its whole timeline: SetPlayRate, SetPlaybackTime, GetPlaybackTime, TogglePause, GoToEndAndStop (plus GetPlayRate).
• SetPlayRate is a multiplier: 0.5 slow-mo, 2.0 fast, negative plays backward.
• SetPlaybackTime teleports the playhead instantly — it doesn't animate there.
• TogglePause is a freeze-frame: it keeps the playhead in place.
• GetPlaybackTime is your sync hook to fire other systems in step with the shot.

Next — Part 4: The Grand Reveal — the capstone: we choreograph the animated mesh, the cinematic, and a character emote into one timed, multi-beat show, orchestrated by a <suspends> coroutine.