Keyboard Shortcuts Reference
FOVEA uses keyboard shortcuts throughout the annotation interface. Most actions that require multiple clicks with the mouse can be performed with a single keystroke.
Video Navigation
The arrow keys control frame-by-frame navigation. Press → to move forward one frame or ← to move backward. Hold Shift with either arrow key to jump 10 frames at a time. For larger jumps, Home takes you to the first frame and End to the last.
When working with keyframes, Ctrl+→ and Ctrl+← jump directly to the next or previous keyframe in the sequence, skipping all interpolated frames between them.
Video playback follows standard conventions. Space toggles play and pause. The J, K, and L keys provide reverse, pause, and forward playback respectively, matching professional video editing software.
Annotation Actions
Press B to begin drawing a new bounding box. Once you have a box selected, K adds a keyframe at the current frame. To remove a keyframe, navigate to that frame and press Delete.
The V key toggles visibility for the selected annotation at the current frame. This creates visibility ranges when objects enter or leave the video frame. For more precise control, [ and ] mark in and out points for visibility.
To copy the previous frame's bounding box to the current frame, use C. This is useful for tracking slowly moving objects where interpolation might overshoot the actual position.
Press I to open the interpolation mode selector for the current segment. This lets you change how the system calculates intermediate frames between keyframes.
Press T to toggle the timeline panel visibility. The timeline replaces the standard video controls when expanded, showing keyframe markers and interpolation segments for precise editing.
Timeline Editing
Click keyframes on the timeline to select them. Ctrl+Click adds multiple keyframes to the selection. Shift+Click between two keyframes selects all keyframes in that range. Ctrl+A selects all keyframes in the sequence.
Drag keyframes to move them in time. Hold Alt while dragging to disable snapping, allowing precise frame placement.
Tracking Workflow
When reviewing tracking results, Y accepts the current track as an annotation and N rejects it. Press ↓ and ↑ to move between tracks in the results panel. Enter previews the selected track. Ctrl+T opens the tracking dialog from the video view.
Selection and Deselection
Tab cycles forward through annotations on the current frame. Shift+Tab cycles backward. This is faster than clicking each annotation when multiple objects overlap.
Esc deselects the current annotation or cancels the current drawing operation. Use it whenever you want to return to an unselected state.
Box Adjustments
With a box selected, the arrow keys nudge it 1 pixel in any direction. Hold Shift with the arrow keys to nudge 10 pixels at a time. This provides precise positioning without requiring mouse interaction.
Dialog and Export Operations
Ctrl+E opens the export dialog. Ctrl+I opens the import dialog. These work from anywhere in the application.
Ctrl+S saves the current annotation. While annotations auto-save as you work, this provides an explicit save action when needed.
Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z provide undo and redo functionality across most operations.
Platform Notes
On macOS, Cmd generally replaces Ctrl for standard operations like copy, paste, undo, and save. The exception is Ctrl+Click for multi-selection, which uses Ctrl on all platforms.
Context Help
Press ? at any time to show the keyboard shortcuts dialog with context-sensitive shortcuts for your current view.
Next Steps
The Bounding Box Sequences Guide demonstrates these shortcuts in practice. The Automated Tracking Guide covers tracking-specific shortcuts.