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How to: Set a Duration for an Animation

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A Timeline represents a segment of time and the length of that segment is determined by the timeline's Duration. When a Timeline reaches the end of its duration, it stops playing. If the Timeline has child timelines, they stop playing as well. In the case of an animation, the Duration specifies how long the animation takes to transition from its starting value to its ending value.

You can specify a Duration with a specific, finite time or the special values Automatic or Forever. An animation's duration must always be a time value, because an animation must always have a defined, finite length—otherwise, the animation would not know how to transition between its target values. Container timelines (TimelineGroup objects), such as Storyboard and ParallelTimeline, have a default duration of Automatic, which means they automatically end when their last child stops playing.

In the following example, the width, height and fill color of a Rectangle is animated. Durations are set on animation and container timelines resulting in animation effects including controlling the perceived speed of an animation and overriding the duration of child timelines with the duration of a container timeline.

Example

<Page 
  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" 
  xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml">
  <StackPanel Margin="20">
  
    <Rectangle Width="100" Height="100" Name="myRectangle">
      <Rectangle.Fill>
        <SolidColorBrush x:Name="MyAnimatedBrush" Color="Black" />
      </Rectangle.Fill>
      <Rectangle.Triggers>
      
        <!-- Animates the rectangle fill to yellow and width to 300. -->
        <EventTrigger RoutedEvent="Rectangle.Loaded">
          <BeginStoryboard>

            <!-- By default, TimelineGroup objects like Storyboard and ParallelTimeline have 
            a Duration of "Automatic". A TimelineGroup's automatic duration encompasses its 
            last-ending child. In this example, there is only one child of the Storyboard, the
            ParallelTimeline, so when the ParallelTimeline ends, the Storyboard duration will
            automatically end. -->
            <Storyboard>

              <!-- This ParallelTimeline has overriden its default duration of "Automatic" with
              a finite duration of half a second. This will force this Timeline to end after half a
              second even though its child Timelines have a longer duration (2 and 4 seconds respectively). 
              This cuts off the animation prematurely and the rectangle's fill will not go all the way to 
              yellow nor will the rectangle width get all the way to 300. Again, the default duration of a
              ParallelTimeline is "Automatic" so if you remove the finite duration, the ParallelTimeline
              will wait for its child timelines to end before it ends. -->

              <!-- Note: To specify a finite time in XAML, use the syntax of "days:hours:seconds". As mentioned,
              this ParallelTimeline has a duration of half a second. -->
              <ParallelTimeline Duration="0:0:0.5">

                <!-- For Animation Timelines like DoubleAnimation, the duration is one factor that
                determines the rate at which an animation appears to progress. For example, the DoubleAnimation
                below that animates the rectangle height will complete in only one second while the animation
                that animates the width willwill complete in 2 seconds which is relatively fast compared to the DoubleAnimation
                which animates the rectangle width over 4 seconds. -->
                <DoubleAnimation
                  Storyboard.TargetName="myRectangle"
                  Storyboard.TargetProperty="Height"
                  To="300" Duration="0:0:1" />

                <DoubleAnimation
                  Storyboard.TargetName="myRectangle"
                  Storyboard.TargetProperty="Width"
                  To="300" Duration="0:0:4" />

                <ColorAnimation
                  Storyboard.TargetName="MyAnimatedBrush"
                  Storyboard.TargetProperty="Color"
                  To="Yellow" Duration="0:0:2" />

              </ParallelTimeline>
            </Storyboard>
          </BeginStoryboard>
        </EventTrigger>
        
      </Rectangle.Triggers>
    </Rectangle>
  </StackPanel>
</Page>

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