timeline playback is really solid, i like that you can make a selection while the playback is playing to change the range and length. there however doesntr seem to be a way to interrupt the playback and only watch the beginning with for example the "first frame" keyboard shortcut or button. Also when selecting the top of the timeline you would expect the playback to start at that point, but that doesnt happen
It would be a good idea to test your animation bug reports using the latest nightly 5.0.0-prealpha portable .zip package, after making backups (for later restoration) of your configuration files and resources folder. The 5.0.0-prealpha has many changes to animation and has the new Animation Timeline docker.
I think what you're asking for here is a loop point system -- and I agree with that. Right now, the way this works is that the playback range is hijacked temporarily which works, but doesn't allow for the user to playback before the selected range. It would be nice to fix this, particularly for game animations that need to be designed with loop points in mind. However, since bugs / tasks have piled up that I want done before Krita 5, I think this will have to wait for the next immediate version.
I think this has actually been improved quite a while ago now that the STOP transport button has a dual-function: 1. If you hit STOP while PLAYING it should bring you back to whatever point the playback started from. (For example, if you started playback from frame #24, hitting stop while the animation is playing should bring you right back to frame #24.) 2. If you hit STOP while the animation is already STOPPED, it should bring you back to frame #0 or the start of the animation. (Note: there is currently 1 open edge case bug related to playback position which will cause this to work incorrectly, but I should be able to fix it soon. Generally it should be working as described above though.)
Resolving this for now. Please reopen if there is more we can do to make this work better.