Global time is the time a Player, Schematic, or Animation Editor view uses. This time may be either master or standalone time. Remember, you can use master and standalone time to synchronize or separate playback between two or more views—see Playing Back in Multiple Views.

Local time becomes relevant when you add a Time Offset tool to a node of the composition. A Time Offset tool creates a local time in all nodes that precede it along the branch, i.e. the nodes at the left of the Schematic. When you select a node affected by a Time Offset tool, you can disable the Global button in the Tool Options area of the Tool UI to see the local time of the tool—see Converting the Frame Rate and Offsetting Time.

The Time Offset tool lets you adjust the timing relationship between two branches of the dependency graph. For example, if you need to synchronize action in two separate shots, you can create a composition with a branch for each shot and use a Time Offset tool along one branch to adjust the timing relationship between the two shots.

You can examine the local time and global time of a node affected by a Time Offset node in the Tool Options area of the tool UI.