How can I manage multiple animations in one .blend file? The way I currently use animations is just one long timeline. All my separate animations are lined up back to back on this single timeline. I keep the start/end frame numbers in a separate file.

This becomes a problem when I want to expand, shrink or alter an animation. Since the length of the animation changes, the start/end frames of all subsequent animations also changes. This requires me to manually parse the timeline and update my file with the new start/end frames. The file looks something like this:

0:0:6:6=SPECIAL_SETUP
7:7:22:22=ATTACK_1_FireTurret
23:23:44:44=IDLE_ANIMATION_1_Sweep
45:45:55:55=IDLE_ANIMATION_30_Stationary


Where the format is as follows:

[Start frame]:[Loop start]:[Loop end]:[End frame]=Name of animation


I would like to not do this anymore. Since it can get messy.

How can I have multiple animations, each with their own timeline, inside a single .blend file?

Alternatively, is there a way to place markers in my timeline that can be used to automatically generate a file like the above. The markers would ideally move with the frame they are attached to, not the specific frame number.
If you go to the Dopesheet View you can create and name separate animations with the Action Editor pane. You can also use the main Dopesheet pane to scale your animations.



Each of these animations as it relates to the objects do have their own separate timelines within Blender and can be linked or copied to other .blend files.

Also you can press M in the timeline to add a marker. I would really recommend desisting from the approach you have been using as it's very inefficient and is prone to error.