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Making a Movie
Each animation frame can be saved as a bitmap file for creation of a movie. A separate program is then used to assemble the files into a movie. The discussion here applies to history and kcycle animations as well as time animations.
The track property pages supporting animations (Time, History, and Kcode) each contain a Save Frames checkbox and a Folder button. The Folder button is used to specify the directory in which the frame bitmaps are saved. Select any file in the desired directory to set the location; the selected file will not be opened. The use of a dedicated directory for the frames will facilitate selecting the files for importing in the movie program and for deletion once the movie is made. The animation should be shown in only one plot to prevent images from different plots being intermingled.
The files are written when Save Frames is checked and the animation is started with the Animate button on the property page; they are not written when the animation is started with a function key. Save Frames is always unchecked when the page is displayed and reverts to unchecked when the animation terminates. It is strongly recommended that Loop be unchecked so only a single cycle of the animation is saved. The files are namedFrameN.bmpwhereNstarts at 0 for the first frame and is formatted to 4 digits padded on the left with 0s if necessary. No more than 9999 frames can be saved. Any existing files are overwritten. The size of the movie file will be considerably smaller than the aggregate size of the frame files.
During the animation, the window showing the animation should not be covered by other windows, including the tracks property sheet.
We discuss our experience using Windows Movie Maker here (Movie Maker is supplied with Windows XP service pack 2.) Any existing frames remembered by Movie Maker from a previous movie should be removed within the program. The animation frames are loaded with the Import Pictures item in the Movie Tasks pane.
In the movie, the duration is the amount of time each frame is displayed. The default Movie Maker Durations are too long and should be changed by selecting Options in the Tools menu and going to the Advanced tab. Our choice is to set the Transition duration as low as possible (.25 seconds). For the Picture duration, we use 0.1 seconds for time animations and 0.5 seconds for history and kcycle animations.
The Storyboard (rather than the Timeline) should be visible at the bottom of Movie Maker (if the button between the collection and bottom panes reads Show Storyboard, click it).
Select all frames by clicking in the collection pane and then choosing Select All in the Edit menu. Drag the selected frames to the storyboard pane. The default durations are applied when the storyboard is populated.
To create the movie, select Save to my computer under Finish Movie in the Movie Tasks pane. Except for the movie file name and location, choosing the default settings in the subsequent wizard should result in a satisfactory movie. We have encountered cases where Movie Maker reported that it could not make the movie; it did make the movie after rebooting the computer.
Our practice is to delete the frame bitmap files once an acceptable movie has been made. The files should be removed from both the collection and storyboard panes of Movie Maker before deleting them from the computer to prevent the program from hanging.
 White Rock Science http://www.whiterockscience.com/wrs.html 505 672 1105 |
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