MOVIESETTER [DOC!] CREATE YOUR OWN MOVIES! Disk Drives : One Amiga 3.5 floppy disk drive is required. Conventions Used in This Manual : The MovieSetter manual and the software it describes follow the standart Amiga user interface. It is assumed that you have some familiarity with basic Amiga procedures. However, as a refresher, we recommend that you read the fallowing conventions adhered to throughout this manual. * Bullets (*) indicate related informations, lists, or sequences. * The use of Amiga hierarchy of terms for pull down menus. Main menus are called "menus", options in a menu are called "items", and options in sup-menus are called "sup-items". The terms "requester", "gadget", and "tools" are also used. * Menu selections are often listed in this manual using the format: Menu/Item/Sup-item. For example, Text/Style/Bold refers to the Bold supitem in the Style item of the Text menu. * Moving the mouse pointer to a desired location, pressing and quickly releasing the left button is called "clicking". If this is done in order to activate an object, it is sometimes referred to as "selecting". Making a Working Copy of MovieSetter : Immendiately make one back-up copy of your disk to use as you working disks. Store the original MovieSetter disks in a safe place, retrieving only to make additional replacement copies if your back-up disks are lost or damaged. For your convenience, MovieSetter is not Copy-protected. Please respect the fact that Gold Disk Inc. have made it easy for you to make an authorised back-up to prevent risk to your original copies. Do not sell, lend, give, or otherwise distribute the MovieSetter programm to anyone. Starting MovieSetter [from the Workbench:] * Insert the MovieSetter Program disk in the drive to boot the system. * Double click on the MovieSetter Program disk icon to bring up the MovieSetter window. * Double click on the MovieSetter Program icon to start the program. Loading a Production : Once we`ve run MovieSetter we start with a new production, that contains no backgrounds or tracks. This is a clean slate. Before we try creating our own production, lets load one from the disk. Using the mouse put the pointer at the very top left or your screen and press and hold down the right mouse button. A menu will drop down called "Production". Lets select the seconds item called "load". A requester will appear titled "load production". At this point eject your MovieSetter program disk and insert the MovieClip disk in drive Df0:. Now select the gadged called df0: with your left mouse button. The text beside the word "drawer" has changed to the name of the currently selected disk. The larger white area now shows a list of all the individual files and directories have suffix "" after them. Click on the one called "Productions". A list of the files available in the directory "Productions" will appear. Note that the "drawer" ha been updated to include the directory we selected. This helps us keep track of where we are on the disk. We`ll begin by loading in a simple animation. Double click on the production called "Demo" with the left mouse button. The requester will disappear as the production is loaded in. A new window appears which displays to us what parts of the current production are being loaded in from the disk. When the background appears on screen the production is loaded and ready to be shown. Playing a Production : On top of the background there is a requester that has arrows pointing to the left and right, and a series of numbers underneath. This is the "Player Control Window". It operates similarly to a VCR remote control, allowing you to step backwards or forwards single frames, play forwards or reverse, and go to the beginning or end of the production. The current position in the production is always displayed as the frame number and elapsed time. Try clicking on the play forwards button: the movie you loaded will play in a continuous loop until you hit the "space bar". Stop the movie, click ob the loop button and click on play forward button again. This time, the movie will not loop continuously and will stop when is has reached the point where it started. Although the player window disappears during full-speed playback, the operation of the mevie can still be controlled using the keyboard. Hold down the key same time click the play forward button. This is like pressing the pause button on a VCR. MovieSetter holds at the current frame until you tell it to play. Hit and the movie plays forward. Try hitting , the movie will immendiately reverse directions.

pauses, while and mimic the step forward and step reverse button respectively. Hit the space bar to stop the movie. The player control window will reappear. A second way to manoeuvre through you movie is to enter a specific frame number or time. Try this by clicking on the numbers in the player window and entering new values. If you enter a number which would put you beyond the end of the movie, you will be put at the end of the movie. MovieSetter Terminology : These are some of the terms that relate to MovieSetter that will be used in the manual. Production : This is a MovieSetter movie. The animated secuence or movie that you create with MovieSetter. It can be played back at any time from within MovieSetter or viewed with the use of the MovieSetter. Backgrounds : A picture that forms the backdrop for scenes in you production. It is simple an IFF picture that can be as large as 352 x 240 pixels in overscan mode. Backgrounds can be scrolled underneath your animations and can contain up to 32 different colours. Face : An IFF bitmap or brush. It can be imported from a paint program, clipped from an existing IFF picture in the set editor or drawn in the set editor using MovieSetter`s built in drawing tools. Set : A collection of faces that are combined using the set editor into a single animated motion. A walking character would be considered a set as it is composed of several different faces. Tracks : An animation created by ordering and positioning faces from a set. An unlimited number of tracks can overlap in any given frame. In any one frame, only one element from every visible tracks is shown. Tracks can be overlayed behind or in front of each other in any order. Given a set of a character walking, a track might be the character standing stationary for several frames, walking a distance and falling off the screen through a manhole. Events : Events are actions that happen in an individual frame. A color change, timing change, colour cycling or a sampled sound being heard are all examples of MovieSetter avents. Tutorial : This tutorial is designed to clarify terms we`ve introduced ( face, set, background, track, event ) and help you create your first animation. Creating a Production : Let`s create a simple production of our own using some of the clip art provided with MovieSetter. Before wa load in any of the individual elements, let`s select Project/Clear to clear anything that already might be in our production. Loading a background : The first thing to add is a background. * Go to the Event menu and choose background/select. This will bring you to the Load Background requester. There are a series of backgrounds in the "Backgrounds" directory on the MovieClip data disk. Double click on the one called "Tutorial Background". This will automatically load that picture in from the disk, and place an event in the first frame which tells MovieSetter to change backgrounds at the first frame. Unless we add another background change event, this will be the background for the lenght of the Movie. * Before Background appears MovieSetter allows us to choose a wipe effect for the background. This wipe will take place when the background enters our production. The Wipe requester will appear and ask us to select the type of wipe that we want to use. MovieSetter comes with many special wipe effects built in. If you choose "none" there will be a direct cut to the new background picture. Since we are in the first frame of our movie, select none. The background for your animation will now appear. Creating a track : Our background looks a little barren so lets spice things up a little by creating our first track. Remember that tracks draw their imagery from sets of faces. MovieSetter comes with pre-drawn sets, so we won`t bother to create one from scratch for this animation. * Go to the Track menu and choose New. "NEW" lets MovieSetter know that you are going to add Set Load requester. There are a series of sets in the "Sets" directory on the one called "BoingBounce". This will automatically load that set in from the disk. You will now have a small "Boing Ball" attached to you r pointer, this is the object that we are going to animate. Move the pointer to the far top left of the background. The real power of MovieSetter is that every time you click the left mouse button, the current object gets placed onto the current frame and the production advances to the next frame. This process is called stamping. Every time you stamp, the set also advances one face. This set was created to make the Boing ball look it`s rotating. Let`s try it. * Stamp out a few frames in a path from the top left down to the centre of the road. Stamp out a few more going in a path from the centre to the top right of the background. To complete your track, hit or hold down the key when stamping the last frame of the track. Playing a production When you want to play your poduction use the player contol window. * Select the Start Movie gadget to "rewind" to the first frame of the production. * Select the Play Forward gadged to play the production. * Press the space bar to stop the production at any time. Adding a sound Let`s add a sound to give our production a real "cartoon" feel. There are a number of great sounds provided for you on the data disk. * Rewind the production. * Using the Player Control Window, step through the frames until you reach the frame where the boing ball is bouncing off the road. * Choose "Sound" in the Event menu. This will take us to the Sound requester. * Double click on the sound called boing! to load it into the production. * Before the sound is loaded into the production we are placed in the Sound Control Window. We'll return to the spezial sound effects that can be performed here later, but for now just click on the Event button. This tells MovieSetter to play the Boing! sound when it reaches this point of the movie. To hear the sound without creating an event, press the Play button. Remove the sound control window by pressing its close button. * Play the production to hear the new sampled sound. Sound adds an extra punch to any MovieSetter production. Changing the timing Changing the timing lets us slow down or speed up the production. MovieSetter works on a scale that breaks every second down into 60 parts. The default setting for MovieSetter is 6/60th or 10 frames shown by the player for every second of real time. The Timing value tells MovieSetter how long to delay between each frame. For example, lets slow the film down to four frames per second. * Rewind the production to the first frame by using the MovieSetter player control. * Choose "timing" in the event menu. This takes us to the Timing requester. * Click in the Delax box. Now enter the number 15. Press return to leave the Timing requester. * Play the production to watch it at 4 frames per second. Timing notes MovieSetter uses the 60th of a second scale because this is the number of times your monitor refreshes or "draws" the video image every second. MovieSetter plays the productions at a default settings of 10 frames every second because most people cannot distinguish separate frames at a faster rate. This is very close to the frames rate used by the classical animators of the thirties and forties. Below 10 frames per second the animation will tend to appear jerky. For example, the popular television animation that is produced in Japan is often shown as slow as 4 frames per second. This accounts for the noticeable gaps in the animatedmovement. You may be satisfied with this timing speed as it means less drawing work for you, but smooth enough to still be acceptable. Animation purists will stick with the faster rate of 10 frames per secound. Use the scale below to convert MovieSetter`s timing to frames per secound. It is important to note, however, that MovieSetter cannot guarantee the playback speed. For movies of moderate complexity, using 32 colours, it is likely that 10 frames/sec is realistic. However, when large sets are used or many tracks overlap, MovieSetter may not beable to keep up with the timing you specified. Speed of playback is also affected by the presence of a background, sound, scrolling and the number of colours. If you simplay wish to do a pencil sketch animation, running MovieSetter with only two colours will allow animations up to 60 frames/sec. Timing is an event. This means that the new timing will remain in the production until you decide to change it. You can slow the beginning of a production to slow motion and then through successive timing events you can slowly speed up the animation until you the speed that you want. Delay : 1 2 3 4 5 6 8 10 12 15 20 30 60 Frames per Secound : 60 30 20 15 12 10 7.5 6 5 4 3 2 1 Adding a new Track We have already produced a simple production with a background, an animated track and sound! Lets add a secound track to the production. * Rewind the production. * Advance to the frame just before the ball hits the road. * Choose "new" under the track menu. Select the ball again. * The ball set is now attached to the pointer. Stamp out the new track in roughly the same way that you placed the first bouncing ball. * When this ball leaves the screen, rewind to the place where the new ball track hits the ground. * Add the "boing" sound to this new track. * Play the production to see the two separate balls chasing each other down the road. To see a working version of all this, try loading: "Tutorial Production" and playing it. Track Editing Track editing may be done while creating. Once you have started creating a new track, how ever, you CANNOT move around the movie, and attempting to do so will force MovieSetter to autotically complete the track for you. As well, many menu options are disabled (ghosted). NOTE : As long as the mouse pointer is carrying around a face, you are creating a track. Editing on existing track: Once you have completed a track, you will probably want to make small adjustments to synchronise it with other tracks you previosly created. For this purpose, there are many tools available in the track Edit window. ( Note: these tools many not be used during track creating. ) Track hold, repeat and guides may also be used as often you like during the edition of a track. To use them, you must first select the track and then press the Insert After or Insert Before buttons on the Track Edit window.