QuickStart Manual

The Big Picture

MovingPicture is used in place of an animation camera to perform pans and zooms on high-resolution images, similar to those used by Ken Burns in his documentaries. MovingPicture can pan and zoom through images up to 8,000 by 8,000 pixels.

The Parts of the Screen

The Stage is the most commonly used portion of the screen and starts in the top left corner. The stage is a bird’s-eye view of the scene. The magnification of the still image can changed from 10% to 100% using the Stage size control at the bottom left.

The floating Viewer, to the right of the stage, previews what the camera sees, and plays the animated sequences. The window can be sized by dragging the left side, but keep in mind that the display may slow as the window gets larger.

Below the Viewer, the Player control, which mimics a VCR control panel, is used to play animated scenes on the Viewer's screen.

The Timeline sits on the bottom of the screen and provides a way to set the timings of the Pictures as the move across the screen. The concept is similar to that used by most nonlinear editing systems.

In a Nutshell

Load an image by selecting the Load Picture option in the File menu.
Move the yellow box atop the image until your starting position is set up.
Click on the Timeline to the place in time you want the move to end on.
Move the yellow box atop the image until your ending position is set up.
Play your move.

Step-by-step guide

Drag a clip to the timeline. This should be video clip or a video-size still. Placing the hi-res still will slow rendering and may cause other problems.
Make the clip's length the time you want the move to occur in.
Open up the "Effects Palette" from Avid's "Tools" menu.
Drag the MovingPicture effect over the clip.
Click on the setup effect button under the source/master screens.
The "Effect Editor" palette will open and MovingPicture icon will appear in the top line.
Click (or double click) on the MovingPicture icon on the left side.
The MovingPicture user interface will come up on one of the screens.
Load a picture using the "Load Picture" option in the "Files" menu.
Move the yellow camera until the starting position is reached.
Click on the timeline to set the time for the position you want to go to next.
Move the yellow camera until the next position is reached.
Play the move using the controls on the Viewer.
Click on the round "OK" button.
Render the effect.

NOTE: You need to place a clip on your editor's timeline and then apply the MovingPicture effect to that clip. MovingPicture will ignore the contents of the clip and uses it only as a "Trojan Horse" to carry MovingPicture into the editor.

About KeyFrames

A KeyFrame is a "snapshot in time" of the Camera’s position and size. MovingPicture uses KeyFrames to move from one view to another without having to define all the in-between positions by hand. You simply need to define two KeyFrame positions, and the Camera will move from the first to the second position over the course of time you have defined. The first KeyFrame is already defined for you (you have to start from somewhere), but you can easily change it to where you really want to start.

The manipulating of KeyFrames is done both in the Stage and the Timeline. The actual positioning of the camera's viewpoint is done in the Stage, while the timing is established on the Timeline.

Getting Pictures to Use

MovingPicture uses bit-mapped digital images as Pictures to pan and zoom around. The images can be scanned from photos or magazines, shot with a digital camera, or drawn in a paint program, such as Adobe’s Photoshop.

Although MovingPicture can work on images as large as 8,000 by 8,000, this will result in huge files and will take longer to render than is necessary. For most video applications, 1,000 to 2,000 pixels across will produce excellent results. Try to use 16 or 24 color images for the best quality.

The easiest way to bring a picture into MovingPicture is to scan it in, using an inexpensive (many are under $100) color scanner. Set the scanner to a resolution that will create an image is close to the desired size.

MovingPicture accepts these images in the form of bitmap files, in the Windows BMP, Targa TGA, and Win/Mac TIFF formats (uncompressed only), . The Windows versions can read Jpeg files if the MovingPicture Jpeg driver is installed. Most paint programs can output these common types and can provide conversion from the myriad of other formats out there.

Understanding DPI and Pixels

Some scanners only allow setting the resolution in Dots Per Inch (DPI). DPI is the number of pixels generated for each inch of the original image scanned. For example, an 8 by 10 inch photo scanned at 150 DPI would yield a 1,200 by 1,500 pixel image (8x150=1,200 and 10x150 =1,500). That same image scanned at 1,200 DPI would yield a 9,600 by 12,000, which is larger than MovingPicture can handle.

NOTE: TIF image files are more complex to load and decode than other formats. This will translate into longer render times on editors such as Premiere, which tend to reload the image from disk every frame. Use TGA or BMP files instead. They are identical in quality, but load faster.

Loading Pictures

Pictures are added to MovingPicture by selecting the Load Picture option in the File menu. This will bring up a dialog box showing a list of all the possible graphics files in the current directory. The default graphics format is for all graphics files supported by MovingPicture.

If the images you are looking for reside somewhere else, use the dialog controls to go to that folder. The default folder for images is always set to the last folder you loaded an image from.

Once selected, that Picture will appear simultaneously as a bar in the Timeline, as an image in the Stage window, and in the Viewer window. The picture will appear in the top left corner, but you can have it displayed in the center of the screen by clicking on the Center Pic on Stage item in the Options menu will center the image on the stage area, for easier positioning of images and rotation.

JPEG Images

The Windows versions are able to load images in the JPEG format. In order to do this, you must download the MovingPicture Jpeg Driver file from the Downloads section on our website. When you run it, it will extract itself into your default Windows directory.

You can use JPEG images on Mac-based systems by turning on the MacOS File Translation option in the File Exchange Control Panel item in MacOS 8.5 to 9.2 (see http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58098). Make sure you have QuickTime loaded on this computer. OSX-based Macs will typically have this feature automatically enabled.

Matching Moves to New Pictures

Sometimes it is useful or necessary to create you moves initially with a lower resolution image initially, and then remake the how with a higher spatial resolution image for the final show. To facilitate this, a dialog that will appear whenever you re-load a picture to an existing show, asking if you want to match the current moves to the new picture's size. Saying yes will scale to existing KeyFrames to the new picture's size.

Using Pictures with an Alpha Channel

MovingPicture will respect the values in the alpha channel of your 32-bit images. The Alpha Channel is a fourth component (aside from the red, green and blue channels) that will determine the degree of transparency each pixel will have. This is useful in floating logos over a background. The two image formats that can hold an alpha channel are Targa (.tga) and Native Photoshop (.psd).

This is available on all editors (and Producer) with the exception of Canopus, which does not support alpha in its transition plug-ins. Since Avid does not support alpha in plug-ins directly, the alpha information is used to merge the contents of the clip MovingPicture is attached to (the "placeholder clip") with the MovingPicture image on top of it.

You can turn ignore the alpha channel by selecting the Ignore Alpha Channel item in the Image Prep dialog box. If you are not using alpha, this will speed up rendering by 25% and insure that you will not have your image intentionally altered by whatever the contents of the alpha channel happens to be.

Image Preparation Options

Clicking on the Image Prep option in Edit menu will bring up a dialog box that has a number of image-related features. These options are saved with the clip and/or show file, so you can have multiple settings on the same timeline and be assured each will render as they were set initially. Multiple pictures in the Producer version will all share a single setting however. Adding these any of these options should not increase render times on most systems.

Video Safe Color

Clicking on the Video-Safe Color check box will make sure that the color range of the incoming image when initially loaded is now shaped to the NTSC/PAL color space, rather than the straight RGB color space (i.e. black level at 7.5). For example, an RGB 0 will be raised to 17, and a 255 will be compressed to 235.

Pre-Blur

Clicking this option will add a small gaussian blur to the image to reduce moiré and noise artifacts on very crisp images. If blur is turned on, a notice will appear in the bottom center of the screen. This will not increase rendering time on most systems.

Border

You add a colored border around your image by adjusting the slider from 0 (no border) to 100 (50% of the image's width). Clicking on the color option will bring up a color selection dialog that you can choose the color in RGB, HLS or choosing one of the color or grayscale chips. This is useful for zooming beyond actual picture.

Contrast and Brightness

Setting the brightness and contrast sliders will change these factors of the image. These factors are saved in the show when it is reloaded, and will remain in effect until changed, with directly, or from loading a new show.

Image Tint

You can tint images to a particular color, (for example to add a Sepia tone). Click on The Image Tint option and click on the color bar to select the color to use. The image will be converted to gray tones and then tinted to the hue and saturation (40 looks good) of the color bar you have chosen. To remove the tint, set the Color Mode to Normal.

Ignore Alpha Channel

If you are not using alpha, this will speed up rendering by 25% and insure that you will not have your image intentionally altered by whatever the contents of the alpha channel happens to be. NOTE: if alpha is being considered on the image, the word "Alpha" will appear under the timeline

Batch Rendering (Producer version)

Choosing the Batch Render Movies option in the File menu will allow you to render a collection of show files as a QT or AVI movie. A "choose file" dialog box will appear. Select the shows you want to render, using the Shift or Control keys to allow the selection of multiple files. The standard Make Movie, codec and movie file name choice options will appear, as with making a single movie. Each show will then render into it's own file, using the name of the show file it used and adding a 'B' to the name (i.e. myShowB.avi or myShowB.mov).

Moving the Camera Around

The Camera performs the same function in MovingPicture as you would expect in real life. It provides a look onto the Stage, which is seen in the Viewer’s window, and is represented on the Stage by a yellow drawing of a camera’s viewpoint (know as the reticule).

By dragging various portions of the Camera on the screen, you can control what it sees, by changing its position, magnification and rotation. As you pass the mouse over the yellow box, your mouse cursor will change, depending on which part you are over.

Moving the Camera

Dragging the center of the box will position the move the reticule through the image. If you press the Shift key while dragging, will constrain the motion in the direction you are dragging most. If were moving left to right, the vertical position would remain the same, while the camera moved in a perfectly horizontal path and vice-versa for up-down motions.

Sizing the Camera

Dragging the corners of the box will allow you to change the field of view (the magnification size). Keep in mind however, if you magnify too far, the image may break up.

Rotating the Camera

Dragging on the circle in the left-hand corner will cause the box to rotate as you move left to right. You can exceed 360 degrees for multi-revolution spins, (such as in spinning newspaper headlines). If you press the Shift key while dragging, the rotation will snap to no rotation (0 degrees), as a convenient reset.

3D Camera Moves

Dragging the circle in the upper left hand corner of the yellow camera box left/right with the CONTROL key pressed, will allow you skew the image horizontally. (Command key on Macintosh) Dragging the circle left/right with the CONTROL and SHIFT keys pressed will allow you skew the image vertically. The numeric values are displayed in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.

Setting Things Numerically

Right-clicking (Control-click on the Mac) within the yellow camera box will bring up a dialog box for changing the size, position and rotation parameters numerically.

Setting a KeyFrame

The Camera already has its initial position KeyFrame already added at the first frame of where it appears in the Scene. This first KeyFrame can be easily reset to reflect where you want the motion to start.

Making a new KeyFrame involves two steps:

Choose the frame in the Timeline where the KeyFrame should appear.
Position the Camera box into the position and size you want.

A new KeyFrame will be added to the Timeline, containing the framing you set using the Camera box, and the position.

Auto-Adding Keys

There is a setting in the Options menu to change the ways KeyFrames are added. Un-checking the Auto-Add Keys item will not automatically add or update KeyFrames whenever the camera box is move. Instead, you will need to ‘record’ the position by clicking on the Add Key button in the Viewer window.

Holds

If there is no change in the Camera’s position, size or rotation from the previous KeyFrame, a "Hold" message will appear between the two positions.

Changing an existing KeyFrame

If there was already a KeyFrame at that frame (indicated by the red icon on the Timeline), it will be updated with any changes you have made to the Camera framing. At any given frame, there will be only one KeyFrame.

MovingPicture will automatically figure out the in-between positions between this KeyFrame and the one that preceded it.

Scrubbing the Timeline

Dragging the cursor in the Timeline area will cause the position to "scrub" (i.e. the Viewer frame moves with the cursor as you drag it). To scrub, click the mouse in a clear area of the Timeline that does not contain a KeyFrame. As you move the cursor left to right, the Viewer will show the motion for that frame.

Changing a KeyFrame

Changing the Size and Position

Simply click on the KeyFrame icon on the Timeline and then reposition or size the Camera. The key icon on the timeline will turn red when you are within 4 frames of it, indicating you are in range to change it.

Changing the Time

You can move the time when any KeyFrame (except the first one) becomes active by dragging its icon in the Timeline to where you want it to go.

When moving a KeyFrame on the Timeline, you can have all the KeyFrames that come after it to be moved in relation to that key's new position. Pressing on the SHIFT key when dragging a KeyFrame on the Timeline will shift all the keys that come after it up or back by that amount of time.

Eases

The ways in which movements start up and end are adjustable by setting their eases in and out. The "Options" menu will bring up a list of possible ease options. Picking "Slow In/Out", (which is the default) will cause a move to start out and end slowly. "Slow In" will ease the start; "Slow Out" will ease the ending. "None" does not apply any slow-ins. Selecting the "No curves" option will cause the camera to move in a straight line from KeyFrame to KeyFrame.

This will reset any individual settings that are set on the individual keys to this value.

Please note that there may be a slight slow-down as a move goes around one of the KeyFrames. If this is a problem, turning on the "No curves" option will eliminate the slow down.

Per-KeyFrame Eases

You can change the slow ease of any particular KeyFrame. Right-clicking (Control-click on the Macintosh) on a KeyFrame in the timeline will bring up a dialog box that will allow you to control how the move will flow from that key to the next.

Selecting the Use Default radio button will cause the motion to follow the default set via the Options menu setting mentioned before. The Ease Speed slider sets the speed in which eases in and out will occur. Drag the slider from 0 (slowest) to 100 (fastest). The timeline will show the setting to the right of the key icon.

There are also boxes in the dialog that will let you numerically set the position and size. This is useful when trying to position the camera off screen, or some other particular place or size.

Removing a KeyFrame

You must first select the KeyFrame on the Timeline you want to remove (it will turn red), and hit the Delete key on the keyboard.

Cut and Paste of KeyFrames

The "Edit" menu contains the standard options for Cutting, Pasting and Copying the positional information of the currently highlighted KeyFrame (the red one). There are also 32 levels of Undo/Redo. When pasting a KeyFrame and there is no KeyFrame highlighted, a new one will be added to the timeline at the current frame position.

Showing KeyFrames on the Stage

Checking the Show Camera Path item in the "Options" menu will cause the camera path you have defined to be drawn as a yellow line on top of your image in the Stage. Red circles indicate the actual KeyFrame positions. Clicking on a red circle will set the timeline to that KeyFrame.

Deleting all the Keys

Choosing the Delete All Keys item in the Edit menu will cause all the keys of your show to be deleted. The picture will stay the same.

Make Moves a Uniform Speed

Clicking on the Uniform Speed option in the Edit menu will space whatever KeyFrames in your show to be spaced across the timeline by the amount of distance they travel from KeyFrame to KeyFrame on the image. This is useful for creating a smooth path across a number of positions, and having the velocity remain constant throughout the move.

TV Safe Area Boxes

Clicking on the Show TV Safe option in the Options menu will draw a square box on the viewer screen, showing the Safe Action area. Within that box is a rounded corner box that defines the Safe Title area. These boxes will not appear in the rendered video.

Previewing your Moves

The Viewer contains VCR-like controls to play whatever moves you have set up in it's window. The moves will play in real-time, but will drop frames if it cannot render it fast enough. Setting the Draft Quality option from the Render menu sacrifice image quality for speed.

If a move is playing, clicking on the Timeline will cause it to play from the point in time you clicked. Clicking outside the Timeline will stop playing.

TV Safe Area Boxes

Scrubbing the Timeline

Saving the Moves

Clicking on the close window box will cause any moves you created to be saved with your project and control returned to the editor. Selecting Apply Moves and Close from the File menu will accomplish the same thing.

If you wish to exit the MovingPicture plug-in and not save the moves you have recently made, select the Quit (Don't Apply changes) from the File menu.

You can also save and load shows to a file using the Save Show menu from the File menu. This is useful primarily when using the Producer version as an offline tool. You easily can move shows (as MPX files) between the Macintosh and Windows versions of the Plug-in and/or the Producer versions of MovingPicture.

NOTE: When importing Windows MPX files into the Mac, you will need to make sure the file retains it's '.mpx' extension. Similarly, when importing Macintosh files, you will need to select the All Files option to have the Mac show files appear in the file loading box.

Rendering from the Plug-In

Selecting the OK button will save the moves to the clip you have applied the Plug-In to. You will need to render the move, as you would do with any filter or effect. This will take about 2 to 60 seconds to render each second of move (depending on your system).

Automatic Show Rescaling

You can ask MovingPicture to make the moves track the current length of the editor's timeline when you change the clip's length. Clicking the Auto-Rescale Show option in the Options menu toggles this on or off. Suppose you had a clip that is 8 seconds long with with 3 keys at 0, 4, and 8 seconds. Later on during editing you needed to shorten the overall clip to only 4 seconds, those keys would automatically move to 0, 2, and 4 seconds. You do not need to re-open MovingPicture to do this.

Rendering Movies (Producer version only)

If you want to make a movie file in the Producer version, select the Make Movie File option from the File menu. A dialog will appear with a number of options as how create the movie file.

Height and Width

The height and width boxes control the movie's frame size. Make sure you set them exactly to what you editor needs (i.e. 720 by 480 or 730 by 486, etc.) Check the properties of an existing movie file to be sure. If the sizes aren't right, codecs (particularly DV and MPEG2) will not even create a movie file, and the editor may need to re-scale it on import, causing artifacts and time-consuming re-rendering.

DPS Movie Files

You will need to have Microsoft's DirectX v8.0 on your computer and download the DPS File Driver from the website. You create a .dps movie file exactly like an AVI movie file, but select DPS files from the Save as type option in the file selection dialog when specifying the movie file's name.

About the Evaluation Version

The evaluation version of MovingPicture is a full-featured version of the program with a single exception: A red bar will appear across the image. This bar will disappear when you receive an unlock key from StageTools, without the need to re-install MovingPicture.

MovingPicture does not extract the picture to move from the NLE's timeline, as most limit the resolution that is passed onto any plug in to the final output video resolution, which is too small for zooming into without breaking up. Instead, use MovingPicture's "Load Picture" item in the "File" menu to load your image.

Registering MovingPicture

Registering your demonstration version of MovingPicture will enable you to remove the red bar from the image. Select the Register item from the Help menu. Each version of MovingPicture contains a unique serial number that uniquely identifies your computer, which is displayed in the dialog box. Close the dialog box and Email that number to info@stagetools.com.

To find your computer ID, run MovingPicture. When the menu bar appears and click on the Register menu option (in the Help menu on Windows systems). A dialog box will bring up a message saying what your computer ID number is. A key number, unique to your computer will be mailed back to you (assuming you have purchased the standard edition, of course).

Select the Register item from the Help menu and enter that number in the space provided and your demonstration version will be turned into the standard version.

Rendering Options menu

Aspect Ratio

This will allow you to create different aspect ratio shapes (width/height), to either the standard 4:3 or 16:9 ratios. Choosing the LetterBox (16:9) option will create 16:9 shaped moves within a 4:3 aspect image, adding a black border to the top and bottom of the frame to fill it out.

Draft Rendering

Selecting the Draft Quality option from the Render menu, will cause the rendering to occur at a lower quality so the renders will occur 4-6 times faster, for testing the basic moves in context quicker. This effects both the final rendered output of the plug-in, (or movie file in the case of Producer) as well as the viewer window.

Multiple Processors

MovingPicture is multi-threaded, meaning it was take advantage of multiple processors (or Intel's new HyperThreading Pentium 4) in your computer. Selecting the Multiple Processors option from the Render menu, will enable this. NOTE: If you have only one processor, selecting this option will slow down rendering.

Motion Blur

You can add motion blur to your rendering by checking the Add Motion Blur option in the Render menu. This is useful when the motion is very fast. MovingPicture will dissolve between the current frame and the one before it, to smooth out the choppy motion when moving too fast. NOTE: This adds extra time during rendering.

Advanced Options Menu

This menu will give access to a number of less commonly used options. Clicking on the Advanced Options item the Render" menu will bring up a dialog box containing the following options:

Flop Top Field / Flop Field Order

Different editing systems and/or hardware differ in the order in which the top and bottom fields are arranged with a frame. The easiest way to diagnose this, is by creating a move the ends midway through the scene. If the motion stutters only in the portion of the scene that actually moves, try reversing the filed order using the Flop Field Order. If it stutters in both the moving and still portions, you will need to change the spatial ordering of the two fields within the frame by clicking the Flop Top Field checkbox. Some older cards, such as the Miro and Pinnacle DC series card require this to be flopped, but most systems do not work this way.

Alternative Image Folder

When onlining projects on one computer that were created on another, it is common not to be able to find the images, since they are referenced by links to folders that do not exist on the online, particularly when the offline in Mac and the online is Windows (i.e. Symphony).

Clicking in the box will allow you to select a select a file in that folder that you want to search. From that point on, if MovingPicture cannot find an image in a show, it will look in that folder and try to load it from there. If it still cannot find it, it will either display the picture error box or load an error image, depending how the Show Pic Errors option is set.

Show Pic Errors

When an image cannot be loaded for some reason, you can now choose whether on not you want a dialog box to appear (the default) or just have the image loaded with a placeholder image. This is useful when you are moving shows from editor to editor and the images may be in a different location on the disk.

Multi-Proc Offset

Some Windows systems with multiple processors need this box checked in order to eliminate a jitter that occurs exactly in the top or bottom half of the frame.

Viewer on Second Screen

Users of dual monitor systems can now have MovingPicture remember the size and position of the Viewer window when it is placed on the second (non-primary) screen. Checking this will save the size and position on the viewer even if it's on the second screen.

Shortcut keys

[0] (zero) Plays from beginning of show
[space] or [p] Plays or stops playing
[j] , [k] and  [l]  Plays reverse, stops playing or plays forward

[-]  Move back a frame
[+]  Move ahead a frame
[home] Go to start of timeline
[end] Go to end of timeline
[up] Move the camera up 1 pixel
[tab]  Moves you from key to key in the timeline
[Ctrl-<] Make timeline show more frames per gray block
[Ctrl->] Make timeline show fewer frames per gray block
[del]  Delete the currently highlighted key

[down] Move the camera down 1 pixel
[left]  Move the camera left 1 pixel
[right] Move the camera right 1 pixel
[PgUp]  Expand the camera 1 pixel
[PgDn] Shrink the camera 1 pixel
[down] Move the camera down 1 pixel
[Ctrl-left]  Align the camera to picture's left
[Ctrl-right] Align the camera to picture's right
[Ctrl-home]  Align the camera to center of picture
[Ctrl-PgUp]  Expand the camera to picture's height
[Ctrl-PgDn] Expand the camera to picture's width
[shift] Constrains horizontal or vertical motion when dragging camera

[Ctrl-S]  Save show to disk
[Ctrl-O]  Load show from disk
[Ctrl-E] Load a new picture
[Ctrl-N] Clear the current show
[Ctrl-K] Make a Movie file (Producer version only)
[Ctrl-T] Make a still Targa file of the current frame on timeline
[Ctrl-Q]  Quit MovingPicture and return to editor

[Ctrl-C]  Copy the highlighted key to the scratchpad
[Ctrl-X] Copy the highlighted key to the scratchpad and then delete it
[Ctrl-V]  Copy the key in the scratchpad to the highlighted key
[Ctrl-Z]  Undo the last action that modified a KeyFrame (32 levels)
[Ctrl-Y]  Redo the last action via Undo