About VideoMaker software VideoMaker software is application for producing videos on a computer. You can use it for simple tasks like replacement for video editing equipment. This means that you can perform digital video effects like blend, fade in and out, chroma key, etc., but unlike using VCRs there is no loss of quality. And, unlike video editing equipment you don't have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to perform such video effects. Or you can go one step further and make script for video composition which will combine some or all of the digital effects. And above everything you can do things which can be done only by computer like morph effect. VideoMaker is a comprehensive tool which you can use to produce videos ranging from simple presentations to broadcast quality professional video clips. This is the age of multimedia and virtual reality. Personal computers are getting faster and better. For this kind of application speed and storage capabilities are very demanding. As you can store a whole book in just a couple of megabytes it is barely enough for one or two pictures. Big hard disks and fast CPUs are must for video on a PC application. Today 486 and Pentium processors offer enough speed for this purpose. PowerPC, Alpha and MIPS will be even better. Soon it will be possible to do true real time video on a PC (this could be read also that we are like many other software developers depending on next generation of CPUs). VideoMaker is true 32 bit software so it takes the full advantage of the 386, 486 and Pentium processors. The code has been optimized for maximum speed under 486 and Pentium processors. So the operations on the images are done couple of times faster than by other standard 16 bit Windows software. System requirements Minimum system to run VideoMaker software must be PC compatible computer with 386 or better processor, 4 MB RAM and 3MB free space on the hard disk. However, multimedia is the most demanding field for computer technology regarding speed and storage capabilities. This is especially true for video production. Therefore, here applies the bigger the better. If you will want to produce high resolution and more than a couple of seconds videos you will need a lot of free hard disk space. So for serious work we recommend 486 based computer with 8MB RAM and a large hard disk. You will certainly need to setup virtual memory manager (386Enhanced program in Windows Control Panel) with substantial amount of disk space reserved for virtual memory. I suggest that you reserve at least 8MB of disk space for VMM if you have 4MB of RAM. As VideoMaker is Windows software you will also need Windows 3.1 to run it. VideoMaker is desktop video production software so there is no point in trying to run this software in B/W or 16 colors modes (even though it is possible). We suggest that you use video card and set up the Windows mode which will support 32K, 64K (16 bit) or 16.7M (24 bit) colors. If you have also video card that has Windows accelerator it is even better. If you will run this software in 256 colors mode there will be significant deceleration in operation of the software due to the overhead generated by converting 32 bit image output of the VideoMaker to 8 bit (256 colors) Windows representation. For each Windows output VideoMaker will perform process called dithering to achieve the highest quality possible. It will significantly slow down the operation of VideoMaker. Preview option for real-time playback in this mode is not very usable, unless you have 200MHz Pentium system. Installation You should create directory where you want to copy VideoMaker. Switch to that directory, copy VIDEO.ZIP into it and unzip it using PKUNZIP 2.04 version. You can afterward install VideoMaker group and program icon into your desktop manager manually. You must install just one file this way. It is VIDEO.EXE. Or you can just start VIDEO.EXE through the File Manager or the Program manager (Run option in File menu). After finishing installation procedure you can start application by double- clicking on VideoMaker icon. If you didn't install VideoMaker program group into you desktop manager you can start VideoMaker through File Manager of Program Manager by starting VIDEO.EXE. QUICK START After starting VideoMaker software you will see the menu and two main windows. Swatch Window This Window is used for preview purposes. When you double-click on the specific frame number in the Composition Window computer will after performing all of the effects and transitions for that frame display result in the selected swatch sub window within main Swatch window. All swatch sub windows are of the same size. If you resize one all other will be resized according to that one. In the Swatch window there will be always as much sub windows as it fits within drawing area of the main Swatch window. Composition Window This is where you design and edit your video. It consists of two parts, timeline and composition area. Timeline shows numbers which represent frame numbers within your video. For example if you are making video for NTSC standard then 30 frames on the timeline represent 1 second of video (25 frames represent 1 second for PAL, and 24 frames represent 1 second for movie). If you double-click in the timeline computer will move pointer for current frame to that position, calculate all the effects and transitions for that frame and display the picture in selected swatch sub window. Composition area is where you "compose" your video by inserting and linking desired effects and transitions. Each effect and transition is represented by block within composition area. Dimension of specific block represents duration corresponding to the timeline. Blocks are connected by vertical lines showing which effect or transition operates on the output of another block. For example if your composition area shows that you have Filein connected to Blur effect above it means that computer will first take an image (or series of images) from a file and then it will perform blur effect on it (or on them). You select blocks representing events by clicking on them pressing the right mouse button. To select multiple events you hold down the SHIFT key and click using the right mouse button on desired blocks. Composing video As it was mentioned to "compose" a video you set up blocks representing images (or sequences of images), effects and transitions in the composition area of the Composition window. Effects and transitions cannot exist only by themselves within composition area, they must be connected to one (effects) or two (transitions) blocks. Every video should always start by one of the options in Image menu. It is because you cannot have video without pictures. Filein operation is used to import images for you video. So, let's do one simple video which will take just one image from the file on your disk and then apply Edge detection on that image and finally rotate that image for 30 degrees. The duration of the whole video will be 90 frames (3 seconds for the NTSC standard). First we must insert a block for Filein image import operation which will read specific image from the file. We go to the Image menu and choose Filein. The dialog box opens where we must specify name of the file containing image, starting frame and ending frame. All other fields are optional. So we put starting frame number 1 and ending frame number 90. The filename can be specified by writing the name in the filename field or browsing the disk for it by choosing Browse. We can read any of the following image file formats: Targa (TGA), BMP, TIFF, GIF, FLI, FLI, FLC, JPG. After clicking on OK button you will se Filein1 block within composition area. The block will be wide 90 frames. After specifying the image we can apply to it edge detection effect. We select block (by clicking on it using right mouse button) Filein1 first to avoid writing the name of the block in the edge detection dialog box. (You know that the block is selected within the composition window when it gets additional border.) Then we select Edge detection from the Effects menu. Dialog box opens where we should insert starting frame number, duration, source (already filled with Filein1 name), level of edge detection and colors for background and edges. We will set up starting frame 30, duration 60 and colors as you wish. Level will be 50. After clicking on OK button Edge detection1 block will be inserted from frames 30 to 90 above Filein1 block and it will be connected by vertical line to Filein1. Now to apply rotation to the output of edge detection we select Edge detection1 box by clicking on it and finally we choose Rotate from the Effects menu. Now the source is Edge detection1, start frame will be 60 and duration 30. Center of the rotation we will put on 100,100 coordinates. Now we can specify starting angle and ending angle and computer will gradually apply rotation to our image within frames 30 and 60. So we set 0 as starting angle and 30 as ending angle. It means that computer will rotate our image from 0 degrees in frame 60 to 30 degrees in frame 90. Clicking on OK puts Rotate1 block above Edge detection1 and connects it to it. Our video is now finished. We can preview any frame by double-clicking on it in the timeline. Now that the composition is finished we can produce 90 frames in any of the supported formats in any resolution by using Generate frames option in File menu. Loading and saving compositions You can load previously made compositions by using Load composition option in File menu. To save composition choose Save composition from the File menu. To save composition under different name than current use Save As option from the File menu. Composition files have SCE extension. Composition files are ASCII files containing scripts describing how will the whole video look like. Generating images from the composition. To produce images (files containing pictures) according to the composition you should choose Generate images from the File menu. Images are developed according to setup information which can be adjusted to your needs. In the setup you should specify resolution and image file type which will be used to produce pictures. Previewing composition. It is used to play images previously generated in FLI format in real or near real time in up to 320x200 swatch window. Why is this limitation necessary? It is due to the extremely large amounts of data needed to store pictures. So to achieve real or near real time previewing images must me generated in small enough resolution with just 8 bit color and compressed. On the PC based on 486DX2 processor with fast local bus or similar video card one can achieve playing of the FLI files at rates of up to 30 frames per second. To use preview option preview images must be created from the composition. (This is done through Generate images option in File menu.) This can take some time depending on complexity of composition and duration. It means that they will be stored in a single file with FLI extension. Preview images are always in 320x200 resolution with 8 bit color. This is due to preserving as much free space on disk as possible and to fulfill speed requirements for playing images in real time or near real time. Note: To use this option you must first generate images in FLI format using Generate images option in File menu. Note: Support for JPEG compression/decompression and JPG file format: this software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group