CompuServe Messages

>> load in background without affecting currently-playing animation You can pre-load in backgrounds as an anim plays but you will probably have a hit on your playback speed. It doesn't work like Director where you can predraw a buffer. Preloading only means it doesn't have to read from disk. >> play a reasonable combination of non-looping anims In my experience I have had problems with non-looping anims as they will end on the first frame. You can put in a wait for a specific frame but I have found it doesn't always work. >> looping amins You can loop anims a specific number of times or infinitely. Does not support Ping-Ponging. >> still frames without transition glitches Transitions are much improved in AVPro and there are quite a few that don't care about the palette. I have found they can be somewhat slow (ie 2-5 seconds before anything happens) but that may have been because I had only 1 MEG chip RAM. >> being absolutely consistent about where an image is placed on the >> screen. I haven't had any problem with that but I may not be as picky as you. It is possible to interactively position bitmaps (including super-bitmaps). Also, you can position brushes interactively or by co-ordinates. AVPro is great for interactive apps (kiosks, CBT etc) but I wouldn't recommend it first for linear presentations where speed and presentation are more important. It has lots of visual pizazz but lacks the exact timing and speed that would be required for video. It would seem to me that Scala or MediaPoint (or the Oxxi product whose name has escaped me) might be your best bets. It doesn't sound like Helm would be appropriate, either. Hope this helps, Andrew