#WI arrived
WI finally arrived. Looks very promising. Also looks kind of shaky. Here's some
random notes from a few hours of poking at it.
Some Help buttons in dialogues give me Invalid Keyword errors from help. A few
I found just offhand are
Area|Transparency Controls|Help (I dislike dialogues with no Cancel, BTW )
Timeline|Frame Rate|Help
Timeline|Generate|Note Message 091(file exists)|Help
Timeline|Sequence Controls|Specify|Help
Section 4. Getting Started | The Basics help section errors near the end with
Unable to locate AVIFILE.DLL. This locked the machine up tight once, but I
haven't been able to reproduce the lockup.
Section 5.3, Invert Alpha tool jumps to Key to Alpha help.
Soften Alpha tool jumps to Harden Alpha help.
If I load a sequence of 640 x 480 24 bit TGAs into the Timeline and go to save
as 8 bit AVI, I get a 24 bit AVI. If I select FLI, and go back to AVI, it says
24 bit. Then if I select 256 colors again, I get an 8 bit AVI. I think. None of
my DOS AVI players will play it. Nor will my DOS FLC players play the FLC.
Diagnostics say "Magic number for frame 0 of 38 is not $f1fa, but $0000"
Is there a way to tell a FLC (or an AVI, for that matter) to ping pong?
Z sometimes gives + zoom and sometimes gives – zoom. This is my erratic typing
style doing me wrong, since you seem to be checking the shift key when the z is
released instead of when it's pressed. I expect actions on the downstroke.
Area selections, Area tool rectangle didn't work when I selected Area |
Rectangle From Corner. I was adding to an area with ^click. The rectangle would
draw, and then it would just disappear when I let go. Deselecting and
reselecting Rectangle From Corner seems to have cleared that up. Nope, when I
restart the program, Rectangle From Corner doesn't work.
Can I save an alpha channel as an 8 bit file? Or copy an alpha channel from one
image to another?
I don't understand the Size Windows menu at all. Need more docs, perhaps.
-The docs say "This control allows you to specify the resolution." How ?
-"The view windows may not be sized beyond your maximum screen resolution."
I have 3 640 x 480 images open on a 640 x 480 screen. When I deselect Maintain
Aspect Ratio and do Match Image, I get about a quarter of the window. Both
scroll bars are off screen. With Maintain Aspect Ratio checked, Match Image
boots the right scroll bar off the screen. Diamond Speedstar 24X in 24 bit 640
x 480 mode. Is this a driver issue?
-"There are also several preset resolutions (in the form of ratios) for the
view windows." What are the ratio buttons? I don't understand what they're
doing or what they're for.
Can I do a 1:1 100% zoom so I can see pixel for pixel what's in the file? I
don't like on the fly scaling. Picture Publisher behaves in a way I like very
much. The Home key scales a view into the biggest window possible, like your
Size Windows does. Then the Page Up and Page Down keys bumps it to the nearest
even scaling, i.e. 100%, 50%, 25%. Thereafter, Page Up and Page down scale the
magnification by 50%. It's very fast, and the view is less subject to
misinterpretation, because the computer's not trying to deal with things like
1.257 times magnification.
When I deselect Display | Maintain Aspect Ratio and resize a window, I get the
whole image, squashed. Is there some use for that? I want to resize a window
without altering the image, so that part of it is visible with scroll bars to
move it. I can zoom in and get scroll bars, but when I resize the window it
insists on maintaining the aspect ratio, even though it has no relevance in a
zoom.
I am unable to get Area | Save and Load Area Select File to work. I select an
area, and save it to an ASF. I change to another image, select Redo from the
area tools, and do a Load Area Select File. Nothing happens. I click on the
image and I get an apparently random oval selected.
Here's a current project, which I've been hoping WI would help me with. I have
an animation, a series of 20 scans in which a few elements move a little each
frame. Because they're scans, they're not exactly identical. As far as FLI
compression is concerned, there's almost no delta compression available. I want
to mask off the areas that change, using a very soft edged alpha channel, and
copy the rest from one frame to all of them. Then when I go to FLI, those
pixels will be identical throughout the anim and I should get much better
compression. I loaded a few key frames, and stacked the windows right on top of
each other. I can flip through them with the v and V keys to see which parts
change. I want to zoom in identically to the same spot in all the frames and
check the motion visually while I add and subtract from the selection area in
one of the key frames. When I have it right, I would like to save that
selection and copy it to the other keyframes so I can be certain it's correct.
Then I want to convert the selection into an alpha channel, copy the static
part and composite it on top of all the frames. Seems like F/X was born to do
this job, but I'm having a devil of a time getting it to work. I can't zoom
predictably, and I can't copy the selection area.
That's enough message for now, I think. <G>