The "Movie" menu allows you to play your movies and control the settings which determine how they are played:


Next Frame
Displays the next frame in the list of frames.  If you are looking at the last frame (no next one), then PICT-Play will cycle around to the first frame.

Prev Frame
Displays the previous frame in the list of frames.  If you are looking at the first frame (no previous one), then PICT-Play will cycle around to the last frame.

Play Forwards
Check this menu item when you want to play the movie frames in the order in which they were loaded from disk.  This is the forward direction.  This menu item only changes a view setting, the movie will not be played in this way until you select "action".

Play Backwards
Check this menu item when you want to play the movie frames in the opposite order in which they were loaded from disk.  This is the backward direction.  This menu item only changes a view setting, the movie will not be played in this way until you select "action".

Play Forwards & Backwards
Check this menu item when you want to play the movie in the forward direction, then immediately play it in the backward direction.  This menu item only changes a view setting, the movie will not be played in this way until you select "action".

Play Backwards & Forwards
Check this menu item when you want to play the movie in the backward direction, then immediately play it in the foreward direction.  This menu item only changes a view setting, the movie will not be played in this way until you select "action".

Play & Repeat
Check this menu item when you want to automatically play the movie over and over, otherwise it will play once and stop.  This menu item only changes a view setting, the movie will not be played in this way until you select "action".

Action
Play the current movie using the current movie direction and frame settings.  If you wish to stop the movie, press the mouse button.  This menu item is only available after movie frames have been loaded.

Note that each frame of the movie will be loaded into an offscreen window with a color environment which is the same as the current settings of your monitor.  If your monitor is set to display more colors (256 instead of 16, say), then the off-screen windows will also require more memory. This can be varied with the "Monitors" control panel, and the memory requirements for each pixel are as follows:

2 colors (black and white) - 1/8 byte per pixel per frame.
4 colors or grays - 1/4 byte per pixel per frame.
16 colors or grays - 1/2 byte per pixel per frame.
256 colors or grays - 1 byte per pixel per frame.
Thousands of colors - 2 bytes per pixel per frame.
Millions of colors - 4 bytes per pixel per frame.

If you need to display your movie with 16 colors or less (due to memory limitations), then it will usually look better in gray-scale mode. Note that you need to close and re-open your movie for any monitor changes to take affect.

Frame Settings...
Displays a dialog box in which you can specify frame settings.  This dialog contains three edit-text areas in which you can specify how the movie is loaded into memory and/or played.

The "Frames/Second" value specifies how many frames of the movie will be displayed per second. If you change this value, it will take affect immediately. The default value is 20 frames/second.

The "Frame Step Size" value specifies how PICT-Play should count through the PICT file sequence as it is loaded.  For example, if it were set to three, then every third PICT file will be loaded, and this would require only one third as much memory.  The default value is one which will load every file in the sequence.  Note that you need to close and re-open your movie for a new frame step size to take affect.

The "Frame Scale" value specifies how PICT-Play should scale the frames of the PICT file sequence as it is loaded.  For example, if it were set to 50%, then each frame would be half the normal size, and this would require only one quarter as much memory.  The default value is 100% which will load every frame at its standard size.   Note that you need to close and re-open your movie for a new frame scale to take affect.