Movies

Movies

Movies is a GIF Animator. It will produce an animated GIF-file from a series of images. You can use ready made images or Create Frames within Movies.

When you use ready made images you can use images in BMP format or GIF format (new in Movies 4).

New

Please read New  before you proceed because I have changed the interface in Movies 6.

Updates

Some Background

Movies works with images of exactly the same size. The first image that you add to the list determines the width and height of all the following frames.

Getting Started

First prepare some BMP's with the same width and height. Then start Movies and navigate to the directory where the BMP's are located. Add BMP's to the list by selecting the filename and then right-click Add or double-click the filename. The name of the frame is added to the list and a copy of the image placed in the frame viewer. Add some more images and then select from the main menu Animation Create. Movies will now create the animated-GIF and let you see an animation preview. Finally save the file with Animation Save As.. as an animated GIF-file.

That is all! You can stop the animation preview with Animation Stop or by pressing F2.

Arranging Frames

You can arrange frames by selecting a frame's name in the list and dragging the name to the new location. When you release the mouse button, Movies will show the new arrangement.

Deleting Frames

You delete a frame by first selecting it in the list and then right-click Delete.

Delete All Frames

Delete All Frames by right-clicking Delete All in the list. You will be asked for a confirmation. Just click the No button if you change your mind.

Transparent Frames

When you check the box next to the frame's name in the list, the image will be treated as Transparent. Please note that the color of the bottom left pixel is used as the transparent color.

By default Frames are added as opaque to the animated GiF-file.

Scrolling a Frame

One important aspect of animation is positioning. Although Movies has no painting facilities you can scroll a frame in any of four directions: Up, Down, Left and Right by first selecting the frame in the list and then use ctrl+alt+U for moving Up, ctrl+alt+D for moving Down, ctrl+alt+L for moving Left and ctrl+alt+R for moving to the right.

Invert a Frame

You can invert the colors of a Frame by first selecting the frame in the list and then Image Invert

Duplicate a Frame

Duplicate a Frame by first selecting the Frame in the list and then press ctrl+D. Specially when you want to make some sliding transitions this function is convenient. Just duplicate a frame a couple of times and then Scroll the individual copies to the desired position.


Open GIF

Open GIF file

Introduced in Movies 3, you can open an existing animated GIF file. Movies will extract the individual images and their frame delay and transparency. This allows you to improve your work later on or modify an existing animated GIF to your own needs.


Create Frames

Create Frames

In Movies you can use ready made BMP, GIF or JPG-images, but you can also create frames from scratch and use the drawing tools.

The First Frame

Select Frame New from the menu or press the F3 key to create a new empty frame. Since this is your first frame Movies will ask you for the width and the height of each frame. Please note that once you have defined the frame dimensions, all subsequent images added from file must have the same dimensions, or they will be rejected. Once you have the first frame defined, press the F3 key a couple of times and view how Movies adds extra blank frames.

Draw on a Frame

To draw on a frame you first have to put it in the draw window. Double-click on the frame that you want to edit and it will be displayed in the drawing window. Edit  and click the OK button when you want to update your frame or click the Cancel  button when you want to discard any changes.

Colors

In the color grid you can select the pen and brush color for a frame. Left-click to set the pen color, denoted by FG in the color grid. Righ-click in the color grid to set the brush-color, denoted by BG in the color grid.

Drawing Shapes

The following drawing 'shapes' are available in Movies:

•	Rectangle

•	Line

•	Ellipse

•	Rounded Rectangle

•	Freehand Drawing

•	FloodFill

•	Color Dropper

Brush Style

Use the Clear and Solid buttons to set a Clear or Solid brush style. With a solid brush style shapes will be filled with the brush color.

Erase Image

Erase the image with the current brush color by clicking the Erase button.

Transparent Effect

You can create a transparent effect when drawing a shape by holding down the ctrl key when releasing the mouse button.

Image Manipulation

When you have selected a frame you can manipulate the image by selecting an option from the right-click context menu:

•	Trace, this will trace the contours of uniform colored shapes

•	Rotate, this will rotate the frame by the number of degrees you have set (90 is default)

•	Flip Right or Down, flips the image around its vertical or horizontal axis

•	Shadow, creates a shadow effect in one of the four directions indicated.

Pen Width

Click on the pen width dropdown menu on the toolbar to change the pen width to 1-5 or any other user size (up to 50).

Adding Text

You can add text to a frame with the Text Gadget

Adding Gradient Text

Display the gradient gadget by clicking the colored cube button on the draw toolbar. Move the gadget with mousedown-drag-mouseup. Resize the gradient gadget by moving the mouse to the left border until you see the resize cursor, then mousedown-drag-release to resize. Right-click the gadget to display the various options:

 Caption

 Font

 Begin Color

 End color

 Style

 Paint

 Bring to Front

Please note that the gradient gadget uses 24bit colors. When you paint it to the drawing it is converted to 8bit colors because the GIF format only allows a maximum of 256 (8bit) colors.

Resize

Introduced in Movies 6 you can resize  the image to make it easier to edit. Right-click resize on the image to resize x1, x2 or x4.


Text Gadget

Text Gadget

With the text gadget you can add text to a frame. You can display/hide the text gadget by clicking the text (T) button.

Once the gadget is visible you can drag it to the desired location.

Please note that the text gadget may get hidden by newly created frames. To bring the gadget at the top again just hide and display it again.

Text Options

By right-clicking the gadget you can set its Font and Caption. Once you are satisfied by the looks of the gadget, move it over the target frame, select the frame and the right-click Paint, to stamp an image of the gadget on the frame, or Paint Shadow, to paint a shadowed image of the gadget on the frame. Please note that the current brush color of the image will be used as the shadow color. You may want to set the brush color to the desired value before you stamp the shadowed text.


Wizards

Wizards

Wizards are introduced in Movies 2. The enable you to achieve animation effects not easy to create manually. Wizards allways work on two adjacent images, hereafter called transition images. Before you start a wizard make sure that you have selected the first of those two images.

Transition Wizard

The Transition wizard tranforms the first image slowly into the second image.

Rotation Wizards

There are two rotation wizards Left-Right and Top-Down. They create a rotation like effect between the two transition images.

Blinds Wizards

There are two blinds wizards Right and Down. They create a blinds effect bewtween the two transition images.

Wipe Wizards

Whipe Right , Down, Up or Left, the second image over the first image.

Curtain Wizards

The wizards simulate the Opening or Closing of a curtain. You have the choice of vertical or horizontal opening and closing.

Box Wizards

Create a box-in or box-out effect.

Options

With Options you can set the default Frame Delay, the default Transparency and the Number of Transition Frames created by the various wizards.


Tutorial

Tutorial

This is a small tutorial giving you a start with the creation of animated GIF-files. I use the example that you also can find on my website. We want to create a spinning Logo that rotates between the following words: Jans Freeware Collection Jans.

Create the first Frame

Create the first frame by clicking the New button. Just accept the standard with of 120 pixels and standard height of 60 pixels.

Make the frame Black

Because we want to spin the text on a black background we make the frame black. Take the following steps:

 1.	Select the Frame

 2.	Right-click black in the color grid

 3.	Select the floodfill tool

 4.	Click the frame

 5.	Click the pointer tool

Now your frame is black. We just clicked the pointer tool to avoid drawing operations we don't want. It is always wise, once you are done drawing, to select the pointer tool. You will need to do that to be able to select other frames.

Make copies of the first frame

Because we have 4 words we need 4 frames. Make sure you have selected the first frame and then press ctrl+D 3 times.

You see three copies created.

Add text to the frames

Now we are ready to add text to the frames. We will use the text gadget for this. Make the text gadget visible by clickiing the T button. The gadget is labeled: Movies.

The first thing we do is set the font name, color, size and style. Right-click on the text gadget and select Font. The font dialog box is displayed. For this excercise we choose Comic Sans as the font face, Red as the color, Bold as the style and 14 as the font size. Click OK when ready.

You now see Movies in its selected font.

Next we change the caption with right-click Caption. Enter Jans in the input box and click OK.

Make sure the first frame is selected and drag the gadget to the center of this frame. Position it where you want it to be and right-click Paint on the gadget.

Now drag the gadget away to see that Jans is painted on the first frame. Change the caption to Freeware, select the second frame, move the gadget over the second frame, position it and right-click Paint on the gadget. Do the same with the 3rd and 4th frame and the Collection and final Jans words.

Use the rotation wizard

We will use the left-right rotation wizard.

Select the first frame with Jans on it, then select Wizards Rotation Left-Right. Watch the creation of the transition frames. The frames window is scrolled. To move to the next frame just click in the frames list the one underneath the currently selected one. Select again Wizards Rotation Left-Right. To this also for the Collection to Jans  transitions.

Create the GIF-animation

You are now ready to create the GIF-animation: select Animation Create from the main menu. In the viewer window you can see how the animation is build, image by image.

Save the GIF-animation

To save the GIF-animation select Animation Save As from the main menu. Enter a filename (the GIF extension will be added by Movies) and click OK. That is all. You can use the animated GIF-file in one of your web-pages if you want.


Updates

Movies Updates

You can always look for updates of this and any of my other programs at:

http://home.wxs.nl/~verho037/freeware.htm or

http://jans.hypermart.net

Email

If you find a bug or have some suggestions for the program you may email me:

jan1.verhoeven@wxs.nl

About

Movies is created by Jan Verhoeven with Delphi 4.


GIF Explorer

Gif Explorer

The Gif Explorer is introduced in Movies 3. Open the GIF Explorer by selecting Tools Gif Explorer from the main menu. You can open an animated GIF file and explore the individual images and their properties. In addition you can preview the animation at various speeds.


Backgrounds

Backgrounds

Introduced in Movies 5 you can now create a quick background for a frame. If you have used my Painter program these backgrounds will be familiar. Right-click Backgrounds... on a frame to open the backgrounds tool.

Background Functions

To help you in creating Backgrounds a small understanding of the used functions is usefull, although you can also try and click. SeeBackground Functions for a summary of the available functions.

Use

Using Quick backgrounds is easy. First select the red, green or blue  radio button. Then select a function from the list. This function will be attached to the selected color. As explained in Background Functions, a color offset is added to the result of a function. You adjust these offsets with the color trackerbars. Some functions use a factor that you can set with the factor trackerbar (the rightmost bar).

Background Library

Users of my programs may know by now that I like the use of libraires in programs. This makes it easy to save something for use later on. You can save the current settings of the Quick Background tool by right-clicking Add Backdrop over the library dropdown list. Enter a descriptive name and press enter or click OK. The Backgrounds are automatically saved (and loaded when you start Movies) in the PainterQB.txt file. Although this is a very simple file, I would suggest not to change this file manually, but always within Movies. Just to avoid errors.

Update a library item by first selecting it from the dropdown list. Then you modify the settings and finally you right-click Update backdrop over the dropdown list. You are asked for a name, with the present name given as default.

Preview

Movies will display the background in a preview window. If you want to use the background, just click the Use button on the preview window.


Background Functions

Overview of the Background functions

When Movies creates a quick background it cycles through all the pixels starting with the top left pixel and ending with the bottom right pixel. Every pixel is made up of three colors: red, green and blue. You can assign a seperate function to each color. In the outer loop the lines are scanned, top to bottom. In the inner loop the pixels are scanned left to right.

Example

If you select for red the Prod function from the list then Movies will apply the BGProd function (see below) to the red part of every pixel. ImgDrawFactor in the formule is the rightmost tracker on the Quick backdrop tool.

To the result of the function a color offset is added. To all red parts the Red offset is added. You adjust the offsets with the red,green and blue trackerbars.

function BGProd(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=outer*inner mod ImgDrawFactor;

end;

function BGSum(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=(outer+inner) mod ImgDrawFactor;

end;

function BGSub(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=(outer - inner) mod ImgDrawFactor;

end;

function BGXor(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=(outer xor inner) mod ImgDrawFactor;

end;

function BGAnd(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=(outer and inner) mod ImgDrawFactor;

end;

function BGOutXor(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=outer xor ImgDrawFactor;

end;

function BGInXor(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=inner xor ImgDrawFactor;

end;

function BGOutAnd(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=outer and ImgDrawFactor;

end;

function BGInAnd(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=inner and ImgDrawFactor;

end;

function BGOutMod(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=outer mod ImgDrawFactor;

end;

function BGInMod(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=inner mod ImgDrawFactor;

end;

function BGProdXor(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=(outer*inner) xor ImgDrawFactor;

end;

function BGSumXor(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=(outer+inner) xor ImgDrawFactor;

end;

function BGSubXor(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=(outer-inner) xor ImgDrawFactor;

end;

function BGProdAnd(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=(outer*inner) and ImgDrawFactor;

end;

function BGSumAnd(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=(outer+inner) and ImgDrawFactor;

end;

function BGSubAnd(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=(outer-inner) and ImgDrawFactor;

end;

function BGInner(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=inner;

end;

function BGOuter(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=outer;

end;

function BGOutRed(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=QBDRed * outer;

end;

function BGInRed(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=QBDRed * inner;

end;

function BGOutGreen(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=QBDGreen * outer;

end;

function BGInGreen(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=QBDGreen * inner;

end;

function BGOutBlue(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=QBDBlue * outer;

end;

function BGInBlue(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

result:=QBDBlue * inner;

end;

function BGInModOut(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

if outer<ImgDrawFactor then

  outer:=ImgDrawFactor;

result:=inner mod outer;

end;

function BGOutModIn(inner,outer:Integer):integer;

begin

if inner<ImgDrawFactor then

  inner:=ImgDrawFactor;

result:=outer mod inner;

end;


Effects

Effects

Display the Effects Tool by right-clicking Effects in a frame. First select an effect from the list and then change the scrollbar position. Changing a scrollbar position will give you immediate feedback on the preview panel. When you want to use the preview just click the Use button on the preview panel.

•	Contrast

•	Saturation

•	Brightness

•	Gaussian and Split Blur

•	Color and Mono Noise

•	Seamless

•	Smooth

•	Twist

•	Fisheye

•	Smooth Rotate (use the cx and xy bars to change the center of rotation)

•	Wave

•	Wave Extra

•	Wave Inference (use the second scrollbar for wave height)

•	Split Light

•	Wings (use the second scrollbar for wing size)

Please note that Effects are allways applied to the main image, not to the preview image. This means that if you want to apply several effects to an image you have to click the Use button before you apply the next effect.

Please experiment with the various effects. I will not try to describe them in this help file.

Effects Animation

When you are working with the effects tool and change the scrollbar positions you may notice that what you see at the preview is an animation in itself. Use the add button on the effects tool to add the current preview as an animation frame. In this way it is very easy to create dynamic animations. You can see an example of this on the graphics page of Jans Freeware Collection.


New

New

Movies 6 has several new features. The first thing that you will notice is that the toolbar has disappeared. In order to make drawing more flexible all drawing operations do now take place in a separate drawing window.

Edit a Frame

To edit a frame, double-click the frame and the frame is displayed in the drawing window. When your are finished click the OK button. When you do not want to change the frame, click the Cancel  button.

Wizards

In the effects tool you now have to choice of letting movies step-up or step-down the scrollbar at regular intervals and at the same time adding a copy of each step to the frames collection.

As with all wizards: the number of wizard frames generated is determined by the FramesCount.

You can change the FramesCount from the Movies Menu Options Set Frames....

FramesCount is set to 10 frames by default. Increase this if you want for instance a smooth 360 degree rotation.

Gradient Text

In the draw window you can click the Gradient button (the colored cube) to display the Gradient Text Gadget. Right-click on the Gadget to display a context menu. Click-drag-drop to move the Gadget. Please note that the Gadget itself is displayed in 24bit colors, but when it paints to the frame it is converted to 8bit colors, simply because the GIF format only allows 256 colors. You will loose color information, but still can create nice effects.