Playing and Editing Sequences

The Movies utility is used to play back a sequence created with any of the following utilities:

• Animation Producer (see Fundamentals of Animation)

• FlyThrough Producer (see Producing FlyThrough Sequences)

• Solar Study (see Conducting Solar Studies)

The displayed sequence of frames will show motion, just as in a film or videotape.

You can also use the Movies utility to edit sequences — delete or insert a frame from a sequence, insert one sequence into another, or control a sequence's playback speed (see Making changes to a sequence).

You can display and save sequences in several common file formats. Using the Movies utility in conjunction with other applications, you can integrate sequences into multimedia presentations.

Movies dialog box

General Procedure — To play back a sequence

1. From the Utilities menu's Image submenu, choose Movies.
   The Movies dialog box opens.


2. (Optional) To adjust the playback settings, use the controls in the Movie Playback Settings dialog box, opened by choosing Playback from the Movies dialog box's Settings menu. See Image > Movies.


3. (Optional) To preview the sequence, choose Preview from the dialog box's File menu.
   Previewing means loading only the first frame of a FLI/FLC or AVI sequence and viewing it. This is a quick way to identify a sequence, since loading an entire sequence can take some time. Where a sequence consists of individual frame files, you can Reset to stop the loading of frames at any time. See To preview a sequence.


4. Load the sequence. See To load a sequence.


5. Click the Play button.
   You can use the scroll bar to view a particular frame or to move through the frames slowly.


6. To stop the playback, click the Stop button.

To preview a sequence

1. From the File menu in the Movies dialog box, choose Preview.
   The Preview Movie dialog box opens.


2. In the Files list box, select the sequence in the list box.
   If a sequence of image files from a non-animation format is to be previewed, select the file that contains the first frame of the sequence.


3. Click the OK button.
   Where the sequence is a FLI/FLC file, then the first frame loads for preview. Where the sequence consists of separate frame files (such as TIFF) then the frames start loading from the selected file. Entering a Reset stops further frames loading.

To load a sequence

1. From the File menu in the Movies dialog box, choose Load.
   The Load Movie dialog box opens.


2. In the Files list box, select the sequence.
   If a sequence of image files from a non-animation format is to be loaded, select the file that contains the first frame in the sequence.


3. Click the OK button.



The process of loading an animation sequence — reading and dithering each frame so that it displays as well as possible in the current MicroStation color configuration — can take a lot of processing time. To be sure you are loading the correct sequence, preview the first frame. See To preview a sequence.

Making changes to a sequence

You can delete or insert frames into a sequence, or insert one sequence into another.

To delete a frame from a sequence

1. Use the scroll bar to select the frame to be deleted.


2. From the Movies dialog box's Edit menu, choose Delete Frame.

To insert a frame into a sequence

1. Use the scroll bar to select the frame (in the original sequence) before which the new frame is to be inserted.


2. From the Movies dialog box's Edit menu, choose Insert Frame.
   The Insert Frame dialog box opens.


3. In the Files list box, select a file to open.
   Since sequences in most formats are stored in separate files, you can select the file containing a particular frame. If you select a sequence file in FLI or FLC format, the first frame of the sequence is inserted. To make all the frames in a sequence in FLI or FLC format available for insertion, save it in another format.


4. Click the OK button.
   If necessary, the frame is resized to match the resolution of the current sequence.

To insert a sequence into another sequence

1. Use the scroll bar in the Movies dialog box to select the frame (in the original sequence) before which the new sequence is to be inserted.


2. From the Edit menu in the Movies dialog box, choose Insert Sequence.
   The Insert Sequence dialog box opens.


3. In the Files list box, select the filename of the sequence file to insert.
   The sequence that is inserted must have the same resolution as the current sequence.


4. Click the OK button.

To save changes to a sequence

1. From the Movies dialog box's File menu, choose Save As.
   The Save Movie As dialog box opens.


2. In the Files field, key in the filename.


3. Click the OK button.