Animation Types


There are 5 different animation types, and each type has different parameters that may be entered, following is a introduction to the the animation types. See the "Animation Types" Section for more information relating to the different parameters.


Picture/Video
Picture Stretched
Sprite with Random Movement
Sprite with Linear Movement
Crossfade between Two Images


Picture/Video

Simply allows you to place an Image or Video/Movie File onto the screen and allows you to designate the Position, Size and Movement of the Image in the X & Y Planes

The Following Options are available in the Picture/Video Animation Type


Image A or Video (Avi-Mov-MPEG-DVD) This is the name of the video/image file of the animation to open without spaces inside.

It is very Important Not to use spaces in the Filename.
Make sure that you do not enter any invalid Characters like \ / : * ? " < > |
The file that you are planning to run/display Must be in the "MartinPS" Directory

Top - This designates the distance from the Top of the screen to the Video/Image Window in Pixels, if you put a negative figure, i.e. -100, this will convert into the distance from the Bottom of the Screen.

Left - This designates the distance from the Left of the screen to the Video/Image Window in Pixels, if you put a negative figure, i.e. -100, this will convert into the distance from the Right of the Screen.

In the event that you are using a Dual VGA configuration (Only available in Windows98), you will need to add a figure to the figures given for the first screen resolution to produce the image on both Monitors. i.e. If the first Monitor is 800 x 600, you will to enter a figure higher than 801.

Width - This designates the width of the Video/Image window in pixels, If you wish to Autosize (that is take the actual size of the image) put "-1" in the box. Alternatively if you wish to Autosize and Centre the Image put "-2" in the box.

Height - This designates the height of the Video/Image window in pixels.

Timeout - This designates the number of seconds that the Video/Image is displayed before automatically closing.

Kill Previous - If you wish to make a Slide Show you will need to replace one image with another, In this instance, enter "1" into the Box to kill the Previous Image. However, if you wish to make a composition of many images one (or two) monitor(s), selecting "0" will leave the images on the Screen.

Vertical Movement - This is the increment measured in pixels that the Image/Video will use to travel between the the Top and the Bottom of the screen putting a positive number i.e. 10 in the box, the Image/Video will travel to the Bottom of the screen at a speed of 10 pixels per second, and conversely, putting -10 will cause the Image/Video to go to the Top of the screen at a speed of 10 pixels per second

Horizontal Movement - This is the increment measured in pixels that the Image/Video will use to travel between the the Left Hand Side and the Right Hand Side of the screen. If you put a positive number i.e. 10 in the box, the Image/Video will travel to the Right of the screen at a speed of 10 pixels per second, and conversely, putting -10 will cause the Image/Video to go to the Left of the screen at a speed of 10 pixels per second

Movement timeout - This designates the number of seconds that you wish to elapse before automatically stopping the movement of the Image/Video, this is counted from the time that the Image/Video commences movement.

Movement Wait Time - This designates the number of seconds that you wish to wait before automatically starting the movement of the Image/Video.

In addition to this, there is a Box on the Right hand Side Labelled "Macro File to play at the end of the Video"

A ProScenium Macro file is a text file that you can edit with Windows Notepad , You can enter many MCI Commands, one on each individidual line. ProScenium will execute these commands line by line in much the same way that a DOS Batch file would operate. There are two manners in which you can save this file, either by giving the suffix (.txt), a normal text file or (.mps) a MPS Macro File.

As an example, make a Macro and name it "crossfade.txt"

within "crossfade.txt" enter the text.

C:\martinps\mpsexec.exe cfd

This will start the crossfade when the video is finished.

Three Very Important Things.....

It is very Important Not to use spaces in the Filename.

Make sure that you do not enter any invalid Characters like \ / : * ? " < > |

The file that you are planning to run/display Must be in the "MartinPS" Directory


Picture Stretched

This has the same parameters as above but without the last parameter "Macro File to play at the end of the Video"


Sprite with Random Movement

A Sprite is an image, or collection of images (cells) that can be superimposed upon the base image and if desired, this image may be moved across the screen, or in the event that there are multiple cells selected, an animation may be created along the lines of a simple cartoon. This feature, as is explained by the title allows for Random Movement of the superimposed Image(s).

In this instance, the Box labelled "Macro File to play at the end of the Video" serves as the place to enter the name of the BMP file to be used in the animation to open (again without spaces).

The files must be a Bitmap (BMP) using 8 bits per pixel resolution for both Sprite Random & Linear Movement.

It is very Important Not to use spaces in the Filename. Make sure that you do not enter any invalid Characters like \ / : * ? " < > |

The file that you are planning to run/display Must be in the "MartinPS" Directory

To use Sprite Random & Linear Movement, you can make a bitmap, for example, of 100 pixels by 100 pixels.

If you need to make 4 different positions for your Sprite (in order to create animation) you should make the width 100 and the height 400 pixels.

Having inserted the Sprite File Name, there are the following parameters that need filling in, these are similar to the Left Hand Side but with a couple of important differences.


Top - This designates the distance from the Top of the screen to Image B above Image A in Pixels, this is assuming that Image A is situated at 0,0 if you put a negative figure, i.e. -100, the Images will appear off the edge of the Top of the Screen.

Left - This designates the distance from the Left of the screen to Image B in Pixels, if you put a negative figure, i.e. -100, the images will appear off of the edge of the Left of the Screen.

In the event that you are using a Dual VGA configuration (Only available in Windows98), you will need to add a figure to the figures given for the first screen resolution to produce the image on both Monitors. i.e. If the first Monitor is 800 x 600, you will to enter a figure higher than 801.

Speed of the Animation Steps (0-1000) - This is the speed at which the animation Crossfade from one cell to another. Please note that you will need multiple cells to see the effect of this. The scale uses 0 as the Fastest Speed and 1000 as the Slowest Speed.

Horizontal Movement - This Parameter has no effect in this mode as the movement is Random

Image B Movement timeout - This designates the number of seconds that you wish to elapse before automatically stopping the movement of the Image, this is counted from the time that the Image commences movement.

Image B Movement Wait Time - This designates the number of seconds that you wish to wait before automatically starting the movement of the Image/Video.

Number of Cells that compose your Sprite - This is the number of images that you have built into your Bitmap, make sure that you enter the correct number of Cells otherwise there will be strange results in the animation.

Number of Sprites you want to load - This is the number of images that you wish to load, meaning that in Random Mode you can take one Image of a Bird Flying with say, 4 Cells, and create a flock of Birds flying around the Screen.

Sprite with Linear Movement

This option is the same as the Sprite with Random Movement but with two slightly different options:

Vertical Movement - This is the increment measured in pixels that the Image/Video will use to travel between the the Top and the Bottom of the screen putting a positive number i.e. 10 in the box, the Image/Video will travel to the Bottom of the screen at a speed of 10 pixels per second, and conversely, putting -10 will cause the Image/Video to go to the Top of the screen at a speed of 10 pixels per second

Horizontal Movement - This is the increment measured in pixels that Image B will use to travel between the the Left Hand Side and the Right Hand Side of the screen. If you put a positive number i.e. 10 in the box, the Image will travel to the Right of the screen at a speed of 10 pixels per second, and conversely, putting -10 will cause the Image to go to the Left of the screen at a speed of 10 pixels per second


Crossfade between Two Images

There is a small change in the display when you select this mode, instead of animation steps, you have the option to change the

Speed of the Crossfade Steps (0-1000) - This is the speed at which the Images Crossfade from one to another. The scale uses 0 as the Fastest Speed and 1000 as the Slowest Speed.

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