Image Movie Control

This window allows you to control the starting and ending coordinates within which a movie will run, the increment between successive frames, and the frame rate. There are also controls for automatically taking snapshots through the range of a movie, and for taking a high-resolution (montaged) snapshot of the Zap or Slicer window. The options set in this dialog have an effect only while the window is open, so you need to keep the window open to take movie snapshots.

Use the axis radio buttons to select whether the sliders will adjust the start, end, and increment for X, Y, Z or Time. The initial default setting is for the sliders to adjust movies in Z.

The start and end values for Time have another function not related to movies: they provide the limits for changing time with the "!" and "@" hot keys. This allows you to use these keys to toggle between two selected times, not just the first and last time.

The Reset button will reset the start, end, and increment to their initial settings (the minimum and maximum coordinates and an increment of 1) for all four axes.

The Done button will close the window and reset these values in the same way.

The Rate text box will display the current frame rate as it is changed by the down and up Arrows or by "," and "." and will also allow you to enter a custom value. You must type Enter to have your value take effect.

The next line shows two actual frame rates, the first averaged over the time since the current movie was started, the second an instantaneous rate since the last frame was displayed. The actual rate will be less than the selected rate if the display is too slow to keep up, and can also differ from the selected rate due to lack of precision of the system clock.

If Round Trip is selected, then movies will loop from one end to the other then from that end back to the start; if One Way is selected, then movies will always go in one direction and jump back to the start when the end is reached.

If one of the Snapshot buttons, TIFF or one of the two non-TIFF buttons, is selected, and a movie is started in a Zap or Slicer window, then that window will automatically take a snapshot of each frame in the given format for one complete cycle of the movie. The default non-TIFF formats should be JPEG and PNG. To change the format of the first non-TIFF option, use the menu entry Edit-Options and go to the Behavior panel. The second option will be PNG if the first one is not PNG, or JPEG if the first one is PNG.

If you stop the movie before it is done, then another mouse click in that or a different window will start a completely new movie.

Montage Snapshots

This capability can be used to get a snapshot of a display larger than what will fit in the Zap or Slicer window.

If Montage is selected for one of the two window types and this dialog is open, then a snapshot of the window (via any of the Ctrl and/or Shift S hot keys) will be taken as a montage of frames at a higher zoom. High-resolution display is automatically used for these frames. The montage is assembled in memory and saved as a single TIFF or non-TIFF image, depending on which hot key was used for the snapshot. In addition, if you start a movie in the Zap or Slicer window when one of the Snapshot buttons is on, a montage will be taken at each section in the movie range and saved as a TIFF or non-TIFF image, depending on which snapshot type is selected.

In the Snapshot tab of the 3dmod Preferences dialog, you can set a resolution in dots per inch (DPI) to be stored in a TIFF or JPEG snapshot file. That tab also has an option to have your specified resolution scaled up by the zoom factor of the montage. With that option selected, montages based on different numbers of frames will all appear at the same size as an ordinary snapshot in viewers that pay attention to the DPI setting (e.g., Adobe products).

Another useful option is available in the File menu: Gray TIF Snaps. With this selected, all TIFF snapshots will be converted to 8-bit gray-scale. This setting is not stored between instances of the program.

On some machines you may need to make sure that there are no other windows on top of the Zap or Slicer window. The settings in this section are saved across sessions of 3dmod, including whether to take montage snapshots when the dialog is open.

Zap Montage Snapshots

The Montage button in this section of the dialog controls whether a montage snapshot is taken of a Zap window. If Whole image at 1:1 zoom is not selected, then the by spin box is used to select the amount that the image is zoomed up from its current zoom for the snapshot. Just the area of the image showing in the Zap window will be captured; i.e., borders are eliminated.

Select Whole image at 1:1 zoom to get a snapshot of the entire image at a zoom of 1. The program selects a montaging factor that will work for capturing the whole image at zoom 1. This feature is useful, for example, for getting a full-resolution JPEG snapshot of an image that is too large to fit on the screen.

If Scale sizes by is selected during a montage snapshot, then the thicknesses of all model lines and the sizes of all symbols will be scaled up by the amount selected in the spin box. These thicker, larger lines will then show up well if the image is scaled back down to the original size, such as when it is embedded in a figure. You can select either a specific scaling or Auto scaling by selecting the value below 2 in the spin box. With auto-scaling, the sizes will be scaled by the product of the zoom before montaging and the montaging factor for zooms below 1, otherwise by the montaging factor. This will produce no scaling when taking a whole image at 1:1 zoom, and scaling by the montaging factor in most other cases.

To get a Zap montage snapshot, the rubberband must be off, otherwise an ordinary snapshot of the enclosed subarea will be taken.

Slicer Montage Snapshots

The Montage button in the bottom section of the dialog controls whether a montage snapshot is taken of a Slicer window. The by spin box is used to select the amount that the image is zoomed up from its current zoom for the snapshot. The whole area of the slicer window will be captured, including any borders.

If Scale thickness by is selected during a montage snapshot, then the thicknesses of all model lines will be scaled up by the amount selected in the spin box. (The methods used to draw the model in a Slicer automatically scale Symbols and spheres by the absolute zoom factor.) These thicker, larger lines will then show up well if the image is scaled back down to the original size, such as when it is embedded in a figure. You can select either a specific scaling or Auto scaling by selecting the value below 2 in the spin box. With auto-scaling, the sizes will be scaled by the product of the zoom before montaging and the montaging factor for zooms below 1, otherwise by the montaging factor. This will produce a scaling that is appropriate when the output image is scaled back to the size that original image would have at 1:1 zoom.

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