FMV6 Help

Tip :- If the setup fails to extract and you had to extract to a different folder, this can often be because a file called ‘setup.exe’ is already present in your ‘\Temp’ folder. This file was probably left there by a previous failed installation attempt and this file has ‘Read only’ attributes. This means that other installers will often fail when they try to extract their files.

To cure this problem, locate your ‘Temp’ folder (Start – Control Panel – System – Advanced – Environment Variables’. Now locate the ‘Temp’ or\and ‘Tmp’ settings. Now in Windows explorer, go to these folders and delete all the files.

Microsoft Windows Installer

FMV6 uses the latest Microsoft installer based on 'Windows Installer Technology'.

This installer keeps FMV and the files it uses separate from any other applications you have and helps to prevent a situation called 'DLL Hell' from arising.

As this installer is new however, it requires that some core files are placed on your system. This in turn may require that your system is re-booted during the install process. This will only happen once and all subsequent packages that use this installer will not require the re-boot.

To uninstall FMV, just re-run the setup.exe file and select 'Remove FMV'. Do NOT just delete the folder. You may also use 'Control Panel - Add \ Remove Software'. If you delete the folder, the Windows installer will assume that the

installation has become damaged and it will try to repair the application by re-installing FMV when you next re-start Windows.

You can also repair a damaged installation if required by again re-running the setup.exe program.

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The Basics

What is a Collection ?

A collection is a group of movies, audio tracks, stills etc - basically anything that can be played or shown with FMV. This allows you to 'group' multimedia clips into convenient, 'collections'. You could for example have a collection of 'Rock Music' which could be composed of a few of your local CD-Audio tracks, a few Web pages, some MP3's and a few movie streams.

A 'Star Trek' collection might be composed of some local MPEG's, a few AVI's, some stills and some local sound files.

Once you have added all your clips and set them up to play, just the way you want, whenever you load this collection back in to FMV, it will be replayed exactly as you set it up to.
This will include it's Zoom level, playback rate, any pan settings and it's position on screen. This allows you to tailor the playback to be perfect for your individual system.

Right Clicking

Right Clicking is the key to FMV. In general, right click on the movie itself and either a new set of menu options will appear or you will invoke the Remote control unit. In the settings screen, right-clicking in the black space around the toolboxes will hide them. Right clicking inside the main toolbox 'black' space will toggle between showing all tools and hiding all tools.
Right clicking on the slider control will create a memo point. Right clicking on the 'Mark-In' or 'Mark-Out' symbols will also re-set the range selections. As soon as you switch to the freeform Zoom Mode, Right clicking on the Movie will invoke a new set of options.

Useful Right-Click Shortcuts :-

Right-Click – on Movie - Zoom, Aspect Ratio

Right-Click – on Toolbar - Prefs – (Shift-Right-Click – Playlist)

Right-Click – on Effects - Effect Parameters \ Keyframes dialog shown (When in Editor)

Right-Click – Volume - Resets audio output level to 100%

Right-Click – Speed - Resets Playback rate to 1.0x

Right-Click – Rew5 << - Rewind to start of clip

Right-Click – Slider - Envokes the ‘Positioner’ dialog

MouseWheel frame control \ Flick Start\Stop

The mousewheel is the main method of control in FMV. FMV uses the mousewheel for advancing or rewinding in a movie or audio clip. To use the mousewheel, just click on the movie and then use the mousewheel to position. The sensitivity of the mousewheel can also be configured in the preferences section. Additionally, if you have a multimedia controller such as the ‘Contour Shuttle Pro’, it can also be used in conjunction.

To scroll with Frame level precision using the mousewheel you must have the ‘Create’ tab selected. This is due to the realtime previews reducing CPU resources.

When setting Keyframes in the editor, again, if you click on the main source movie display, you can scroll with the mousewheel and as well as the ‘source clip’ scrolling, the ‘effected preview’ will also scroll . This gives a ‘frame by frame’ preview of any effects you apply.

You can also adjust the sensitivity of the mousewheel and how it reacts.

Prefs - Mousewheel - Sensitivity

FMV can also use the mousewheel to start and stop playback. A rapid ‘flick’ of the mousewheel will toggle Play\Pause mode. The sensitivity can be controlled from the editor by ‘Right-clicking’ on the ‘Mouse icon’ .

Tip:- In an ideal situation you will effectively ‘Rock’ the mousewheel forwards and backwards to start and stop playback and to frame advance and rewind. It takes a little ‘tuning’ to get it just right but once it is setup, it’s a very powerful method of media control. (On some systems, the sensitivity controls can be reversed i.e Low=High and High=Low.)

The ‘Rotation’ panel is accessed ONLY from within the editor by Right-clicking on the Mouse icon.

Main Controls

Clicking the 'Magnify' button will take you directly to the zoom screen. It is here you can have a detailed look at your movie and set the movie up to play in a screensaver i.e Zoom and speed. When you save the collection, FMV will remember the settings you have applied for this particular clip. Each and every clip in the collection can have different settings applied and each will play with these settings when you play the collection or create a screensaver from the collection. The zoom buttons allow you to access common zoom settings but the slider will allow you to zoom the clip to about 1500%. At this resolution you should be able to see reflections in peoples eyes on high def footage.

Clicking the 'Editor' button will start FMV’s movie editor. In this screen, you can cut, mix and apply effects to movies and stills – The editor is a ‘CUT’ based editor and is not timeline based. See the Editor Section for more information.

Clicking the ‘Minimum details’ button. This button will hide all the ancillary data about the movie and give you just the movie with the control buttons. This mode is also good if you want to preview a clip in a little more detail.

Full screen mode and a free sizable zoom mode are available after clicking this button. If you are in the ‘minimum details’ mode and click this button, the player will initially show a sizeable window with the movie sized to 100%. If you are in the main initial screen, FMV will go straight to ‘Full screen mode’. In the ‘Sizeable’ mode, to size the window, just grab the corner or any border and drag the window bigger or smaller as desired. To move the window, use any 'black space' or the top of the toolbar itself.

Click the Cross (close) icon to return the player back to it's default mode. Use the 'double square' icon to toggle between the sizable zoom mode and full screen mode. The slider control can also be activated at any time by clicking the slider icon on the toolbar. 1 and 5 Frame advance and rewind are also available (Holding down the mouse on either the advance or repeat will invoke it's repeat mode) as are the speed controls where appropriate.

You may also SHIFT+RightClick on the toolbar. This will hide it completely. If you again now Shift+RightClick anywhere on the black background, the toolbar will be re-displayed. This may be useful if you wish to record a playback sequence to tape for example.

The above toolbar then becomes available for controlling playback. Right Clicking on the toolbar will show the full remote control which can then be used to advance to the next movie or audio clip in the collection. This window is also sizable. To increase or decrease the size of the window, just grab it's bottom corner and increase or decrease the size of the Window. You may also Right-click on the movie for additional controls such as re-sizing the movie back to 100% or playing the movie in Full Screen Mode.

Speed Controls - These will allow you to change the playback rate for some types of Video and Audio. They won't for example work on CD-Audio tracks, RealMedia format files, streams from the internet or WMV format files. If you do want to speed up and slow down CD-Audio like this, first convert the track to a WAV file with the CD-Audio to WAV converter. You will then be able to not only edit the track but also speed it up and slow it down. Once the speed controls are invoked, a ‘slider’ is superimposed over the movie – Just move the mouse over this slider for greater control over the clips speed.

Advance 5 frames or seconds. If you are listening to CD-Audio and click this button, you will advance the track 5 seconds.

If you are watching a movie, again you advance 5 seconds. If you click the 'Pause' button first however, the player will switch into 'Frames' mode and the button will now advance 5 frames in the video or MP3. Clicking once and then clicking again but holding down the mouse button will invoke a continual advance \ repeat mode.

Advance 1 frame or second. If you are listening to CD-Audio, and click this button, you will advance the track 1 second. If you are watching a movie, again you advance 1second. If you click the 'Pause' button first however, the player will switch into 'Frames' mode and the button will now advance 1 frame in the video or MP3.Clicking once and then clicking again but holding down the mouse button will invoke a continual advance \ repeat mode.

Play \ Reverse Play This will toggle between itself and the pause button. i.e when the movie or track is Paused, the play button will switch off. Holding down the SHIFT key while playing a movie will start the movie playing in reverse mode. The rate of reverse play is dependent on the previous forward rate at which the movie was playing i.e if the movie was advancing at 0.25 speed, when reverse play is invoked, the movie will play at about -0.25 normal speed. Reverse mode is only available on AVI and MPEG format movies. Reverse mode is also a CPU intensive task.

The Slider control.

The slider control allows you to quickly position in a movie or audio track. You may hold the mouse down over the blob and then position it or just click on the line and the track or movie will advance to that position. If you hold the mouse button down and drag it while you are playing a movie, the movie will update it's display about every 300ms. Right clicking the 'blob' will create a 'memo-point'. In the sliders preferences section you can also specify 'No text', If this option is unchecked a digital display will track with the slider.

The format of the numerical display is mm:ss:ff where ff represents the frame number. You may also click on the numeric display to activate the frame level positioner below. From here, you can set both the mark-IN point and mark-OUT point with frame level accuracy.

Click the blue numeric ‘tracking’ display to activate the ‘direct positioner’.

The ‘Positioner’ can be used for several other tasks such as trimming clips. To do this, click on the outer segments to activate the ‘Mark-In’ or ‘Mark-Out’ functions. To set either of these points, you may position with any of the positioners in FMV i.e the slider, quick positoner, remote control and when you click the ‘Apply’ button on the positioner, the change will be effected.

The positioner can also be used to accurately trim WAV files (Preferably PCM 44.1Khz Stereo) . When available, the positioner will be displayed with additional levels of movement resolution i.e :-

In the above example, the level of resolution is set to 1/1000^th of a second so each rotation of the mouse will only advance about 1/1000^th of a second.

FMV prefers to work with 44.1Khz Wav files. If you have audio file of other formats, the Convertor on the Tools menu will convert most other formats including stripping audio from movies. If you are stripping audio from Movies, FMV will only strip the selected part of the audio. You can therefore just extract the parts you want.

Once you have done this, the WAV form is displayed whenever the clip is selected. Again, Clicking on the displayed waveform will allow you to scroll with the mouse.

Mark IN and Mark OUT symbols. When these are visible, drag them on the slider control to set the start and end points of the playback. To reset them, just right-click on either symbol and the movie start and end positions will be reset. You can also do this with WAV and MP3 files. These positioners are accurate to about 1 second. If you want to set the start and end points more accurately, use the above direct positioner screen. This allows you to set both the start and end points with frame level accuracy.

Memo Points - These allow quick access to specific points in the movie or clip. To use them, just click on the memo graphic and the movie will either advance or rewind to the point the memo was set at.

To set a memo point, just right-click on the slider timeline. To clear it, right-click on the memo. You may set up to 3 memo points at any one time.

Buff =42% @ 30024bps If you are viewing a stream and the data is not being received fast enough, FMV will display buffering data and the current reception speed.

Buff =22% @ 1022bps - Net Traffic FMV will the display a traffic warning if your reception speed drops significantly or there are large gaps in when the data is being received.

Index If the movie or stream you are viewing has been indexed, FMV will display an Index indicator. If you click this, FMV will display the index list shown below. Clicking any of the entries in the list will either advance or rewind you to the requested point in the movie even if the movie is a stream. FMV also displays the length of each section in the video.

Stream Info When you view either an Audio or video stream the 'Stream Info' prompt is displayed, clicking it will bring up detailed information on the stream you are viewing and the speed it is being received at.

Non-Video Visualisation.
To launch the full screen visualisation, select 'Tools - Launch non-video visualisation' when playing either CD-Audio or MP3 tracks. To configure the effects select 'Prefs - Configure non-Video Visualisation'. Additional help is also available on the dialog that is presented. DirectX3 or higher is required.

Shortcut Keys

You can select the main features by using the shortcut keys.

TO	*Press*
Add media to collection	ALT-A
New collection	ALT-N
Save current collection	ALT-S
Open existing collection	ALT-O
Remove media from collection	ALT-R
Play this collection - mouse click advances	ALT-P
Exit FMV	ALT-X
Go to media settings screen	ALT-M
Change section display name	ALT-B
Advance media up the playlist	ALT-I
Move media down the playlist	ALT-D
Show Remote Control Unit	ALT-L
Mute audio	ALT-M
Show Volume Controls	ALT-V
Display Help	ALT-H

Show Controls
Esc Quit Show when playing a collection

Frame\Movie Position Controls
> Adv 5 frame and pause
< Back 5 frames and pause
. (Full Stop) Advance 1 frame and pause
, (Comma) Back 1 Frame and pause
S Start of movie
I mIddle of movie
E End of movie(second last frame)

Volume Controls
M Mute ON/Off Toggle

Speed Controls
P Pause/Play (or Space) Toggle
Q Quarter speed
H Half speed
N Normal speed
D Double speed

Zoom Controls (When playing collection)
Z Zoom Up
X Zoom Down

Movie Controls (When playing collection)
1-9 Play Movie 1 to 9 in collection
R Repeat Movie Toggle
V PreVious Movie
T nexT Movie

Some of these functions are NOT available if the Contour ShuttlePro device is enabled. You can disable

The ShuttlePro in ‘Preferences – General’

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Adding Media to a Collection

FMV is fully 'drag & drop' enabled - You may drop entire collections (INI files), single or multiple files onto the main window, the remote control or the playlist itself. Single files or collections can also be dropped onto the desktop icon when FMV is not running. If you associate your media files with FMV, FMV will start and play the file automatically from applications such as Windows Explorer, Outlook Express or Internet Explorer. If FMV is already running, the file(s) are added to the playlist.

FMV will NEVER take over any file type associations automatically and make itself the default player. If you wish to do this, just use Windows explorer and highlight a file i.e Test.MPG, now while holding the Shift Key down, Right Click. On the dialog that has opened, is the option 'Open With'. Select this and you will be presented with a list of applications that are installed on your PC. Now just find FMV6 and check the 'Always Open with' checkbox. FMV is now the default player for MPEGS. You may now just click files in Windows explorer and if FMV is not running, it will start and then play your movie. You may also click files like this when FMV is running and they too will be added to the playlist.

Note :- Windows XP users MUST use Windows Media Player and de-associate the file type first.

To add media to the current collection from the File menu :-

Click File, click Add Media to Collection.
In the file open dialog box, click the drive or folder that contains the clips you want to add.
In the folder list, double-click folders until you open the folder that contains the movies or media you want.
Click the file name of the media you want to open.
Click Open

To Change the CD in the drive, just eject it, change the disk and add new tracks. FMV will then update the track data in the playlist.

You can add several clips at a time by multi selecting files from the Add Media to Collection dialog box. To select multiple consecutive files, click on the first file, then keep the SHIFT key pressed while pressing the up or down arrow keys. To select multiple non-consecutive files, click on the first file, then keep the CTRL- key pressed and left mouse click on each file you want to add.

If the file format is supported by FMV, then the clip will be added to the collection and played in the FMV preview window.

If the file is not supported by FMV, adding the file will involve the following additional steps:

FMV will try to connect to the Internet to download a CODEC (compressor/decompressor). Click Cancel.
FMV will now ask you if you wish to attempt viewing the clip through the FMV Mov Viewer and try to use the QuickTime subsystem. If the movie does not play in the FMV QuickTime MOV Viewer, add the file again but connect to the Internet to download the appropriate CODEC. If the movie still does not play, FMV cannot display the movie.
A dialog box will be displayed saying FMV was unable to download a suitable decompressor. Click Close.
A dialog box will be displayed asking if the Movie/Image displayed correctly. Click YES or NO. If you click no, the Movie/Image won't be added to the collection.

The above feature can be switched on or off in the preferences - Movies - use 'Windows Media Player first' menu.

The 'use Windows Media Player first' option in the preferences menu will make FMV use Windows Media player subsystem first on QuickTime MOV files. This is because the Windows Media Player supports some earlier version of QuickTime MOV's. It does not however support the latest format of QuickTime V4 & higher. Unfortunately however both old and new format QuickTime movies have the same 'MOV' extension. If you know that most of your MOV files are the new Version 4 format, uncheck this option and FMV will always use the Apple subsystem and not the Windows Media player subsystem to play the movies with a .MOV extension. If you try to play a New version 4 MOV with Windows Media Player, it will attempt to download a codec to play the file. As there is no codec available to do this, it will always fail. The QuickTime V4 subsystem however supports all previous versions of QuickTime MOV's. FMV requires that you must have QuickTime V4 or higher already installed - The 'Pro' version of QuickTime is not required.

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Adding Video and audio streams from the Internet

If your dialup connection \ Internet connection is not set up to AutoConnect to the Internet, manually connect. On the menu, click File, then click Add Internet Movie Stream to Collection, type in the exact location and file name of the movie stream you want to view. This must be the exact URL and file name of the clip e.g. http://www.f-m-v.co.uk/download/prev56.wmv Then click OK. FMV will now start to play the stream.

You may then use the 'Media - Change display name' to make the video title a little more readable.

If you do not know the actual URL of the movie stream you want to view, follow these steps:

Connect to the Internet and open your browser
Click the link on the webpage that starts the movie playing
When the Movie is playing in either WMP or QuickTime :- for WMP - The location and filename will be detailed in the file properties tab. This is usually accessed from the menu or by right mouse clicking on the movie.
Open FMV if you do not already have it open
Click File, then click Add Internet Movie Stream to Collection
Type in the full path and file name of the movie stream you want to view. You can also do this by copying and pasting the path and filename from the properties tab.(Remember to add the backslash between the path and the filename itself)
Click OK

· To see additional details about movie streams when they are playing in FMV, click the 'Stream Info' label on the main display window. This will show details such as your connection speed and how quickly data is being received.

· FMV will also diagnose your connection to the internet and if the current rate of reception falls to below 40% of your connected speed, FMV will issue a 'Net traffic' alert telling you that it cannot get the data required quick enough. For ASF \ WMV video streams, this may result in just the audio being heard with no picture. This will happen for example if you have a 56k modem and attempt to view a 100kb video stream.

· As the movie is being streamed over the internet you may experience delays, stoppages, etc due to poor internet connections, transmission problems, internet traffic and so on. If FMV detects this while playing, it will display your current connection speed together with your current reception rate. Click Stream Info to get more information on Connection Statistics e.g. Connected Speed, etc. Click the More button to display Stream Properties such Channel Description, etc.

· Try to avoid zooming live video or audio streams from the web. Zooming will initiate a re-buffering of the clip. If you just wish to make the streamed picture bigger, switch the player into it's 'minimum details' mode and then use the 'position and size movies' option from the prefs menu. Only use the zoom option if you are setting up a clip to be played as part of a 'full screen' presentation.

· Web pages can also be added to the collection whilst browsing in the Web Browser. This allows you to group information logically while browsing the web. Additionally, if you create a screensaver from a collection that contains web pages, you can set the screensaver to automatically cycle through the web pages in the collection. You can also set the length of time each page is displayed for.

CDDB

The CD-Audio player creates a text file of all CD Albums it identifies called CDDB.TXT in the \CDDB folder under the installed folder. This file is a standard CSV file and can be imported into any database such as MS-Access. If the CD is incorrectly identified or you wish to permanently change the track descriptions, just edit this file with Notepad.exe accordingly. Individual Album descriptions are kept in the files pointed to by the CDDB text file. Again, these can be edited to rename and change individual track titles.

If you wish to see more details about the CD track you are playing, use the Media - Media notes option. The Album name, artist and genre are automatically added to the notes window at the bottom of the form.

The CDDB database will supply different language descriptions for the album. Click the server location to best select the language you require.

Capture Video \ DV Write to tape

Provides the facility to capture video and frames from your video capture device.

On the menu, click Tools
Then select an appropriate capture option. The capture options are :-

DV Camcorder Capture \ Write to Tape

This option allows you to transfer video both from and too your DV camera. You can also preview tapes and control the camera in VCR mode.

Capture Video (DirectShow)

This option allows you to transfer video from an analog camera to you PC via the Windows ‘DirectShow’ interface.

Capture Video (VFW with Compression)

This option allows you to transfer video from an analog camera to you PC via the Windows ‘Video for Windows’ interface and to compress the captured video through a compressor \ Codec.

Change display name

This option allows you to change the displayed name of media clips. If, for example, you have a 30 minute training video which has four sections, add the clip four times, then use the setting screen to mark each section. Now alias each section e.g. Introduction, Step 1, Step 2, etc. FMV will only use one copy of the movie but will allow you to split it as many times as you like.

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Media Settings

Playback Rate

You can set the playback rate for any clip by just clicking on any of the predefined rate settings buttons on either the main front screen or the toolbar in full screen mode i.e 0.25x, 0.5x or 2.0x.

As soon as you click one of these settings, an additional rate settings overlay is displayed on the video. i.e

This overlay is ‘mouse sensitive’ and just moving the mouse over the display will alter the playback rate from 0.1x speed to 1.0x speed. This is the master playback rate control.

FMV has two effective rates for video.

A) A display playback rate

B) A video render playback rate.

This allows you to have a video render speed for editing whilst still allowing you to view the video at the rate you wish in either full screen mode or on the main front screen .

Reverse Mode

Clicking on the play button whilst holding down the SHIFT key will start reverse playback mode. The reverse rate is based on the previous rate of playback i,e if you had a forward playback rate of 2.0x, FMV will attempt to playback the video at -2.0x. Reverse playback is a CPU intensive task and FMV will attempt to match the negative playback rate.

The Settings Screen (Zoom Video to 1500%)

FMV allows you to set clips up to play in the way you want. In addition to this, once you have set the clip up once, the clip will always be played this way whenever the collection is loaded. FMV remembers the setting you apply to each clip in the collection. Set it up once and then save the collection and you will never have to adjust the zoom, speed etc again for any of your movies.

All settings applied in this screen will also be applied to any screensavers you create from the current collection.

· In the playlist, click on the clip you want to customize so that it is playing in the main FMV preview window.

· You may now click any of the labels in the details pane below (Zoom, Speed etc). Clicking on the labels will activate the settings screen with the correct tool displayed. You may also click the main 'Media - Media Settings' menu option.

· The settings screen will be displayed with the 'Tools' toolbar in the top left corner.

· Clicking on the any of the buttons in the main toolbar displays the associated dialog box enabling you to change the corresponding setting.

· Right mouse click on the black space inside the border on the toolbar will hide the toolbar. This also applies to any of the tool dialogs when they are displayed. i.e Right clicking on any blackspace inside the Zoom panel will hide it.

· Left mouse click anywhere on screen to redisplay the main toolbar.

· Zoom Allows you to change the visual size of the selected movie - Zoom is available to 1000% with pan controls. FMV allows you to Zoom movies from 25% right up to 1000 %. This allows you to maximize the display area of your monitor. Many movies when played at 'full screen' can have large black borders surrounding them. If the move was recorded at a high enough resolution, you can zoom the clip to fill the screen without any noticeable picture degradation. FMV allows you to use the full display area of your monitor.

· The zoom dialog box consists of the 'title bar' which displays the current zoom level.

Click the Fullscreen label to show the movie in fullscreen mode.

Click the Stats label to display the movie statistics pop-up window.

The Zoom Slider bar will allow you to change and optimize the zoom level of the Movie

The % Buttons allow you to quickly switch to any of the predefined zoom levels

The Pan buttons allow you to scroll about the movie. These are only activated whenever the movie is zoomed to above full screen size. When the movie is played back as part of a collection, pan settings are also applied.

Note: If you get a black screen reduce the zoom level slowly with the slider control until the movie is re-displayed. You may also click the 100% button to restore the movie to it's normal size.

To play a movie at the optimal size for your PC .
Whilst it is possible to zoom movies to larger than full screen, this does not mean that your PC will be able to deliver adequate performance at this level of zoom. This will greatly depend on the capabilities of your system i.e graphics card etc and how the movie was encoded. If the clip is a high resolution 'Full Frames Uncompressed' clip, you will need a very powerful computer to view the video without dropping frames. All clips that have been compressed through a Codec however should play without dropping frames.
To tune the performance :- Click on the Stats button in the zoom dialog box. While keeping the Stats window open, change the zoom size until the value of Frames skipped in the Stats window is 0.
Click Close on the Stats dialog.

· Playspeed Allows you to change the playback speed of the selected movie or audio clip. To change the playspeed of the movie, use the slider bar to select a custom speed or click any of the pre-defined speed buttons. Some ASF and WMV format movies may not allow you to change the playback speed due to buffering limitations in the format itself. This can often be overcome when the movie is created by changing the buffering setting in the encoding process itself.

When you now play the collection, this movie will be displayed with the settings you have just applied.

Media properties \ Notes

On the menu, click Media, then click Media Properties \ Notes

Details displayed about the clip include:

Media settings
Looping information
File history
File attributes

To add notes and change text color and font

Click in the text box to add notes
Type in your notes. Notes are limited to 120 characters.
Click TEXT-COLOR-FONT to change the font style, size, color and other font attributes.

To edit text

· Click the right mouse button. When you release the mouse button, a menu shows the available options for moving and copying.

To mute the sound

· Click on Mute.

To go back to the main screen

· Click Done

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Creating Windows Wallpaper

Go to main screen
Position the movie to the exact frame you want as your windows backdrop.
On the menu, click Create.
Click Create Windows Wallpaper from Current Movie
Use the control buttons or position slider to select a frame of the movie to be made into wallpaper.
Click Clear wallpaper if you do not want to keep the new wallpaper. This will display your default wallpaper.

Note The wallpaper is saved in the file out.bmp in your FMV directory. If the wallpaper created is a small square in the center of your desktop, this is because you have not set the 'stretch' wallpaper setting in your display settings. Use Control Panel – Display Properties - Desktop and adjust the ‘Stretch’ setting.

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Creating a screensaver of this Collection

FMV can create video screensavers. To create a video screensaver, simply create a collection of one or more clips and adjust the zoom and playback speed for each clip in the settings screen. Now create the screensaver. The screensaver will be created and called the current collection name. i.e. If your current collection is called 'A Day at the Races', the created screensaver will also be called 'A Day at the Races'. You may create as many screensavers as you like.

Screensavers created with FMV can also include Web pages
This for example allows you to create a screensaver of different web sites and cycle through each at 30 second intervals (you decide the time interval and the Webpages can be mixed with any other format of Audio or video that FMV supports) - Useful if you perhaps have to monitor lots of websites for changing data or to see if they are functioning.

You cannot however create screensavers from collections which contain CD-Audio tracks. Some older 2 speed CD-Rom drives can malfunction and overheat if used for prolonged periods of time. You should bear this in mind if you have an older type CD-Rom drive.

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Extracting Frames

Extract Current frame as Still

Position to the exact frame you want to extract and FMV will save this as a bmp image at the movie source resolution.

Extract Current to Clipboard

Position to the exact frame you want to extract and FMV will save a copy of this frame in the windows clipboard. You can then open your graphics package and select ‘Paste’ and edit the image. The pasted image size will match the source movie dimensions.

Paste Current Clipboard image as new still

You can also Ctrl+C (copy) the image from any other package as a still into FMV. This can even be a ‘Print Screen’ of any program running – Just hit ALT+PRT SCR on any program and then paste the image into FMV

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Visualisations

If you are playing audio track(WAV, MP3, WMA, CD-Audio), FMV can play a visualisation in time to the music. To do this, you must have your recording setting set to the audio source. i.e

This is the panel for a ‘Soundblaster Audigy’ card, your sound cards panel may look different. As you can see ‘What U hear’ is selected on the RECORDING settings and this will key the visualisations.

FMV also has a ‘Dolphin’ mode – Help – Dolphin. (For inspiration and to clear the mind)

The Editor

FMV’s editor is a cut based editor and is an alternative to timeline based editors. Cut based editors can be more ‘creative’ than timeline based editors in that it’s much easier to try things from a menu rather than looking at a complex set of multi-tracked timelines. Once timelines have a few effects, keyframes, rate changes and color corrections, it can be difficult to see what is happening on a complex timeline representation.

FMV's editor is a full featured editor with special effects, transitions and the added advantage of real-time previews.

Real-Time previews greatly increase the creative process of making movies as you don't have to wait for the movie to render before you can see your results.

This allows you to experiment and 'try and see' if concepts and ideas look good or not before you spend time rendering the movie.

FMV relies heavily on DirectX and will take full advantage of any supported hardware that DirectX can use.

FMV is also multi-threaded and will fully utilize multi-CPU based systems. This includes smoothing playback of high bitrate movies by spreading the CPU load evenly over ‘virtual’ processors. If you have a Pentium4 processor, ‘Hyperthreading’ technology will enhance your viewing experience.

Each clip in the playlist or ‘source bin’ has individual settings for effects, Motion, transitions, speed and audio levels.

You can mix your source media as freely as you wish i.e Clips can be of different sizes, format, color depth and frame rate. The editor supports files of the following type :-

AVI Video - For any codec that you have on your system – Including DivX

DV Type 1&2

WMV - All versions including Variable bitrate V9 and all previous versions

MPEG 1&2 - If your hardware supports it or you have a software decoder

JPEG

BMP

GIF - Including animated 89a

WAV - 44.1Khz Stereo Preferred – Use the Convertor from the tools menu if required

MP3

WMA - All versions including 9 Professional

AIF

Why Cut based ?

Most of us are not hollywood professional moviemakers and when we create a movie of our holiday, school event etc, we generally use 1 audio backing track, perhaps a few voiceovers (usually from the cut itself) and a couple of transitions.

The video we produce in our movies is almost always ‘linear’ i.e you rarely watch two things at once such as picture in picture, split screens ect. The popular TV series ‘24’ is one example of where this is not true. Whilst timeline based editors are good at this, they make it more difficult for simple tasks that most of us want to do with our home movies.

For the rest of us it’s generally ‘Shot – Transition – Shot – Transition’ etc This can be described as linear.

Audio however is not linear i.e we often have a backing music track, and the audio from a cut at the same time (someone speaking). Two or more things are happening at the same time.

Timeline based editors can often make arranging the audio easier but the video more difficult. FMV reverses this and you apply effects and transition to each cut.

For example, if you want to apply a transition over two 5 second cuts, you cannot have a 15 second transition on it. As FMV knows the duration of the previous cut and the current one, it will only let you apply a transition of up to 10 seconds over both cuts. The following situation is therefore possible on a timeline but not in FMV.

Quick Tips

1) Use the blue toolbar or the transport controls at the far right of the screen to control your ‘Source media’.

2) Click ‘Preview’ on the create tab to preview the new movie

3) To position with the Mousewheel, you must first Click on the movie itself

4) Each clip or ‘cut’ has individual settings for speed, effects,volume and transitions

5) When you apply several layered effects and your PC can no longer render them in real-time, just render that section of the timeline and then add it back into your movie.

6) If you render your movie and there is no audio, make sure you check the ‘add audio from source media’ checkbox in the ‘audio tab’.

7) Make sure all audio tracks are at the bottom of the playlist

8) In preferences, Set Clip Looping to ON when working in the editor

9) In preferences, Set the slider to ‘Pause on Reposition’ when working with the editor

10) You can right-click on the movie preview to see your source media at 100% zoom

11) Work in 24bit color and keep your output frame rate as close to the frame rate of your sources

Load Sample Clips

(All clips used to create these samples were downloaded from public sites on the internet i.e Windows media Showcase. If we have broken copyright please let us know and we will remove them)

FMV is shipped with several sample clips to illustrate what you can do. These clips are very low resolution in order to keep the download size to a minimum.

What they show:-

FMVGenDem – General effects transitions and cuts. FMV is also mixing High Def WM9 clips intercut with some holiday shots.

FlashBack – Demonstrates FMV’s Flashback effect

VbustAVSquashed – FMV’s Still to Movie Processor creating movies from stills and these clips then mixed in FMV

Moviemix – This product will be released soon – It allows you to ‘Draw’ video onto other videos or stills.

Editor Help Topics

Quick Start – Create a Movie
Making ‘Cuts’ in FMV
Controlling Source Media \ Clip Copying and duplication
Contour Shuttle Pro (USB Jog Shuttle multimedia controller)
Create Tab
Audio Tab \ stacking and overlaying audio \ synching
Transition Tab
Effect Tab and Ease \ Motion settings
Stills Tab
Color Tab
Overlay Tab
Edit Control Panel / Transport
Render Times \ Estimates
Optimizing Uncompressed Movies \ Real-time Previews
Hints and Tips

Create \ Edit a Movie – Quick Start.

The following section is intended as a ‘quick-start’ guide to producing a movie in FMV. Each of the movie editors control ‘tabs’ are described in detail in later sections of the help file.

Step 1:- Source Media (Quick Start)

In FMV’s main front screen load up 2 AVI or MPEG format movies that are at least 10 seconds in duration. In this example, we will call them ‘Clip A’ and ‘Clip B’

Step 2:- Start the Editor

Click the ‘Editor’ button

Step 3:- Trim the Clips (Quick Start)

The editor will open showing Clip A and B in the source bin as shown below. Now drag the Mark-IN and Mark-OUT symbols on the slider to select about 5 seconds of video. The slider should look like this with the section of video that has been ‘selected’ highlighted in red between the Mark-IN and Mark-Out symbols.:-

You can use the mousewheel to position in a movie also. Click the picture \ movie first, then use the mousewheel to position forwards and backwards.

The section of video that is highlighted between the Mark-IN and Mark-Out points is the section that will appear in your new movie.

You will know you have 5 seconds of video by looking at either the Clip Details pane (below) or the movie details ‘Active Sequence’ entry which is displayed under the movie itself. This updates as you move the Mark-In and out points :-

Now select Clip B and repeat the above to select 5 seconds of video in clip B

Step 4 :- (Optional) Add a Transition (Quick Start)

Click on the ‘Transition Tab’ and select ‘Clip A’ in the listbox.

Click the ‘Transition option’ and not the ‘Straight Cut’ option

Select ‘Fade’ from the list of transitions

Move the transition duration slider to about 2 seconds

Step 5 :- Preview the new Movie (Quick Start)

Click on the ‘Create tab’

Now just click the Preview button and the new movie will be previewed.

Step 6 :- Write the movie to disk

Click the button and FMV will display the following screen :-

Now click the button again

FMV will now examine the render and produce an estimate of how long the render will take.

FMV will then show the progress of the render :-

That’s it – FMV will now produce your movie and ask if you want to add it to the source bin when it has completed.

Making ‘Cuts’ in FMV

You create a ‘cut’ in FMV by selecting the part of the clip you want. You can have as many ‘cuts ‘ as you like from the same clip by just adding it several times. Even though you may have 10 entries in the source bin which are all cuts from 1 source clip, FMV is very efficient and only uses the source clip once. It does not add the same clip 10 times.

For example, if you have captured 3 DV tapes of your holiday to disk, you will probably want to use several cuts from each tape. Lets say we want 4 cuts from tape 1 - The playlist would possibly look like this :-

In the above example, the cuts are ‘in time order’ but they do not have to be. Cuts can be in any order and mixed between different tapes \ captures and formats. In the above example, you would also re-name the cuts to something meaningful i.e. “DVTape1 – Australia1 – 001” would possibly be called “DVTape1 – Australia1 – Airport Arrival” for example.

You can use the mousewheel to position in a movie also. Click the picture \ movie first, then use the mousewheel to position forwards and backwards.

Previewing and controlling Source media

The ‘playlist’ or source bin shows you which clips and audio tracks will appear in your new movie. Clicking on any of the clips in the list will show the clip details both as an individual clip and also it’s position and details within the new movie. The highlighted blue area between the Mark-IN and Mark-Out points is the part of the clip that will be included in your new movie.

You can change the order of the clips with the ‘UP’ or ‘Down’ buttons All data relating to the clip is moved with it i.e effects, transitions, keyframes and speed.

To remove a clip – select it and then use ‘CUT’ – CUT removes the entire clip – not just the selected section.

To add a new clip – use the ‘ADD’ button and select a new clip to add.

There are several methods for controlling and positioning in the source media. The main method however is the mousewheel. To use the mousewheel, you must first click on the movie and then rotate the mousewheel either forwards or backwards. Click on the ‘Mouse’ symbol to change the sensitivity \ ratio of frames moved to wheel rotation.

You can also use the main blue toolbar at the very top of the edit screen. Use this to advance, rewind, start and stop playback of the source clips.

The second method is to use the ‘edit panel transports’. This controls your source media.

Each clip in the playlist or source bin has individual settings for both audio level and speed.

Split Clip – This will split the clip at the current point. If you have a previously defined Mark-IN and out point, the clip is split within the section. All properties of the original clip are copied to the new copy i.e. Speed, zoom, effects etc.

FMV Will also add a ‘generation’ number to the clip name – i.e Clip1.mpg if copied will result in a new clip being called Clip1.mpg – 001. The generation name is not necessary but is added for ease of use. FMV treats all entries in the playlist ‘individually’ and the same clip can be added as many times as required with the same name.

Copy Clip – This will copy the clip exactly including any applied attributes such as zoom, speed and effects. FMV Will also add a ‘generation’ number to the clip name – i.e Clip1.mpg if copied will result in a new clip being called Clip1.mpg – 001. The generation name is not necessary but is added for ease of use. FMV treats all entries in the playlist ‘individually’ and the same clip can be added as many times as required with the same name.

Copy Equi - Chunk – This will copy an ‘Equally Sized Chunk’ from the current clip into a new clip i.e If you have a clip called Clip1.MPG which is 30 seconds long and have the first 5 seconds selected, clicking the ‘Equi-Chunk’ button will produce a new clip called Clip1.MPG – 001 with seconds 5.01 to 10.0 selected. This works to ‘Frame’ level.

Copy To End – This will create a new clip starting at the end of the currently selected section of the current clip to the end of the clip. FMV Will also add a ‘generation’ number to the clip name – i.e Clip1.mpg if copied will result in a new clip being called Clip1.mpg – 001. The generation name is not necessary but is added for ease of use. FMV treats all entries in the playlist ‘individually’ and the same clip can be added as many times as required with the same name.

Re-Set Mark-IN point – The mark-In point is re-set to the start of the clip – All attributes are maintained

Re-Set Mark-OUT point – The mark-out point is re-set to the end of the clip – All attributes are maintained

Selecting sections or ‘CUT’s’ from clips and positioning:-

You select sections of clips in FMV by setting the ‘MARK-IN’ and ‘MARK-OUT’ points. There are a number of ways to do this

1) Use the and symbols on the slider and drag them to the desired points. This is good for rough cuts but not accurate enough for frame level cuts to be made. To make frame level cuts, use the clip trimmer in conjunction with the mousewheel to position exactly.

2) Use the Mark-IN or Mark-Out buttons after you have positioned within the clip. You can re-set the Mark-IN and out points with the re-set buttons i.e Re-set Mark-IN or Position to set these point with either the frame level positioner, the mouse wheel or a multimedia controller such as the ‘Shuttle Pro’ device.

3) You can use the quick scrubber – just click anywhere on the scrubber and you are positioned proportionally within the cut.

You can use the mousewheel to position in a movie also. Click the picture \ movie first, then use the mousewheel to position forwards and backwards.

Contour Shuttle Pro

Additionally if you have a ‘Contour Shuttle Pro’ device you can also control most edit functions from this device.

The contour \ Preferences file is in the folder FMV was installed into and is called FMV5.Pref and FMV5.txt.

FMV will also ‘scale’ the FF\RR function to the length of the movie \ length of the clip selection. i.e if you have only selected 5 seconds of video, applying full ‘fast forward’ will only advance 1 frame at a time. If the length of the selected clip is 10 mins however, you will advance at 5 second intervals.

By default, FMV set’s up the device as follows :-

You may re-program the key designations as you require. To do this, please see the instructions that were supplied with your ShuttlePro device. The current key assignment’s can be found in the FMV5.Pref file located in the folder FMV was installed into.

The Control Tabs:-

Create

The ‘Create’ tab is as it’s name suggests mainly concerned with creating the new movie – either as a ‘preview’ or as a movie that is physically written to disk.

Movie Sizes

The output dimensions of your new movie are also set here. You can choose any of the standard sizes or define your own custom size and frame rate.

FMV will temporarily reduce the output size when showing ‘Real-time Previews’. The final output that is rendered however will have the dimensions that are set here.

Two points to note regarding movie sizes are

1) You will generally get better results if you preserve the aspect ratio between your source clips and your final output movie size. FMV will automatically set the project defaults to the attributes of the first clip. You can change these if required.

2) If all your source clips are 320x240 for example and you make your final output movie size 300x240, this will slow down the real-time preview performance as FMV has to ‘resize’ the clip. If you maintain the size, no additional work is done and the preview will be shown with fewer ‘dropped’ frames.

Generally, it is best to work at a low resolution and when you are happy with your edits, then set the resolution to your required output resolution and write out the new movie.

Frame Rate

Indicates the rate of frames or ‘stills’ per second to play back per second of video. Video is (simplistically) like an old ‘flip-book’ the higher the frame rate, the more smooth the video will appear. The fewer the number of frames, the more ‘jerky’ the video will appear. Between 15 and 30 are normal ranges for most video. If you are editing very high motion, fast action clips which have been captured at a higher frame rate, you may want to increase this value.

Color Depth

Color depth will normally be set to 24bit color but if you are using ‘Overlays’, FMV will increase the color depth to 32bit color in order to use ‘Alpha-Blending’. FMV needs to do this in order to use ‘transparency’ information. Additional information is encoded for each pixel that contains information on it’s level of transparency.

Some special effects and transitions also require 24bit color and if the color depth is reduced to 16bit color, the effect will not work or appear ‘distorted’. This is also true when FMV shows ‘Real-Time Previews’. If the color depth is dropped too much, the preview will not display correctly.

Preview Performance

Real-Time video previews require a great deal of computing power. More power is required if any of the following aspects are increased :-

Height x Width (Frame size)

Color Depth

Frame Rate

Special effects

Transitions

Correspondingly, less power is required if any of the above are reduced. If your PC is not powerful enough to show full resolution real-time previews, FMV will reduce the CPU power required by reducing the above factors.

The number of effects you can apply and preview in real-time depends on the power of your computer. If you have a very powerful PC with a DirectX9 graphics card, you will probably be able to apply 5 or 6 simultaneous effects with no dropped frames during the preview. If you preview the same sequence on a less powerful PC, FMV will start to 'drop frames' and stagger effects because it cannot process the data quick enough.

FMV relies heavily on DirectX and one of the best ways to increase the preview performance is to install a DirectX9 graphics card.

The power required to create real-time previews is derived from a mixture of the following aspects :-

CPU Raw power

Hard Disk speed (Sustained rate and not the ‘burst rate’)

Video card performance (DirectX support is a big plus point)

Some PC’s score highly in some areas but are let down in others – This makes rating any PC’s power level a difficult task. FMV therefore gives you the ability to tailor the performance of your PC to the level of real-time preview performance that your PC is capable of.

To obtain the best real-time preview performance, you will need to tailor the performance settings to match the power of your PC.

You do this with the 'performance slider' as shown at the bottom of the following illustration.

Clicking the ‘Config’ button will open the configuration editor as shown below.

Each of the 10 levels can be tailored to your individual requirements. This means that you can still work on the project with a laptop or from any less powerful PC that is connected on your network.

At power level 10, FMV will attempt to play the new movie back :-

1) Showing all special effects

2) Showing all transitions

3) Maintaining the target color depth

4) Maintaining the target frame rate.

5) Maintaining the final output resolution.

If your PC is not powerful enough to do this, FMV will start to drop frames and you should reduce one or more of the parameters in the configuration editor.

At power level 1, FMV will attempt to play the new movie back :-

1) Showing NO special effects

2) Showing NO transitions - All scenes are straight cut's

3) Reducing the color depth to 16 bit color (you may see 'banding' and some effects won’t work etc)

4) Dropping the frame rate to 10 fps.

5) Reducing the preview resolution to 1/6 of output resolution.

Any reasonably configured 400Mhz Pentium II based system including laptops will manage to preview with these settings at 320 x 240. This setting has the lowest CPU requirement.

As you move the slider, FMV will show you the current preview settings in the 'info pane’ as shown above.

Key frames

Keyframes allow you to vary the all ‘Effect Parameter’ over the length of the clip in a smooth progression.

This allows you to slowly introduce a ‘Plastic Wrap’ effect for example over 3 seconds and then slowly reduce the effect level back to zero.

The above Keyframes panel is accessed from the ‘Effects’ Tab in the editor and then ‘Right-Click’ on any of the available effects.

KeyFrame Basics

1) Keyframes must start from either 0% effect Visiblity or 100% visibility

2) If you only add 1 Keyframe, the effect levels will remain constant for the duration of the cut.

3) Click on the Keyframe in the Listbox on the right of the screen to set the effect parameters for that Keyframe.

4) You can have as many Keyframes as you like for as many effects on as many clips as you like.

5) Scrolling with the mousewheel will let you frame advance and rewind while previewing your effect

6) All effect parameters can be varied with Keyframes

7) Use the mousewheel to advance and rewind – Click on the ‘Source’ movie first and then scroll, The effect preview will now scroll in synch with the source clip.

KeyFrame QuickStart

We are going to add a ‘Plastic Wrap’ effect that fades in over 90 frames, maintains the level for a further 90 frames and then fades out over a further 90 frames.

Step 1

In the effects tab – Check the ‘Plastic Wrap’ effect

Now Right-Click on the ‘Plastic Wrap’ text on the Checkbox itself.

FMV will now show the Keyframes panel and automatically create 1 keyframe at the start of the clip.

Step 2

Set the effect levels to Off

Move the slider to OFF

We have now created 1 Keyframe at the start of the clip that sets the effect to OFF.

We now need to create our next Keyframe at Frame 90 so move the blue position slider until it is positioned at frame 90

And Click

This will now create a new Keyframe at Frame 90 i.e Move the blue slider till Frame 90 is displayed.

Now change the settings for this keyframe and move the effect level up to Full

Add the other Keyframes and your display will look like this :-

Now set the effect level on Keyframe 270 to OFF.

You have now set the plastic wrap effect to start at 0% effect and gradually increase to 100% by frame 90.

It will then maintain at 100% until frame 180 where it will drop off to 0% by Frame 270.

To change the effect levels for any keyframe, just select the keyframe in the list and then move the effect sliders.

Your changes are saved as you move the slider.

All effect parameter can be varied for each keyframe.

FMV will now show a smooth progression between each keyframe.

You can have as many keyframes as you wish for multiple effects at the same time.

Audio

FMV can also add and mix new audio tracks for your new movie. Audio is controlled from the ‘Audio’ Tab.

If you wish to add a new audio track to your movie, just add an audio track to the bottom of the main playlist \ source bin and check the ‘Dub in Playlist audio tracks’ checkbox as shown above.

Multiple Audio tracks \ overlaying audio

You can have multiple audio tracks by simply adding two or more WAV or WMV files to the playlist. Make sure the tracks are at the bottom of the playlist and in the order you want them. In the above dialog there is an option for either ‘Stack’ or ‘Overlay’.

Stacking Audio

Stacked audio will play each audio track one after the other. If you need to have sections of silence in the composition, add in a ‘silent’ audio track. The file ‘Silence.WAV’ is supplied in the folder FMV was installed into.

Overlaying Audio

Overlaying audio will play all audio tracks at the same time. For example, this will allow you to add a background audio track and a ‘voice over’. You can control the levels of each track with the level slider on the main transport panel at the far right of the screen. Each track can have an individual level set.

Synching Audio

Audio can be synchronised to the movie by using the information supplied in the ‘clip details’ pane when you have the clip highlighted. This tells you the timing details for each clip i.e Position in Movie = 10.00 – 13.25(s).

You can control both the speed and audio output ‘Level’ of audio tracks from the main ‘edit panel’ with the sliders as show at the bottom of the following illustration. You can also control the audio level of normal video ‘cuts’.

Audio clips are trimmed exactly the same way as video.

Transition

Some transitions such as ‘shatter’ are only available under Windows XP.

To add a transition between two clips, open the transition tab as shown below.

Each clip or ‘cut’ can have one transition. The above example shows the transition for Clip C.MPG. FMV has also automatically set the maximum duration for the transition – In this case 5.2 seconds. FMV also incorporates all clip speed settings when making this calculation.

When you are happy with the transition you have selected, just click the next movie in the list and set the transition for that clip.

To remove the transition and revert back to a ‘cut’, just click the ‘Straight Cut’ option button at the top of the frame.

You should also make sure that the currently selected movie in the source bin is not playing and is paused

Effects

Some special effects such as ‘Plaster’ are only available under Windows XP.

You can apply as many effects as you like and overlay them. If you add several effects to a clip and your PC cannot process this clip fast enough, just render that section and add it to your source bin. As the effect is no longer calculated in real-time, your PC will now play the clip.

Effects can also be applied to Still images.

To add a special effect to a clip, open the ‘Effect’ tab as shown below.

Many effects have additional parameters that you can tailor to your requirements. To change the parameters of an effect, Right-click on the effect checkbox and you will be presented with the Keyframe \ Effect settings dialog.

Now click ‘Apply’ to see the effect of the changes you have made. You may save these settings if you want to use them again and to make the current parameters the default for this particular effect.

You should also make sure that the currently selected movie in the source bin is not playing and is paused

Ease \ Motion

To apply Motion to a clip, Check the ‘Ease\Motion’ checkbox. You can then select default ‘Ease IN’ and ‘Ease Out’ settings. To select advanced settings, click the small cross next to the ease checkbox. You will then be shown the advanced Motion options as shown below.

Click the + symbol to open the motion control settings

Motion \ Ease settings can be applied to both stills and movies and each clip can have individual settings. Any effects you apply to clips are also applied.

Note: The “Ease Progress “ speed is on a logarithmic scale.

Motion settings are applied to each ‘Cut’ so if for example, you want to have one clip that “zooms in from nothing”, split the clip into two and apply the motion settings to the first clip that zooms it in from nothing to 100%. As the second clip is just the raw movie, when the two are played back, it will appear as one clip that zooms in from nothing and then continues normally.

Stills

You can also utilize still images in your movie. To do this, just add the stills to the playlist \ source bin and then click the stills tab as shown below.

You can now use the above slider to set the duration of either all the stills in the collection or for each still individually.

Effects, transitions, overlays and color adjustments can also be applied to stills.

Note:- If you set a stills’ duration to a very small time interval, the frame rate you select for the movie must be high enough to allow the still to be seen. i.e If you set a stills duration to 0.1 seconds and have a frame rate of 15fps – The still will not be shown.

Color

(This feature is only available under Windows XP)

To modify the color \ brightness and contrast of a clip or still, use the color tab as shown below.

Use the ‘Reset’ buttons to re-set any value.

Tools

Features Overview :- the following features can be located in the tools menu. Where specified, further information is provided

Capture Video (Analog and DirectShow \ DV)
If you have a video camera or webcam attached to your PC and a suitable driver, FMV will allow you to capture your movies as DV AVI format

Images to Movie processor
This option allows you to extract a series of bitmaps from a movie over the entire duration of the clip. This allows you to then take these still images and create Gif89a's or to embed them in another movie.

Create 44.1Khz2Ch WAV from Current clip
This option allows you to extract a 44.1Khz Stereo PCM format WAV file and write the file in the correct format to disk. If you have WAV files and FMV cannot display the ‘waveform’ in the editor, re-save the wav files with this option and then FMV will be able to display the file

ID3 Editor for MP3s:
The ID3 Editor allows you to add track details to MP3s. Click here for additional information

[CONTENTS]

ID3 Editor for MP3's

The ID3 Editor lets you view and edit ID3 information for MP3 files.

Note :- If the attributes of your MP3 are ‘Read Only’ access, FMV will not save the tag information. You must manually change the attribute with Windows explorer. (right click on file and set to read\write.

On the menu, click Tools.
Click ID3 Editor for MP3's

The following data can be added / edited:

Title
Artist
Album
Year
Genre e.g. blues, funk, soundtrack, etc
Comments

In addition, general ID3 information is displayed but cannot be edited. This includes: full path and filename, file size, duration, whether it is copyrighted, etc.

[CONTENTS]

Skins

This option allows you to select from one of the built-in skins: 'Plastique' and 'Aqua' or customize the skin by using one of your own images. Selecting the option: Load skin (Any JPEG/BMP/GIF file) and then selecting your image file.

To create your own custom skin or to perhaps integrate your company logo, you can edit and change any of FMV's 'skins'.

Skin Design notes.

It is generally best to leave a large 'black' area in the center of the skin - This will depend on the predominant background color of your movies. If your movies have a white background, use a white background for the skin. Darker surrounds are generally better
Do not alter the dimensions of the image. You may however change the color depth \ texture etc.
Skins created for FMV may not be compatible with other programs.

Alternative FMV Remote Controls

FMV's remote control can be shaped and changed by the user. The shaping is achieved by FMV making any black pixel invisible. You can therefore design your own shape for the Remote control with any 2d Paint package. Just paint black, any area of the unit that you want to be invisible. Remember however that the more complex the shape, the longer it will take to display. The rest is up to your imagination !

To edit or create your own Remote control, just edit the RC.BMP file with your own paint package i.e PhotoShop, PaintShop Pro or even MS-Paint. (Remember to make a copy of RC.BMP first) and then just save the result as RC.BMP in the folder that FMV was installed into.

Remote Control Installation Notes.

1) The controls (i.e. Play, Pause etc) must remain in the same place on the BMP you create. You can however change the symbol to be whatever you want. We will soon eliminate this restriction as a skin and Remote control designer application is currently in development.

2) Do not alter the dimensions of the bitmap. You may however change the color depth etc.

3) Avoid complex shapes - A lace type effect will take longer to calculate and display than will a solid type shape.

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FMV is installed into. Now just close the Remote control unit and re-display it to show your new remote control.

Troubleshooting

Known Issues

1 CD Audio Tracks

o CD-Audio tracks are NOT played in collections as some older type CD's were not designed for continual use. These older type drives may overheat and become damaged (One of our old 2x drives gave up the ghost after about 8hrs continual use but it was disturbingly HOT - It was a popular brand as well). This is also the reason that we have removed CD-Audio from screensavers that FMV creates.
If you have an older type CD-Rom drive, you should bear the above in mind when using other applications that may play CD-Audio for prolonged periods of time especially if the PC is unattended.

o You should disable all other CD-Players from running while using FMV for Audio CD playback. FMV is not aggressively coded to take control of the CD player and will generally lose the fight against WMP for example.

2 Playing MPEG2 Format Videos

If FMV does not play MPEG2 format videos, this is because you do not have a software or hardware MPEG2 codec installed on your system. Users of Windows Media Player V6.1 may also be missing common codecs for playback of both video and audio. Upgrading to Windows Media player V6.4 (Win95 & NT4) or WMP V7 or higher (Win98, Win2K, Win ME and WinXP) will remedy this problem as additional codecs are installed with the upgrade. FMV will also play DivX format movies providing you have the Codec installed.

3 Some WAV files don’t display ‘Waveform’ correctly in the Editor

a. If you have a WAV file and FMV is unable to display the ‘Waveform’, this can be because the file has been written in a non-standard way. If you use the Create 44.1Khz2Ch WAV from Current clip option on such clips, FMV will attempt to fix the file and re-write a new copy. The source file remains unchanged. This option also allows you to extract a 44.1Khz Stereo PCM format WAV file from all movie clips and write the file in the correct format to disk.

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Frequently asked Questions (FAQ)

Click here for Editor FAQ

General

Q> Why can’t I speed up and slow down some types of movies such as WMV format clips.
A> This will be available in the next release of FMV

Q> Sometimes when I go to ‘Fullscreen mode’ only half of the movie is showing.
A> There is a bug in your display driver. Check you have the latest version of the driver for your Video card. This issue is random but it is known to exist on some older Dell Dimension systems running Windows ME and NVIDEA GeForce2 MX video cards. This happens on the system in it’s factory shipped state. Upgrading to Windows XP cured the issue.

Q> Playback of an AVI video is jerky
A> Check the codec used to encode the movie – FMV will tell you which codec was used on the main front screen. If the clip is ‘Full frames Uncompressed’ then it’s probable that your PC is not powerful enough to playback the movie without dropping frames. There is comparatively little processing on uncompressed video and most performance problems arise from slower, older IDE disk subsystems.

Q> Playback is sometimes very 'blocky'
A> Refresh the movie by re-clicking it in the playlist or either increase or decrease the zoom level. If this happens in the freeform Zoom mode, pause the playback and then click the play button again. Additionally, switching off the Remote control unit may help.

Q> How do I create my own Remote Control
A> The Remote control in FMV is just a standard Windows bitmap. To create your own, just open the 'template' Remote control in the \remote folder edit this with any 2d paint package such as PaintShop Pro. Anything you color true black (rgb 0,0,0) will be 'see-through'. The rest is up to your artistic ability. The only rule you must adhere to is the position of the controls i.e Play must be dead centre. We're currently writing a new Designer which will soon remove this restriction.

Q> How do I create my own Skin
A> FMV Skins are again just standard Bitmaps, Jpegs or even Gifs(not animated). To create your own, just edit the 'template' Skin from the \Skins folder with any 2d paint package such as PaintShop Pro. You don't have to use the template, use any jpeg you currently have and experiment. Each skin is saved with the collection. FMV just saves a 'pointer' or the skin filename and path - If you delete the picture file, FMV will just load it's own default skin instead. FMV's controls are 'rendered' in real-time over the skin so any design is possible.

Q> The Full screen audio animations don’t work.
A> You must have CD-Audio or ‘What You hear’ checked in you Windows Sound Recording properties. You can access this by clicking on the ‘speaker’ icon on FMV’s main screen. When the dialog appears, select ‘Options’ and then ‘Recording’ and then check the ‘CD-Audio’ checkbox.

Q> How do I get reverse play to work ?
A> Holding down the SHIFT key while playing a movie will start the movie playing in reverse mode. The rate of reverse play is dependent on the previous forward rate at which the movie was playing i.e if the movie was advancing at 0.25 speed, when reverse play is invoked, the movie will play at about -0.25 normal speed. Reverse mode is only available on AVI and MPEG format movies and is dependent on the 'Key Frame' rate of the video. It is also a CPU intensive task and on some systems, shutting down all other running tasks may help performance.

Q> I zoom a video to about 800% and my system seems to freeze or slow down ?
A> Try either increasing the zoom slightly and if you still get the same results then drop the zoom level down - Your System is just not capable of what you are asking it to do. This can also be caused by playing 'Uncompressed' format movies.

Q> It' s a pain moving movies up and down in a collection
A> Use the accelerator keys (Alt + I to advance in the list and Alt + D to move it down) or the icons below the playlist or use the playlist editor.

Q> Whenever I try to play a QuickTime movie, nothing seems to happen?
A> You have not installed QuickTime V6.0. Go to the Apple web site and download and install QuickTime from :- http://www.apple.com/quicktime

Q> As soon as the player starts, I get runtime errorxxx xxx. .
A> This is either caused by Microsoft Media player being installed or DirectX8 or higher not being installed.

Q> Can I stop Windows Media Player trying to dial the Internet for Codecs.
A> Uncheck the Preferences - Movies - Use Media Player 1st on MOVs. This will stop it doing this with QuickTime MOVS

Q> Will FMV work on a network ?
A>Yes, but if you are tight on available bandwidth, we don't recommend it. We're only thinking of your co-workers but if you have no co-workers....

Q> How can I play FLI & FLC animations ?
A> Just add them to the collection, FMV will tell you that Media Player cannot understand the format but will also ask you if you wish to view the file with the FMV MOVViewer. Answer 'yes' to this question and the movie will be played

Q> What screen resolution do you recommend?.
A> You should really be running a resolution of at least 1024x768. We generally use 1280 x 1024. Also, stick with standard LARGE or SMALL fonts. It is also interesting to note that some graphics cards will run MUCH slower at lower resolutions. Most graphics card generally have a default resolution at which they operate optimally.i.e Your card may run slowly at 800 x 600 but much quicker at 1024 x 768.

Q> How do I save QuickTime Movie Streams?
A> You must first have QuickTime Pro (USD29.99 from Apple) – The freeware version of QuickTime cannot save movies. To save a Quicktime Movie stream, wait till the movie has stopped playing in your browser, now click the options button on the embedded Quicktime player and select 'Save as'. You can now either save the movie locally on your hard disk or as a 'stream source' If you save as a 'stream source', you must be connected to the Internet to view this movie in the future.

Q> Can I run FMV from the command line?
A> Yes, If FMV is given a '.INI' file on it's command line, FMV will then open and run the collection. If FMV is just given a filename, it will again open the file and attempt to play it. If FMV has the default association for the file type i.e. MPEG, FMV will automatically start and play the file. If FMV is already running, the file will be added to the playlist.

Editor FAQ

Q> I’ve added 9 effects and there is no way my PC is powerful enough to do this
A> Just render that section of video – It’s then just ‘video’ and does not need to be calculated in real-time. (FMV will not drop frames on the actual rendered movie) .If you render the section as ‘full frames uncompressed’ there will be no quality loss at all when you come to render the final movie. You should also make sure that the currently selected movie in the source bin is not playing and is paused.

Q> I’m trying to edit a WMV \ DivX clip and the positioning is sluggish \ not precise.
A> Formats such as the new WMV and DivX formats are compressed and require some pre-processing. On faster systems this delay is not noticeable but on slower systems it manifests itself as slow positioning etc. The CPU requirements to just play some of the higher bitrate WMV files is a P1500. We have tested FMV6 with the new High definition WMV clips available from the Microsoft Website and FMV was sluggish on a Pentium III 1GHz. On a P2.4, it was usable but on a Pentium4 3.0Ghz, it scrolled very smoothly with the mousewheel and was as responsive as we would have wanted.

Q> Why does the ‘CUT’ function not work how I expect it to ?
A> If you click the ‘CUT’ button in FMV, you will remove the entire clip and not just the section you have marked out. See the ‘creating cuts’ section.

Q> What screen resolution do you recommend?.
A> You should really be running a resolution of at least 1024x768 – This is the minimum resolution the editor will work at. We generally use 1280 x 1024. Also, stick with standard LARGE or SMALL fonts. It is also interesting to note that some graphics cards will run MUCH slower at lower resolutions. Most graphics card generally have a default resolution at which they operate optimally.i.e Your card may run slowly at 800 x 600 but much quicker at 1024 x 768.

Q> Why does the editor not use a Timeline \ Storyboard like everyone else.
A> FMV is a ‘Cut based’ editor and we’re trying something new – Video can be described as linear, audio however is not – If you think about video on a timeline :-

It’s basically Clip A à Clip B à Clip C - Pretty much like a playlist – So that’s what we have done. Audio however is different as you can have several tracks starting and stopping, overlapping etc all at the same time. Timelines are good for audio but you can create ‘impossible situations’ on a timeline. For example, ‘stretching’ a transition to be longer than the total of the two clips it is joining.i.e

You can therefore create this situation on a timeline but it is not possible in reality. We also found that by the time you have added a transition and a few effects, it can get difficult to see what is happening on a timeline. This is especially true if your new video is being composed from many source clips. There are many specialist audio packages that can multitrack and mix audio very well but pretty much all video editors use Timelines for video. We’ve swapped it round as FMV is mainly geared towards the video side of production. For the ‘die hard’ timeline addicts, we may add a ‘timeline\storyboard option’ at a later date.

Q> Why do only some of the special effects and transitions work.
A> Some special effects and transitions are only available under Windows XP.

Q> A special effect or transition just shows as funny colors when I preview it. ?
A> Some special effects and transitions require 24bit color. FMV will attempt to optimize any aspect of the preview that it can and one of the ways it does this is to drop the color depth. If the depth is dropped too much, some effects don’t work. To correct this, just edit the current ‘power profile’ and increase the color depth.

Q> My previews in the transitions and effects tab are very ‘jerky’.
A> This is probably because the current ‘Power Profile’ setting that you are using has a low frame rate applied to it. The color depth and frame rate parameters used for these previews is the same as the current power profile being used.

Q> The estimates FMV gives are sometimes inaccurate
A> FMV calculates the estimate by sampling the render at 4 equi-distant points in the movie. If your movie contains effects and these effects occur at a point which was not sampled, the estimate will be ‘under’ as it has not taken into account the additional time the renderer will require to add the effects.

Q> I’ve made the output frame size smaller than the source and the preview is still dropping frames.
A> Changing the frame size to be either larger or smaller than your source media will add an extra layer of processing that FMV has to do. For optimal performance, match your output frame size to be the same as the frame size of your source media or at least work like this until you need to render the movie. Then change the output frame size and render to file.

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Contact \ Credits

Microsoft Windows Media www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia

Geiss is Copyright Ryan Geiss – www.geiswerks.com

Apple QuickTime www.apple.com/quicktime

RealPlayer www.real.com

MPEG2 Codecs www.ligos.com

DivX Codec www.projectmayo.com