"plug-in-gap-videoframes-player"

Playback

    Start from Menu:
      <Image>/Video/Playback...

    This player does playback of your video frames.
    Along with the video frames you can also do playback of an audiofile.
    The player is a tool that should help to give a motionpreview
    and allows visible positioning for the animation designer.

    There is NO direct support for playback of videoformats (like MPEG, AVI, ....)
    Internally the player can read the frames (but no audio) from videofiles
    when invoked from the video extract dialog or from the storyboard dialog.


Video Options:

    - Play (>) button
        Start the playback,
        or switch to forward play if already playing reversed.

    - PlayReverse (<) button
        Start the reversed playback,
        or switch to reversed play if already playing forward.

	SHIFT click on the "Play" or "PlayReverse" button creates
	a snapshot image and adds all the frames that are played
	as new layers to this image to trace the playback.
	(see chapter Creating a snapshot image below)
	

    - Pause button (||)
        Stop playback,
        or go to fist frame of the selcted frame range if not playing.
        Go to the end of selected frame range if right mousebutton was used.
        or go to the active framenr if the middle mouse button was used.
        (the active framenumber is the one that is currently
        loaded in the GIMP image window from where you invoked the player)

    - The GO button array
         the 50 blank buttons above the preview build up the GO button array,
         This tool is for positioning and manual speedcontrol.

         Move the mousepointer over those buttons to display
         frames in sequence as fast as you move the mouse.
         Moving right is forward, left is backward.
	 
	 Click on one of the GO-buttons loads the current frame
	 into the invoking frame image.
	 CTRL-Click sets the current frame as start of the range,
	 ALT-Click sets the current frame as end of the range.

         Tip:
           The positioning is done relative to the point where the
           mouse entered the GO button array.
           If you reached the leftmost GO button at framenr 50
           and want to go more backwards (to framenr 35),
           just move the Mouse outside the GO button array (up or down)
           and then enter again from the right side,
           and continue moving to the left, but now
           keeping the mouse inside the GO button array
           until the desired frame (Nr. 35) is reached.


         Tip: For efficient use of the GO buttons the "Use Thumbnails"
          checkbutton should be turned ON.
          Further all of the frames should have thumbnail files.

          Even fast machines may have problems to deliver
          full sized multilayer frames in time.
          (depending on size of the frames, number of layers
           and IO performance of your hardware)


   - "Frame" "Nr" buttons and spinbutton
        The current framenumber position is shown in the spinbutton
	right to those buttons.

        The timepos: mm:ss:sec displays below shows the same current 
	position as Minutes:Secons:Microseconds

        (The time calculation is always based on the original speed.
         This is the framerate of your animation as found in the _vin.gap file.
         You can change the framerate in the VCR Navigator window)
	
        A mouseclick on the "Frame" button sets the start of the range
	to the current position. 
	
	A click on the "Nr" button sets the end of the range
	to the current position. 

        You can load the frame (the number that is currently on the players display)
        into the active image window when you SHIFT click
	on the "Frame" or on the "Nr" button.

        Alternative you can also click on one of the GO buttons,
        or on the players display to reload the active image with
        the desired frame.


   - "From Frame" and "Frame To"  buttons and spinbuttons:
        Here you can select a framerange by entering
        the begin and end framenumber.
	
	The buttons to the left of the spinbuttons print
	out the description of the selected range in
	storyboard file syntax notation.
	
	Note:
	When the player is invoked via the storyboard editor
	(it usually becomes part of the storyboard editors dialog window)
	you can add the selected range as new clip at end of the
	cliplist by pressing those "From Frame" or "To Frame" buttons,
	where "To Frame" means backward playback of the clip.
	


    - Speed button
         Reset Speed to the original (the framerate of your Animation)
         (a 2.nd click goes back to the previous enters Speed)

    - Speed spinbutton
         Here you can enter the desired playback speed.
         The available range is 1 upto 250 frames/sec.

         Please note that 250 frames/sec may not be reached on
         most machines.
         If the exact_timing checkbutton is ON,
         the 250.th frame will be reached in time (after 1 second),
         but if your machine can handle only 25 frames in one second
         you will see just frame 10, 20, 30, 40, .... , 230, 240, 250

    - Size button
         Set the standard thumbail size
         There are two standard sizes
            "normal" 128 Pixels
            "large"  256 Pixels
         this button toggles between both sizes.
         If you hold the SHIFT key wihle clicking the size button,
         the preview is scaled to 1:1 original framesize.


    - Loop checkbutton:
         Plays in loop if ON, otherwise play once and then stop.

    - Selection only
         Play only frames within the selected range.
         if not checked (OFF) play all frames.

    - PingPong
         Play alternating backward/forward

    - Use Thumbnails
         use thumbnail files if available.
         Both the PNG based open thumbnails standard
         and the older .xvpics based thumbnail files
         are supported.

         Thumbnail based playback has reduced quality.
         If there are just .xvpics thumbnail files
         the quality is very miserable.

         The full original frame images are read in case when
         no thumbnail file is available,
         (Note:
           It also does create the thumbnail file in such a case,
           but this is only done, if the preferences setting
           permits creation of normal (or large) thumbnail files)

           No thumbnail data is written when the playback reads the
           frames directly from a videofile.

         )


         If the "Use Thumbnails" checkbutton is switched OFF
         the player always reads the full original sized frame images

         Playback with full frame image read mode
         is very slow, even on fast machines,
         but gives the original quality.

    - Exact Timing
         if this checkbutton is ON (the checked state)
         the player tries to keep the frametiming
         as exact as possible. if your machine
         is not fast enough one or more frames
         of the sequence are not displayed (dropped)
         and the next frame is diplayed in time.

         if this checkbutton is OFF
         all frames are displayed.
         this leads to more and more growing delay
         depending on the the power of your machine.


Creating a snapshot image:
      A click on the displayed frame creates an image and adds
      the current frame as new layer to this snapshot image.
      The size of the snapshot image depends on the "Use thumbnails" checkbutton.
      OFF: Original framesize is used.
      ON: thumbnail size is used.
      
      if the snapshot image is already there (on subsequent clicks on the
      displayed frame) the displayed frame is added to the top
      of the layerstack in this snapshot image.
      (it will be scaled to snapshot image size if necessary).
      
      you can close the snapshot image any time you want, to force
      recreation at next time.
      
      The snapshot image can also be created and automatically
      filled with layers that are snapshots of all the frames that
      are shown while playback is running.
      This motion snapshot tracing feature is activated
      when you hlod the SHIFT key while you click on the 
      "Play" (>) or "PlayReverse" (<) button.

      Warning:
	It is recommanded to turn on the "Play selection only" checkbutton,
	and to turn off both the "Loop" checkbutton and the 
	"Exact timing" checkbutton in that case.
	
	Exact timing would skip most of the frames, and loop
	produces endless number of frames and may lead to strange
	behaviour or crashes when no more memory is available.
      
      
      
      Note: this feature is also available when the player is
            invoked from the video extract plug-in or 
	    from the storyboard editor dialog and may then
	    be used to pick images out of videofiles.


Audio Options:
     NOTE: The audio options are not existent in the WINDOWS version
           (eg. when compiled with --disable-audiosupport.)

    - Audiofile:
        Here you can specify the audiofile. (you may also use the "FileBrowser" button)

    - Volume:
        *** Volume control is not implemented yet ***
	The "Enable" checkbox can turn ON/OFF audio playback.

    - Offset
        Here you can shift the audiostart against the video startframe.
	An offset value 0 will start auduio at the first frame.
	Negative offsets will start audio with a delay of n frames.
	Positive offsets will skip the beginning of the audiofile.
	The skipped duration is equal to the time it takes to play n frames
	at original framerate.

	The "Offset" label shows the audio shift in unit Minutes:Secs:Millisecs.
	The "Audiotime" label shows the total playing time of the audiofile
	(without taking care of the offset shifts)

	The "Audioframes" label shows the total playing time of the audiofile
	in unit frames where frames are played at the original
	framerate of the video frames.

	The ohter labels show informations about the audiofile.
	- Nuber of Samples
	- Samplerate  (in Samples / Sec)
	- Channles    (usual 2 for stereo)
	- Bits/Sample

	If no valid audiofile was specified, all values are filled with 0.

     - Copy As Wavfile
        This button provides conversion of audiofile formats to RIFF WAV.
	It opens a subdialog where the name of the wavfile can be entered
	and where you can optional specify a new samplerate if you want
	to resample down to lower samplerates.

	IMPORTANT NOTE:
	- You need the external programs sox and lame to run that feature,
	  because the provided converter script audioconvert_to_wav.sh
	  is based on that programs.
	- If you have another external audio converter program, you can configure
	  GIMP-GAP to use that program rather than the standard converter script
	  audioconvert_to_wav.sh

	  The preferred way is to edit your gimprc file and add a line
	  like this on:
	  (audioconvert_program "/usr/local/bin/my_private_audioconverter")

          The 2nd way is to set an Environmentvariable:
	  export AUDIOCONVERT_TO_WAV=/usr/local/bin/my_private_audioconverter


Some notes on the audiosupport:
    - The audio playback checks for the existence of the wavplay audioserver executable
      file in your gimprc file
        (wavplaypath  "/usr/X11R6/bin/wavplay")
      then checks the environment variable
         WAVPLAYPATH=/usr/X11R6/bin/wavplay
      and finally searches an executable named wavplay in all directories
      defined by your PATH environment variable.

    - Audiosupport can be completely turned off at compiletime.
      If Audiosupport was enabled at compiletime, The playback dialog window
      contains a notebook widget tab named "Audio Options"

    - Audio is always turned off, while frames are played backwards.
    - The audioplayback samplerate tries to follow the videospeed.
      If videoframes are played at the original speed, audio is played
      at the normal samplerate.
      If video speed is too fast audio may not follow synchron.
    - If the "Excact Timing" checkbox is off (unchecked) video and audio
      will not play synchron !


Tip:
  If you want to create thumbnails from frames under visual control
  you can use the player to do that. Therefore you have to enable image
  thumbnails in the general GIMP preferences environment settings.
  
  Then simply playback from 1.st until last frame with "Use thumbnails"
  checkbutton turned on and "exact timing" checkbutton turned off.
  This creates the thumbnails while the frames are displayed.
  
