Movie with a mask?

[Graham]

Thanks to all who replied - valuable stuff in each message!

On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 17:14:32 +0200, Klaus Major <klaus at major-k.de> wrote:

>Hi Graham,
>[...]
> > But what if the movie requires a different mask per frame?


>i don't think this is possible at all :-(
>
>Neither with RR nor with QuickTime...
>
>In QT you can only have one static mask (starting with version 5, i
>think...)
>
>Haven't tried to play such a movie in RR yet. Don't have one at hand...
>(Anyone did it? Does it work?)

Yup, I did it - no real problem (for the tiny ones I was using anyway) to 
get them to appear, apart from the masking issue. However there appeared to 
be a big performance hit, particularly if you allowed the user to drag the 
player object (with the movie stopped) - this worked far worse than it did 
in SuperCard - but obviously SC has the advantage of only having to work 
with the MacOSs. If you want to see my movies (which are really just tiny 
animations) I can send them to you off list.

>---
>Try to use one more more animated gifs.
>
>I think this is the only chance to have "moving masks"
>(a.k.a. "travelling matte" in serious video-editing business ;-)
>in Revolution.

OK, that's my very next thing. I'll tell you how I get on.

On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 08:38:35 -0700, Scott Rossi <scott at tactilemedia.com> wrote:

>If you don't have a lot of frames ('a lot' is a relative term) you could use
>a series of PNG images which are masked as needed and swap them in sequence
>in a button object.

Wow! I hadn't thought of that - the big problem there would seem to be 
speed (I am worried that some of my users - schools in the UK, chronically 
short of money - may have very slow machines). But I am keen to try it.

On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 10:06:06 -0700, "Jim Lambert" <jiml at netrin.com> wrote:

>As previously suggested animatedGIF or PNG.
>
>Or, if the background upon which your movie is lain will always be the same,
>just use an old trick - composite that backgroud right into your movie then
>run it in an exactly-positioned rect - no mask needed.

Yes, I can manipulate the design of my app to make this possible, so I 
guess that would be the way to go - but as I'm still worried about the 
performance hit, I'll probably try one of the other solutions.

The hidden problem for me in using the other solutions suggested is that I 
want to be able to run the movies forwards or backwards with different 
speeds and always with sync sound (so that the slow speed movies would have 
a deeper, slower sound for example). This is a no-brainer in QT, but for 
every other method (AFAIK) one is just stuck having a whole set of 'movies' 
called, e.g.

slowest, very slow, slow, normal, fast, very fast, fastest - with 
appropriate sound tracks.

Much more messy. OTOH, I think I agree with some other listers who have 
hinted that QT is not **really** a cross-platform solution if one's users 
are hard-pressed non-experts (in my case, teachers who are not teaching 
IT). Much as I wish Apple to succeed, I do see it as an additional 
difficulty to insist that my users download and configure QT.

Thanks again

Graham

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Graham Samuel / The Living Fossil Co. / UK & France