Auto Capturing Frames

The process of making a movie can be tedious because you have to repeatedly make small changes to the image and then press the Add Button. For this reason, the Viewer has an option that automatically saves every change to the image as a movie frame. This makes it much easier to create complex movie sequences.

Enabling Auto Capture. To begin capturing images, enable the “Auto Capture Changes” option in the Movie Window. Once the option is enabled, the Viewer will save every newly plotted image to the accumulating movie. This way, you can create a movie using the normal zoom, pan and rotate options. You can also use the Drag options to generate smoothly changing zooms and pans. The Auto Capture option is automatically disabled whenever you exit from the Movie Window or when the Frame Limit has been exceeded.

The best quality movies are created when you set the Increments to small values and make small changes. If you are using the Drag options, move the mouse slowly so the changes are small and smooth.

Complex Motions. One limitation of the Auto Capture option is the fact that you cannot do two motions at the same time. For example, you cannot rotate and zoom simultaneously. This is because a new image is created after each operation. For this reason, it is often useful to disable the Auto Capture option for part of your movie. When the option is disabled, you can combine more than one motion in the same frame. For example, you could press the rotate and zoom buttons in sequence, and then press the Add button. This will result in the two actions being combined in a single frame.