Help w/UGA 5: disparities between my preview & the .avi

[Omar5000]

Hello and thank you in advance for reading my post. Make yourself comfortable. I have gone through prior posts & the knowledge base which were somewhat helpful, but it appears I have painted myself into a corner.

I am running the trial version UGA 5 on my W2K PC (IE 6/Firefox) and I have been building an animation (like a slideshow) using photos from my Fuji digital still cam. I have been dumping what I now realize are A LOT of 20-30KB jpegs into 5 separate .UGA files (I read on the forums that UGA is best suited for smaller, simpler animations...whoops). Anyhow, the plan was to make the .uga file into an .avi and then edit it (and add music) in Ulead VideoStudio 5.0 (I've worked with UVS before). Phew!

So here's my problem (finally): Despite their large size, the .uga files look gorgeous & error free in the preview window, and all the effects run on time, etc. Great. But once I convert it to an .avi, picture quality drops (because it's 256?), and even more distressing; the pinpoint-timing that I set up for transitions and music and dramatic effect have all gone out of whack (i.e. my "Run-and-Stop push" effect limps along pathethically; and the timing of the slides transitions have quartered from 1.5" to maybe 1/4 of a second).

I work for the University of Miami, and had I done a bit more research (entirely my fault) I would have had the school purchase me a more powerful app. The icing on the cake is that I have 5 uber-large .uga files exibiting similar symptomolgy that have to me merged into 1 (!) .avi file and then synched to music in Uliead VS 5.0. And I have about 20 hours to finish.

Is there ANY advice to could give that doesn't involve tossing out my last 30 hours of work or brandishing a firearm? I would be eternally grateful.

Thanks!
Omar.

[VikingAnimations]

Have you tried saving it as an MPEG? GA 5 will save in that format, too...

Did you click the Options button on the save dialog to check the compression settings?

[Omar5000]

Thanks for the reply!

Yes, I did. And the MPEG replicates the sped-up timing/sluggish effects almost identically to the .avi.

No, I didn't mess with the compression settings, I am way out of my depth at that point. But I have a few backup copies of the files, so I can tweak the compression setttings if you think that will help. I will let you know how that goes.

Thanks again for your help!
Omar.

[Omar5000]

Great suggestion with the options/compression menu. I tinkered with that for a bit, and it definitely righted the image quality. But the file refuses to play at the same speed as the version in the preview tab. Is there anything I can do to mantain that level of fidelity to the preview?

Thanks again for all your help, I cannot overstate how encouraging it is.

[VikingAnimations]

The Preview Tab uses Internet Explorer's engine to display the image in GIF format. And unfortunately, IE does not always play things at the appropriate speed, especially if the file is large in both pixel size and Kilobytes. So it is not the best thing to measure the speed with.

You could try viewing it in Firefox or Opera - GA 5 has the option to preview in another browser, and those may do a better job. Kind of a crap shoot, unfortunately...

GA 5 will automatically detect Internet Explorer and older versions of Netscape. If you have another browser, you can add this in the Preferences found by clicking "File."



Only one browser in addition to Internet Explorer (IE) and Netscape can be added. If you have more installed, you'll have to go here to change it to view it in the other(s).

However: If you don't have Netscape installed, but have two other browsers in addition to IE, you can uncheck the auto-detect option and manually browse to another browser, as shown in the image below. The Netscape icon will still be there, but in this example, Opera will open instead.



There is also the "Play" button on the frame panel. I'm not sure how accurate that is, either, unfortunately!

Best of luck!

[Omar5000]

Hmm...interesting. I like the version/timing of the animation that IE runs, but the $64,000 question is how do I replicate that into something portable?

Actually, on the portability front: I was able to package one of the 5 files I am working with into an .exe file. The export feature even allows for music, to which I attached the .mp3 to which I timed the animation. And that executable works like a dream. That .exe, unlike the MPEGs or the .avi, runs 98% true to the original timing of the transitions. Great, right? Wrong. Because I have 5 files, not 1 and they must play uniterrupted in sequence (total running time 4 min). I don't think GA 5 can handle the merging of the other four files into one GODZILLA size .uga file (the one I did package for export to the .exe is 49MB )!

So once again, thanks for the help, GA 5 is a very agile app, but I am definitely pushing the boundaries of what it was designed for. I am still playing with the options tab, but once I load the file (MPEG, .avi, etc.) into Visual Studio, it's a mess.

Thanks for the help, I am going to tweak this thing for a few more hours and see what happens.

[Omar5000]

Yo Viking!

Thanks for all your help. What I have finally done is I bit the bullet and merged all 5 of my files into one .uga file about the size of Argentina (seriously, it was like 189MB). From there, I let the PC take a breather and then exported the .exe file (with audio clip) to my desktop. While I still have to make an edit or two to make the clip run dead-on timing wise, I am pretty much done. I have to treat the .uga files with kidgloves or it'll freeze, but the .exe file loads up right away and plays beautifully.

So thanks for the guidance and support, it really kept me going there.

Cheers!
Omar.

[VikingAnimations]

I hope you can get it all tweaked and working, Omar!