CaptionsAlive Pro

[skiyak]

Dave,

Good news. It is working now. The two I did earlier I suppose somehow got corrupted. They could not be read in Producer either.

wendy

[rdurga Profile Private message]

Dave,

I hv searched the hd and even the external drive on my laptop and avi file is not found. I have loaded your program on another computer (desktop) in the house and test ran. Everything worked fine and avi video file was created.

I have transferred that avi file to my laptop and it ran without any hurdles. It shows that codec is not the problem.

It means my laptop doesnot have the program or tools to convert bmp's to avi file. Or something is blocking the conversion?

Any suggestions or workout is appreciated.

ram

[nannybear Profile Private messageWebsite]

Quick little hit to try, and worked right out of the box!! Didn't get fancy just a title over a background in PSP...
can't wait to play with this, as I take a break from school......thanks Dave!!!!

[Dave Fitzpatrick Profile Private message]

I've added a CAP Samples Page to my web site. At present I only have 2 samples uploaded. Here is what they do:

(1) A Daughter. This is a single slide show. The complete AVI was built in CAP and imported as a single slide into Producer. It would work equally as well in Gold. This is a variant on "A Daughter" taken from the CAP Introductory show

http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewsho ... alb=156214

(2) Fancy Frame. This is a show for Producer. It uses two layer masks on the same slide. One maps the frame and flourish animation, the other masks the image portrait to within the constraints of the frame.

http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewsho ... alb=156214

Except for the slow zoom of the image, this entire effect could have been made in CAP and used as a single slide in either Producer or Gold.

There are CAP project files for both of these in the samples' download. For the Fancy Frame sample, there is also a Producer project file.

[kabeeo Profile Private message]

First of all Dave, the program is great. Second I aplolgize for sounding like an idiot but I am one on the issue of masking. I know you said to make a B&W avi in the CAP program in order to use it as a mask in PSP. There is a box to check for "Make Alpha Mask" and another option that says "Configure All for Outline Mask". Which one of those do I select? Sorry for what is probably a dumb question.

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

Make the alpha mask. Dave calls it that, but it doesn't matter. If it's black-and-white, you'll set it to intensity mask in Producer.

Barbara

[Dave Fitzpatrick Profile Private message]

Kevin, No need to apologize. It always takes time for any of us to familiarize ourselves with new programs.

Layer masks in Producer are great. They give you a ton of flexibility and reuseablility of your work.

Basically they work this way:

You set the top layer (usually a black and white or grayscale image) to function as an intensity mask, also referred to as a grayscale mask. This is done under the Layers/Layer Settings tab in PSP. You must have at least 2 layers in your slide to do this. Just make the second one be a solid color layer, say red or blue.

When set up properly in PSP, your layer stack for a simple masked slide would look like:

(1) Grayscale Image (set as an intensity mask)

(2) Solid color layer

The way this all works, then, is that wherever PSP finds an intensity other than black on the top layer, it will map the color of the second layer (the solid color layer) to the layer below it, in this case, the black background. Therefore, changing the color of the solid color layer, will change the color of whatever the mask is mapping onto the background.

CAP black and white masks use this feature with video. The layer mask need not be a static image. They can be animated AVIs also. Therefore, the animation of the CAP AVI, if used as the layer mask, maps the underlying solid color onto the background. PSP also allows you to resize the AVI (larger or smaller), rotate it, change its playback speed, etc. which gives you tremendous flexibility with what you can do with a single CAP generated AVI.

For now, don't bother with the Make Alpha Mask feature of CAP. Just build your AVI using white text on a black background. I'll be writting more about Alpha Masks latter.

Hope this clarifies the issue of B&W AVIs and their use as layer masks in Producer.

[texan Profile Private message]

Dave:

Your trouble report link on your web site gave me a 404 rejection error........

Here's my Question:

Is there a print out of the entire flourish alpha characters; or is there a method to print them all out for fast recall? I assume there is 52 of them??

[Dave Fitzpatrick Profile Private message]

Texan, actually there are not 52 of them. They only go up to the letter "J". I'm not a particularly artistic sort, so I made the limited Flourish set which ships with CAP just to get you started. There are others who are developing more complete sets that should be available soon.

As for printing them out, I can only suggest that you put them on the CAP screen, size and position them to fit, capture the bmp and print it.

[texan Profile Private message]

Texan, actually there are not 52 of them. They only go up to the letter "J". I'm not a particularly artistic sort, so I made the limited Flourish set which ships with CAP just to get you started. There are others who are developing more complete sets that should be available soon.

As for printing them out, I can only suggest that you put them on the CAP screen, size and position them to fit, capture the bmp and print it.

I was afraid I anticipated your answers before I got them..........
I'll create my "own" favorite library and "code" how best to access my
favorites...........Love the program so far

[kabeeo Profile Private message]

Thanks to Dave's instructions and an incredibly easy program that he has provided I have made my first captions and my first masks. Not that I really understand the masks, but I made them and they work. They look great and what a big improvement in title pages and others to have this addition. Great work Dave and anybody on the fence--jump right in.

Looking forward to more fonts.

[caganaudie Profile Private message]

Looks likes a great little program, but a little expensive for us for what it does.

[Barkingmad Profile Private message]

Jan - oh Nanny Bear! - This is all your fault.. . I was not going to get this program - I was not even going to look for the simple reason I am broke
Temptation got the better of me ... just a peek ... so I went to the site and clicked on the smaller of the demo shows .. but had to close it as it was still far too big for me to justify downloading on my restricted bandwidth ... so far so good - see - I cant be tempted to buy what I have not seen ....
THen you come along with a neat little small file size demo, put it here on the forum right under my nose ....
now, I am proud owner of nifty new little program
PS - thanks so much for the small sized demo .... its so frustrating when almost everything is big big for me to be able to watch ... so I really appreciate you doing that.

[gkline Profile Private messageWebsite]

Sample with using several different programs Remask, CAP, and Livebrush.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzOnmlDjVKs&fmt=22

Garrett

[nannybear Profile Private messageWebsite]

Jan - oh Nanny Bear! - This is all your fault.. . I was not going to get this program - I was not even going to look for the simple reason I am broke
Temptation got the better of me ... just a peek ... so I went to the site and clicked on the smaller of the demo shows .. but had to close it as it was still far too big for me to justify downloading on my restricted bandwidth ... so far so good - see - I cant be tempted to buy what I have not seen ....
THen you come along with a neat little small file size demo, put it here on the forum right under my nose ....
now, I am proud owner of nifty new little program
PS - thanks so much for the small sized demo .... its so frustrating when almost everything is big big for me to be able to watch ... so I really appreciate you doing that.

Well I don't mind it being all my fault. I don't even have a lot of time right now to play, but I know once I ever get retired I am going to want all this stuff! Dave is brilliant and I know I will put all his programs to use once I get time to play play play!! Glad you liked it, hugs Jan