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Features without checkboxes are always active, and you must set a value for them. See Part 4 - Settings Tabs for more details on what each setting does in the various Settings tabs.
This chapter details how to use Settings Groups in general, not the specifics of what each setting does. Please see Part 4 - Settings Tabs for details on the settings within each tab.
All of the parameters that you can change in the Settings window together make up a "settings group." Settings groups are often referred to simply as "settings." By allowing you to easily change and save settings groups, Media Cleaner makes it possible for you to quickly select all your parameters at once. This saves you time, as well as helping you to make sure that your movies are consistent.
Media Cleaner comes with some preconfigured settings groups such as "2x Cinepak" (which is optimized for a QuickTime based, Cinepak compressed, double speed CD-ROM movie).
You can create new groups as well as modify, rename, and delete existing settings.
NOTE: It is not necessary to have a movie
open before working with the Settings window. If
you do have a movie open, the current settings
will automatically be applied and saved to that movie. If you do not have a movie open,
the settings you select will not automatically be applied to any movie, but can be saved
and retrieved for later use. If you open a movie
that has settings associated with it, the settings in
the Settings window will change to that movie's settings.
To select a settings group you wish to use or modify, press the "Select" button in the bottom of the Settings window. This will open a selection window that has "groups" of the five formats Media Cleaner currently supports. Each group has a toggle next to it. When the toggle is pointing down, all the settings in that group are shown. When the toggle is pointing to the right, the settings are hidden.
To speed things up, the toggle for the format that you have currently selected in the Settings window is opened by default. You can have multiple toggles open at any time.
NOTE: The settings are sorted into their architecture group alphabetically by name. See "Organizing Settings" below for more details.
To select a setting you wish to use, click on it
and press the "Select" button. You can also
double-click on a setting to select it.
For example, if you have the "2x Cinepak" setting open and decide to make a new setting called "4x Cinepak", the new group will start with the "2x Cinepak" parameters. You may then modify these as you wish.
Starting with the current settings is a way to
save you from having to reset every parameter from scratch each time you make a new settings group.
Within each group, settings are alphabetically sorted according to their name. If you want
a setting to be at the top of the list, you can put
a number in front of it lower numbers come first.
The Dynamic Preview window allows you to see exactly how the changes you are making to the settings affect your image in real-time. Simply select the "Dynamic Preview" option from the Windows menu, and press the "Update" button to see what the current settings look like when applied to your image. You can also press "Command - D" to generate a preview.
Process Checkbox
This checkbox controls whether the result displayed on a given side has the settings applied to it, including image adjustments (brightness, hue, gamma, etc.) and filters (Adaptive Noise Reduction, Blur, Static Mask, etc.).Compress Checkbox
This controls whether the result on a given side is compressed using the parameters set in the "Compress" tab.NOTE: The image displayed in the Dynamic Preview with the "Compress" option is a keyframe. It is a good indicator of what your final compressed image will look like, but is not exactly the same as the final output. To see the final output, you must start the actual compression and use the Before/After Preview. See Chapter 8 for more details.
1. To see the effects of the image adjustment
Turn off both checkboxes on the left side, and turn on only the "Process" checkbox on the right. The left is now your original image, and the right is the image with all the filters and processing applied to it. This lets you quickly see how your adjustments look.
2. To correct for a particular codec's artifacts
Some codecs slightly alter the color balance of your compressed image. You can compensate
for this by turning off both checkboxes on the
left side, and checking them both on the right side.
Thus, the left side is your original, unmodified
image, and the right side is your final output,
with the codec's changes as well as your own.
Simply alter the hue adjustment until the two
sides match.
3. To see the results of noise reduction
Turn on the "Compress" checkbox on the left, and turn on both the "Process" and "Compress" checkboxes on the right. This lets you see how processing your image prior to compression improves the compressed image quality as compared to not processing the image before compression.
NOTE: You can set the checkboxes on both
sides of the A/B slider to the same setting - this
isn't particularly useful, since the image on both
sides will be identical. If you wish to see the
whole image one way, simply move the slider
entirely to one side of the image.
NOTE: Since the frame displayed in the Dynamic Preview window is a keyframe, the size indicated is not necessarily the exact size a particular frame will be in the final movie; this file size indicator is only useful as a relative guide. To determine the exact size of any frame, you must actually compress the movie and watch the information under the Output Movie.
NOTE: Some codecs, such as Cinepak, may attempt to keep the image the same size,
regardless of your processing. Don't worry if the
file size indicator doesn't change with these codecs.
Instead of the image getting smaller, the image quality should improve as your settings allow
the codec to better compress the image.
The image displayed in the Dynamic Preview window is the same as the current frame in
the Source Movie window. To see how your settings will look with any particular frame in the
movie, just move the Source Movie controller to
the desired point in the movie, and generate a new preview by pressing the "Update" button.