The Document Dialog
Oculus has an incredibly rich set of captions and options for modifying your webcam image. This allows you to customize your webcam and create a unique and different appearance to your presence on the web.
We'll first talk about the basic settings that effect your webcam image. Then we'll move into compression settings, and finally into the captioning options.
Selecting a CameraTwo options that affect the image captured in the Document dialog are the video source, and the image size.
The Video Source popup menu allows you to select any of your connected cameras as the input for this document. If you have multiple cameras connected, you can also select Cycle from this menu if you want Oculus to capture from each camera in turn. You can select which cameras to be included in the cycle list from the Cameras dialog.
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The Document dialog controls which video input will be used for this document. This includes both pictures and movies created by this document. |
You can also customize the size of the image. Oculus automatically supports quarter, half, full, and double size of the image created by your camera. It also allows you to choose any custom size you want. If you have a specific size that you would like the image to be, you can simply enter the width and height in this dialog. You can also resize the main document window using the grow box at the bottom right corner of the window. When you grow the document in this way, a pink size indicator will appear in the upper left corner of the image while you are resizing the image. This will let you see the width and height of the resulting image.
Cropping the ImageSometimes, your camera may be including more image than you wish. If this is the case, you can select the Crop item from the Settings menu and define the portion of the image that you would like to use.
When you select the Crop menu item, Oculus will provide blue handles that you can use to crop out the sections on the edges of your image. A small blue rectangle will show the dimensions of the cropped image. The cropping takes place on all variants of the image for this document: the image, the thumbnail, and the movie.
Photo SettingsThe Photo Settings dialog is used to control most of the basic settings about the images that will be saved from Oculus. You can control the orientation, compression settings, filter, and destination for your images.
The Photo Settings dialog is accessed from the Settings menu. The dialog shows a preview of the image to be saved on the left hand side. The compression settings for the saved image (which default to JPEG, which is most standard on the Internet) can be accessed from the Settings button. Oculus can upload images in any format supported by QuickTime, which includes GIF, JPEG, PNG, and many other formats.
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In order to ensure that the images are displayed correctly by your viewer's browsers, make sure that the file name specified contains a filename extension that is appropriate for the file format (ie. name.gif for GIF files, name.jpg for JPEG files, etc.). |
You may want to upload a small copy of the image to your website when you upload the normal image. If you are creating a large history of images, this can be very useful as you can display many small images that will download quickly with links to the full size images. The Thumbnail items will allow you to define a name, a size, and whether to include the captions in the thumbnail image.
The orientation buttons in the upper left corner of the Photo Settings dialog allow you to flip or rotate the image. This can be useful if, for example, you have mounted your camera upside down. A sample of the orientation is shown below the orientation buttons.
Filtering ImagesThe Filter option allows to you select any QuickTime Filter Effect to modify the image before saving. This allows tinting, blurring, sharpening and otherwise modifying your image.
CaptionsOculus provides three basic styles of "captions" or modifications to your document. Text captions are the most common, providing some notation on your image about what you are doing, or when the image was captured. Picture captions allow you to place your favorite image or character on top of your webcam image. Finally, Oculus has a plug in architecture that allows more dynamic images to be placed on your webcam.
Text and picture captions can be created by simply dragging any text or picture from the Finder or other application onto your main document window. Oculus will create the appropriate caption with the default settings. You can also create text or picture captions by selecting the New option from the Captions menu.
When you create a new caption from the menu, or when you double click on an existing caption in the main window, Oculus brings up a dialog to allow you to edit that caption. For a new caption, the contents of the editing dialog will default to the settings for the previously selected caption. This can be useful if you are trying to make a number of captions with similar options.
Text CaptionsWith the Text Caption dialog, you can change many different options to completely customize how your text captions look.
The text caption dialog allows you to enter your text, which is shown with a preview below the text entry area. Oculus supports multiline text - just press return between each line. The basic settings for font, size, color, and style are similar to other applications you may have used. Oculus provides more advanced options beyond the standard Macintosh style formatting.
If you wish, you can have Oculus show you the fonts in the font menu in their respective font. If your machine has many fonts on it, you may find this slows down the selection of the font. This option is off normally, but you can control this option from the Preferences menu, located under the File menu.
The Size slider controls the basic size of the font. The Leading slider controls spacing between lines if you have a multi-line caption. The Spacing slider allows you to control the spacing between each character, either increasing or decreasing it from the standard. The foreground and background colors can be set by clicking on the colored square, and each have an opacity, which allows your webcam image to partially show through the caption. This is especially useful with large captions, or those with the solid frame option specified.
The alignment options allow you to have your caption automatically pinned to a corner or edge of the webcam. Just click in the area on the icon where you wish to have your caption occur. Of course, in the main document window, you can drag the caption to any location you desire. You can also select if you wish multiple lines of text to be left, right, or centered with respect to one another.
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Text captions can become more interesting when you include dynamic
substitutions that change as your image is captured. When entering a
text caption, you can select to have the current time or date inserted
by pressing the appropriate button. More advanced substitutions can be
selecting from the popup up menu on the right hand side of the dialog.
You can specify the items defined in the menu in any order you would like, or you can add the Wildcards by hand by typing them in.
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 Caption Substitutions |
The QuickCaption substitution allows you to have a portion of your text caption easily changed from a floating window in Oculus. You can open this window from the Captions menu. QuickCaptions can be entered and will be applied when the return key is pressed.
The QuickCaption window can also save up to 10 of your favorite sayings and allow them to be selected from the popup menu on the right of the QuickCaption window. In addition, QuickCaptions can be set from AppleScript. See the Advanced section for details.
Picture CaptionsOculus allows you to add a caption that contains custom artwork, transparency or highly stylized text. You can drag a picture from your desktop into your Main document window and Oculus will add the Picture caption. You can also select New Picture Caption from the Captions menu to choose a file.
Like text captions, pictures can be automatically placed into the corners or edges of the document by clicking on the alignment icon. Picture can also be moved by dragging them to the desired location in the main document window.
From the picture caption dialog, you can select transparency. This can either use the transparency in the picture (for images created with applications such as PhotoShop that allow for it) or by having a single color in the image be transparent. You can also adjust the overall opacity of the entire image.
Pictures can be resized or skewed from the main document window by using the controls on the edges of the selected picture. Clicking on the center of the image and dragging the mouse will allow you to rotate the image.
List CaptionsThe List Caption is a feature unique to Oculus that allows you to group a number of captions together.
With the List Caption, you can choose to have individual captions in the list displayed either at random, in sequence, or all simultaneously. This can be used, for example, to have a number of phrases that change as users watch your webcam.
The contents of a list caption are only checked for drawing if the list itself will be drawn. For example, if a sequential list contains three random lists, only one item from the first random list will be drawn, then only one item from the second random list will be drawn, etc.
When the list is set to Rotate Sequentially, the next caption in the list will be displayed when a picture is taken. When the list is set to Random, one of the captions in the list will be displayed in no particular order. If the list is set to Display All, the all of the captions in the list will be displayed.
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Any new caption will be placed in the same list as the currently selected
caption. If no captions are selected, the caption will be placed in the
main list for that mode (online or offline). You choose to put captions into a different list by using the Captions Window. |
The Captions Window is used to order captions and to put captions into different lists. It can also be used to select or delete captions.
The Captions Window will be displayed when you select Captions... from the Captions menu.
Selecting captions from the Captions Window is as simple as clicking on them. You can edit captions by double clicking on them. This will bring up the caption edit dialog for that caption. You can delete selected captions by pressing the delete key. You can drag captions into or out of list caption groups or into the inactive captions area by clicking and dragging the caption. The inactive captions are captions that are to be used when the camera is offline.
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The captions window is also useful for reordering the captions. Captions are rendered from top to bottom, and if your captions overlap one another, you may have a specific idea of which should be visible on top. Click and drag captions to re-order them in the list. |
Oculus has a plug in architecture for more complex captions. As time goes on, you can expect to find more of these dynamic caption plugins. The plugin captions appear under the New Caption submenu of the Captions menu. All of the plug in captions can be named, can be aligned to the corners or edges of the webcam, can be positioned by dragging in the main window, and can be resized by dragging the resize corners of the selected caption.
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Do you like one of the Plug-Ins, but have ideas for other artwork? Clocks and round-style Gauges require the background picture (and optional foreground) picture along with the hand or hands drawn in the 12 o'click position. Thermometer style Gauges require the background (and optional foreground) picture, and the image of the "red part" of the thermometer. Weather plug-ins require a suite of images for each of the weather styles listed in the pop up. We'd love to add your custom art, so feel free to contact us! |
The Clock Caption provides a number of styles of analog clocks. They are usually transparent around the edges, and sometimes in the center, which allows you to place a more interesting looking timepiece on your webcam.
The gauge plug in provides a number of analog gauges and dials. They have a value which can be changed by entering a value in this dialog, or can be read and set via AppleScript. This can be used, for example, to provide live temperature updates by connecting an external thermometer to your computer and changing this gauge with AppleScript.
The effect plug in allows you to apply any of the QuickTime Filter effects to a portion of your webcam image. The most common usage is to blur a section of the window that you wish to be obscured. Note that like all captions, you can control the order of the effect captions, which allows you to apply them either below, or on top of any of your other captions. You can also layer or apply multiple filters to the image, either to the entire image or portions of it. The following is a list of Filters that are built into QuickTime that can be used with Oculus:
Note that each of these filter effects has a large number of options, so you can customize the filters to your liking. Oculus also works with third party QuickTime filters, such as those from Buena Software.
The Weather plug in allows you to display an image (with optional temperature) that shows the weather in your current area. Like the Gauge and Clock captions, the Weather caption provides several display styles, and also allows you to have a transparent or solid background, as well as allowing you to select the font and size of the temperature display. You may select current conditions from the popup menu to the right of the dialog, or you may select a site from which to download the current conditions. The Weather Plug-In requires QuickTime 4.1 or higher in order to appear in the plug in menu.
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The Weather Plug in downloads the current weather in METAR format from the NOAA data base. You may also set the current conditions yourself, using METAR format encoding. The Weather Plug in supports download from any of the observation sites available from NOAA. If you'd like to find a new site not in the popup list, you can search directly on the NOAA site http://weather.noaa.gov/weather/metar.shtml for the 4 letter code for the site you wish to use. You then can enter the site into the edit text box of the Weather plug in, using the form "ftp://weather.noaa.gov/data/observations/metar/stations/XXXX.TXT", where you replace XXXX with the four letter code for the station. If you have a favorite site, and are using the Weather plug in for your webcam, please let us know, and we'll add that site to the popup menu in future releases of Oculus. |
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