Belgian Amiga Club - ADF Collection/BS1 part 65.zip/BS1 part 65/VideoStudio v3.0 disk 2.adf/manual/speedtext

Text File | 1992-04-19 | 17KB | 393 lines

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ZVP SpeedText v1.0
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IMPORTANT !!  If A500 see notes on machine variations at end

DESCRIPTION

A Text-file-driven Automatic Layout multipage titling system...
to be precise... and before you ask.

SpeedText could be  regarded as a 'SCRIPT DRIVER' in its simplest and
most easy-to-understand form, but the 'language' to learn involves only
two commands, (#) and (^)..!  The principle is similar to the extremely
powerful VideoStudio PROFESSIONAL's 'zScript', but  SpeedText's
relative simplicity is much more appropriate to new users, and the
limitations imposed by running titling software on 1Mb A500s, most
widely used where expenditure is to be kept to an absolute minimum.

The type of scroll this program uses is a BITMAP scroll, which, unlike
earlier versions of VideoStudio, is smoother, but demands much more
memory.  The total length of scroll therefore is now conditional
on the memory available. (The former program was an 'endless drum type',
not limited in this way.  We have made this change in philosophy in
response from demand from customers (presumably with the memory) but
if other users (with less RAM available) find this unworkable, then the
former 'endless drum' program is still available upon request.

RUNNING THE DEMOS

The program comes up in SEQUENCE mode.  If you want SUBTITLES or
SCROLL, simply click the corresponding button at the top of the screen.

Click on the JOB of your choice.  Click on RUN.

NEW USER ?  A TITLE IN TWO MINUTES

Having run all of the demos, and selected a title type you would like
to use yourself, click REPLICA.  Type in a JOB name of your choice.
Note that you should not use punctuation or spaces in this,
but to set words apart, the underscore (_) is usually used.

When you press <ENTER> the new job will be generated.  You can now
immediately set about any change to the words you wish.  Click on
EDIT TEXT and move the cursor using the arrow keys to any point
you wish to change.

You can delete text with the BACK-ARROW key (main keyboard group)
or the DELETE KEY.

If you want to change the number of pages, just remember that each
page is separated from the next with the (#) symbol.

When you have finished your edits, exit from the editor by pressing
the ESCAPE key.  Then press either S (to Save) U (to Use but not save)
or A (to abandon and reload former text).  The JOB is now ready to
run.

As you get more ambitious, you can begin to experiment with the
other parameters, like the font choice, colours and transitions.

MORE ABOUT SPEEDTEXT

Although this program is new to 'VideoStudio', users of earlier
versions of the software will quickly recognise the combined functions
of the former programs SEQ SUBT and SCROLL, each of which were pioneering
automatic-layout programs distinguished by their speed and ease
of use.  However, while broadly similar in operation, SpeedText offers
a large number of important new features.

SPEEDTEXT covers all of the former functions, adding greater flexibility,
while simplifying further the user-interface.  Because of the ease
of use and minimal work involved in creating multipage sequences
using this method, new users can quickly modify existing title
examples (using the REPLICA feature), and have their own
titles running literally in a few minutes.

Regular users will find the speed of use indispensible, as this
method of working can perform a large proportion of standard title
tasks without recourse to time consuming manual layout, and offers
the maximum potential for productivity.

Only when greater flexiblity is required is it then necessary to use
a manual layout method (e.g. Captor).  To guide you in your selection
of the best suited program to a given task, here is a summary of
the differences.

STRENGTHS

Very fast operation, minimal work editing, maximum disk space economy.
Script driven, and all pages are edited together in one text-file.
In this way a multi-page sequence can be seen and edited as a whole.
Text may be imported from a word-processor, and control-codes added.
SpeedText is optimally suited to subtitling, also leading and trailing
credits.

RESTRICTIONS

The 8-colour palette, the page layout, the chosen three fonts,
three different rendering types, and three colour combinations,
the background picture or included logo, all remain as initially
set throughout all pages of a job.

None of constraints apply to CAPTOR, but as you will see from the
demos provided these restrictions certainly do not provide any great
hindrance in a wide variety of examples.  Indeed, our research indicates
that an 'Auto-Layout' method is almost universally preferred, wherever
possible, by experienced users.

PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION - GROUPS

The FONT, STYLE, RENDERING and COLOUR of the text af any given line
is selected using a single 'prefix' numeral at the beginning of that line.
This character (a number 1-3, selecting GROUP) is not displayed when the job
is run.  Instead one of the three 'ATTRIBUTE GROUPS' you have set up from
the main menu ie engaged. (An Attribute is a 'qualifier' for the text,
Latin: 'qualis'-of what sort) meaning your own choice of font, style,
rendering etc. for all of the text appearing in that selected GROUP.

Some title types (e.g. language subtitles) may need less than 3 groups.
If a group is unused (in this case groups 2 and 3), you are advised
to leave the fonts of any unused groups undefined.  This speeds loading
and saves RAM memory.  Group 1 however, will always be used.

To summarise then, all of the text lines within a job will appear in
one or other of the three attribute groups.  The fonts, styles and
renderings do not all have to be different, you can set these up as
you wish, and the groups may be selected in any order in the script.

Each line of the script that represents text to be displayed therefore
is prefixed with this GROUP SELECTOR.

SEPARATING PAGES

Pages are SEPARATED by a single HASH character (#), and this
must appear on its own line.  (This differs from former software...
so previous users N.B. Eeek... more Latin...!)

With the exception of text for horizontal scrolling, all other
text lines of a script begin with either a GROUP SELECTOR
(a number 1-3) or a HASH (#).  Any other character will be reported
as an error.  Note that there will therefore be one less hash in a job
than the total number of pages.

In sequence and subtitle modes, the hash denotes the space inseted
to separate pages.  For Vertical scroll, the hash is used to insert
a gap between blocks of text, when required.

For horizontal scrolling, no control characters are used.

SPLITTING TEXT LINES

Cetain types of page layout require tabulation in two columns, these
are usually used for end credits type applications.  There are three
types of PAGE FORMAT that make use of this feature, namely CENTRE SPLIT
LEFT-RIGHT SPLIT, and LEFT-CENTRE SPLIT.

If one of these forms of layout are selected, AND the text line contains
the SPLIT SYMBOL (^), then this dual tabulation will be activated.
(If the line omits the (^) then the layout defaults to CENTRE)
It is much easier to understand this by examination of a JOB example
that uses this type of page layout.

MARGINS AND TEXT LAYOUT

Each of the layout types (PAGE LAYOUT) selected can be shifted using
the margins.  There are four margins, LEFT, RIGHT, CENTRE and V-CENTRE.
The current margin settings for the first three are indicated by the
three small coloured rectangles on the slider near the top of the
the menu page.  The vertical centring is indicated on the sliders
at the extreme left and right.  To adjust any one of these, click on
either the GREEN (left) BLUE (centre) RED (right) knob, and move it
to the new position and click the LH button again.  These settings
are all saved when the JOB is saved, and apply throughout the duration
of the job, when it is run.

Note that the V-CENTRE margin position fixes the centre of the
text (irrespective of the number of lines) in a vertical direction.
That is to say the text covers an equal area above and below the margin.

In the case of subtitles, where the margin is set towards the bottom
of the screen, should the computed V-CENTRE result in lines that would
be positioned off-screen, then the margin is temporarily nudged
upward automatically for that page only.  Otherwise the symmetry of
sucessive pages is maintained.

SETTING THE COLOURS

You can set the 8 colours to what you require by clicking SET COLOURS
and selecting the colour number to adjust at the top, then using the
red green and blue sliders.

Colour 0 is always the colour of the background and screen borders.
For foreground keying you must set this to a value to suit your
genlock, usually R=0 G=0 B=5.

The buttons below are the three group text colours (T1,T2 and T3)
and the three group text rendering colours (R1 R2 and R3).

When in SCROLL MODE only the number of available colours decreases
from the nomal eight, depending on the number of planes/speed you
select.  3 Planes corresponds to the full eight, 2 planes to the
first four colours (0-3), and with 1 plane the available colours
are 2 (0 and 1).  However, the speed increases, the fewer planes
you decide to use.

EXAMPLE: SETTING THE COLOURS (all modes)

For example, if the sliders are full up on colour 1, then it is
white.  If you set T1 to 1, then all the text in group 1 is white.
If colour 7 is black, and you have set SHADOW as rendering, and R1
is set to 7, then the shadows will be black.

The page rendering selector defines the colour from the palette in
which the cut-out mask or page box will appear.

ADDING A BACKGROUND PICTURE OR LOGO

Click the LIST (left arrow) button alongside the BGND box.  Click on
the picture you want.  You can now display it using SHOW BACKGROUND
if you want to inspect it first.  The colour palette will probably
now need resetting, so select CHANGE COLOURS and click PIC PAL.

To remove a background, just list backgrounds and the BGND box is
cleared.

The procedure for a logo is similar, except you will have to position
the logo on the screen once selected.  Click on POSITION LOGO and
click it where you require.  The margins will be displayed at this
time to assist you.

The Backgrounds and Logos behave differently when the JOB is run.
Specifying a background picture implies that this is to be continuously
displayed throughout the job.  A logo however is attatched to a
page, and this may however appear continuously if DB CUT TO is used.
Otherwise it is erased with the text for each page.  The distinction
will be clear by comparing the behaviour of JOB 'subtitle withlogo'
and that of 'wedding3'.

TRANSITION TYPES

For a detailed explanation of the working of these, please see the
manual section on CAPTOR.

MAXIMUM LENGTH OF SCROLL

Because VideoStudio now scrolls a BITMAP this means that the maximun
length of scroll depends very much on the combined CHIP and FAST RAM
that your computer has access to.  The weakest Amiga seems to be the
A500/1.3 in this respect, the A500/1.2 the best, and the A500-plus
(and all other machines) can be (if not already) readily expanded
(see notes on machine variations).

A Four-colour scroll uses TWICE the memory of a two-colour one, for the
same length, an eight colour scroll uses three times the memory.
To minimise CHIP mem demands therefore, reduce number of colours to a
minimum, and keep the scroll short.

INCREASING MEMORY FOR LONG SCROLLS ON 1Mb A500s (esp. 1.3 & 2.0)

If you are reluctant to seek a hardware solution to ChipMem shoratges,
then the cheapest way to maximise CHIP is to avoid WorkBench.  This
won't cost you a penny, and allows you to improve RAM efficency.  This
applies especially to WB1.3, and even more so to WB2.0. (1.2 is so
efficient that little improvement is made).

Do this by making a VSboot disk using LINK.  Better still, edit the
startup to conclude with 'go speedtext', or even manually start this
from the CLI. (see notes on maximising memory).

Conversely, the eficiency deteriorates by fitting extra peripherals.

PLEASE NOTE

Do not attempt to control the layout by using spaces at the beginning
or end of a line.  This will not work.  You can adjust the line spacing
using a 'blank' line, providing the group character is still present.
(in V-Scoll though, avoid this, because it consumes a lot of memory).

LAYOUT TRICKS

1.   Mixed layout mode.

Selecting any split mode will remain hidden (and the title centred)
until a (^) is included in the text line.  (see job 'about')

Another example is to select LEFT-RIGHT SPLIT.

A line such as      1Hello there            will be centred
A line such as      1Hello there^           will be flush L-margin
A line such as      1^Hello there           will be flush R-margin
A line such as      1Hello^there            will be split centred

(see JOB 'filmintro' for an example of this)

2.   Spaces between lines.

A line with no text (but MUST still contain a GROUP SELECTOR (1-3))
will displace the text below by the font height plus 5 pixels, i.e.
as if the line were blank.  Choosing a group selector corresponding
to fonts of different heights will vary the spacing. (see job 'about')
Take care when using this method with V-Scroll, however.  Each line
absorbs a lot of CHIP memory, whether there is text on it or not.
Use the HASH (see below).

With Vertical scroll, the hash character represents the text BLOCK
spacing, i.e. setting apart blocks of lines.  Normally 100 TV lines.
Hashes must not appear consecutively in a script.  Instead, you
can vary the VALUE (or distance in TV lines) that this corresponds to
if you press 'B' and enter a new value (up to 500 lines).  This also
varies the duration, so you can fine-tune your timing using this.

PREPARING BACKGROUNDS AND LOGOS

Deluxe Paint is suitable for generating the High Resolution 8-Colour
IFF files required.

The backgrounds are all 8-Colour standard size Hi-Res (640X512) pages.
The logos must be saved as BRUSHES and should not exceed 255X255.
(use COORDS ON when you lift a brush to check its size).

THE AMIGA VARIATIONS

(Nothing to do with Elgar)

THE A500 (Kickstart 1.2)

An A501 brings RAM to 1Mb.  (Provising no superfluous drive fitted).
Loadsa RAM (900K+ at boot), unlike the later 'improved' versions, you
won't need LowChipFix unless you are using backgrounds, or an especially
large logo.  Few problems.  Good machine, but 0.5Mb chip of course.

THE A500 (Kickstart 1.3, pre Sep 91)

Additional memory (the 0.5 Mb A501 expansion) is required.  Total 1Mb.
Irrespective of how much further RAM you add, the maximum of
0.5Mb CHIP Memory is fixed, so the LowChipFix button again must be
used to permit the display of backgrounds. (Transitions then must be
selected from the Single-Buffered types).

Unlike the K/S 1.2 A500's these have about 100K LESS RAM at boot,
and some, but not all (?), cannot open the editor screen on this program
without using LowChipFix.

They have also less headroom than the 1.2 machines, and so will report
'low chip mem' sooner.

THE A500-PLUS (kickstart 2.0)

You are advised to enter this program directly (only via depts).
Full operation (without recourse to LowChipFix) is available if
(wait for it...) you add a 0.5Mb expansion!  We recommend this.
Especially since the 'improved' kickstart 2.0 now gobbles up an
astonishing 250K for no good reason before you can start!
As the saying goes... you win some, you lose some...

We have 'deglitched' this software as best we can to cope with the
K/S 2.0 screen spoiler bugs (please Mr. Commodore can you fix this) but
intermittent flashes at the top of the screen will still appear.

Due to the awkward screen-centreing of WB 2.0, use of 1.3 prefs is
recommended (and far more comprehensible).

You are advised to set workbench backgrounds to darker colours
(like WB 1.3 was) to avoid premature monitor tube burnout, and
difficult-to-read text (due to defocussing) on conventional TVs...
all of which are peaked to produce best clarity on WHITE text on
a darker background.  I know video users are a small minority,
but please Commodore take note.

Keyboard cueing (as an alternative to the mouse-click) is now
available so that the K/S 2.0 bug that corrupts the display with
each new screen mouseclick can be avoided by using the keyboard.

Many users are now having A500+'s 'upgraded' to 1.3 in order to run
older software (and minus the screen bugs).  Switchable systems
are now becoming available.

THE A1500/2000

The software has been compromised somewhat to run on machines (A500s)
with slower drawing speeds (esp A500-plus!) and with little memory.
If there is enough demand for the slicker version of this program
that assumes a 1500/2000 then we may make this separately available.
These remain the best choice for video use.  (Until that is Mr. C
puts the buggy new chips in them...)



iss 0  Jan 04 1992
iss 1  Jan 10 1992