motion thumbnails?

gmes29 wrote on 9/1/2006, 7:06 PM

since you are allowed to use thumbnail buttons on your menus, i figure there's got to be a way to set each thumbnail to a small 12 second clip at the beginning of the chapter it represents - otherwise what good is it?
but how exactly do you do it?? are you stuck having to use a still?? kind of limiting..

Comments

autopilot wrote on 9/1/2006, 7:33 PM

Click on your menu button in the blue box in the middle ( it should be the first frame of your video ), then Media, then Style, to Animated. Then if you want, right above it, choose the Start Time of the animation on the button.

gmes29 wrote on 9/2/2006, 2:45 AM

thanx..
this is interesting.. first, even though both buttons are linked to their individual chapters, there is no sign of the first frame in either of the buttons (edit and preview mode show nothing but a gray background).. second, i can't change the style because for some reason it is disabled.

gmes29 wrote on 9/2/2006, 3:15 AM

ok, i figured out why i'm not getting a first clip preview of a chapter in my thumbnail - i was using a submenu (via Insert) instead of a scene selection menu. but that brings up another question.. what could possibly be the difference? aren't they basically the same thing??

gmes29 wrote on 9/2/2006, 4:21 AM

well, it wasn't so much the difference between a scene selection menu and a submenu but in how the scene selection automatically selects the media file you're using.. but this is what i don't understand. the media file he assigns is the original file on disk - not your edited file. so why do you have to set the 'media' of the thumbnail to the original mpg/avi file when you already have your edited file (with chapters assigned) in your project included as an object?? this conflicts with how the thumbnails are linked to their chapters - you select the video object (not the original file) then select the chapter marker within the video. isn't this enough for the thumbnail to say 'ok, i'll use the first frame i see starting at this point'? the link is already there so why does the media property even have to be set??