button and navigate to the preferred default folder. This will be the default location for all files created and saved in Voxler.This tutorial provides suggestions and strategies to help you get the most out of your Voxler video.
Click the Actions | Capture Video command to create a video in Voxler. The Capture Video dialog opens. Specify the settings for the video capture in the Capture Video dialog. See Capture Video for detailed information on the dialog.
The Voxler capture video tool gives you the ability to make .AVI movies of everything that appears in the Viewer window, including any angular spin you apply to the image. However, .AVI files can easily get quite large, and in a short amount of time. The following suggestions can help keep the quality of your .AVI files high while keeping them at a reasonable size.
What screen size do you need?
The Actions | Capture Video command allows you to create an .AVI movie of the Viewer window. This means that when Voxler is set for full-screen usage the Viewer window can be as large as 800 X 1200 pixels. A 10-second .AVI file created at this size with a Frame rate of 20 and Quality of 90% is approximately 17.5 MB in size. However, if you reduce the Viewer window size to 350 X325, the .AVI file is 4.7 MB. The width by height size of the window screen is displayed as Window size in the status bar.
How large a Viewer window you need depends on several factors, including the application where the .AVI is used, the type of image you want to capture (how much detail must be visible for maximum visual impact) and how willing you are to have a large .AVI file. Regardless, it is clear that this question is one of the first you should consider when creating your .AVI file. Adjust the size of the Viewer window first.
What Frame Rate do you need?
The Frame rate is specified in the Capture Video dialog. Generally, the higher the Frame rate the smoother the motion in the .AVI file. However, if the rotational motion of the image in the viewer window is slow, the Frame rate can be set at a lower rate without sacrificing much in terms of visual smoothness. If the image is rotating more rapidly, a slower Frame rate can result in a jerky playback of the .AVI. The general rule is: if you use a slower rotation, you can use a lower Frame rate and not sacrifice image quality.
What Quality Setting do you need?
The Quality is specified in the Capture Video dialog. The Quality of the image is akin to the image quality of a .JPG file. Artifacts from compression can interfere with image quality if the compression is too great, in exchange for a smaller file size. The amount of visible artifacts is also dependent on the type of image in the .AVI file. Solid objects, such as the Helens (ContourMap).voxb example file, require a higher quality setting, such as 90%, to make artifacts unobtrusive. But if you are capturing a point data set, such as the Gold (ScatterPlot).voxb example file, you can use a lower quality setting of about 70% without seeing obvious compression artifacts. You can use a lower Quality in point images than in solid images.
Lower Quality settings, such as 50%, should be used only with very slowly rotating point source objects. Avoid using these low Quality settings with Lattice-based data set objects. The resulting .AVI files are virtually unusable:
What duration should you make your .AVI file?
This seems obvious, but always remember the intended audience of this .AVI file, and what information you are trying to convey. If you feel the user needs 45 seconds to understand the basic point of the .AVI and the resulting file is too large, alter the settings to make the file size smaller. It is always a balancing act among screen size, image quality, frame rate, and duration.
How rapidly should the image rotate?
The dramatic visual effect of a rotating three dimensional object or array is one of the primary reasons to make a Voxler capture video. You want to rotate the object in the Viewer window (by pressing the mouse button and releasing it while moving the mouse in the desired direction of motion) at the most appropriate angular speed to convey the desired information. If you rotate the image too quickly the information in the image is a blur; too slow and the effect is tedious.
There is one point to remember regarding angular speed and file size: The faster the speed, the larger the file. For example, if you created a simple file of the Gold (ScatterPlot).voxb example, got it to spin as rapidly as possible, and created a ten-second movie of this whirling object with a screen size of about 500 X 330, the resulting .AVI file would have a size of over 8 MB. If you created another movie of the same image with zero angular speed (an unmoving object), the resulting .AVI file would be only 1.3 MB. Take this into consideration. If the motion effect of your movie is acceptable at a slower angular rate the resulting .AVI file size will be smaller.
This is clearly another variable to take into account when creating your .AVI movie, because the reverse is true as well: Do not bore the audience with a glacially slow-moving image, despite the attractive option of a greatly reduced file size.
What if the .AVI file is still too large?
It might happen that the movie you create is still too large for the intended use, no matter what settings you use in the Capture Video dialog. There are 3rd-party software programs that convert .AVI files to other video formats, such as .WMV or .MPEG files. In many cases the resulting converted file can be considerably smaller in size.
It is common in the video creation process to make/revise/revise through multiple iterations before completing the video satisfactorily. It is efficient to keep Windows Explorer open to the location where Voxler stores the created videos. This default location is the My Documents folder for the current user.
You can change the default location in Voxler by choosing the Tools | Options command. On the General tab click the button and navigate to the preferred default folder. This will be the default location for all files created and saved in Voxler.
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