Can QS 4.x assemble QuickTrace line are frames into a repeating animation (yes/no) ?

I'm new to QS, bought it 2017, played with it a bit, became very discouraged because the manual is outdated and screenshots do not always resemble those in 4.x. QS has been set for Advanced mode from the beginning.

My Apple IIe laser software is far, far easier to take 9 digitized image frames and create a repeating animation loop of "n" number of repeats. It takes many hours to digitize the line art on an Apple graphic tablet where QuickTrace does it almost instantly from a JPG file. But it takes a few minutes to create an animation loop sequence, where I spent hours last night with QS "placing" the 9 image frames (aka cues) into a separate cue set for repeating.

I think it worked and sequence through the 9 frames once, then it started doing frame morphs that seems to relate to the Effects and Animate button in the Edit Frame/Animation window.

I get the impression that QS does not allow one to assemble QT acquired image frames into an animation.

If this CAN be done in QS (all updates applied), please explain the steps to go through.

AND

How the hell does one turn OFF the darn EFFECTS contortion animation?

Thanks
 
Well finally after many, many attempts over many, many hours, I unraveled the the steps to create an animated cue from original artwork.

One note of importance, when constructing an animation queue, never click on Effects or Animation buttons because if you do, it seems you will have permanently changed the cue to do frame morphing transition animations as I've fine no way to "undo" them.
 
Hi, Lasermaster1977!
... repeating animation...
Please take a screenshot or video of the source material and what you got. Maybe there is a shorter way you don't know about it yet.

How the hell does one turn OFF the darn EFFECTS contortion animation?
Please take a screenshot what "he darn EFFECTS contortion animation" you mean by that.

.....as I've fine no way to "undo" them
You don't have a "Undo" button working?
 
Igor, thanks for your responses. My apologies for not replying earlier as I did not receive any email notices that I had received replies to my post.

Here is the QS Cue Editor screenshot toolbar with the "Effect" and "Animate" button at the top. Clicking either of them seems to invoke their default actions. I saw no screen feedback indications that either of these two function button were "active" once clicked.

I now see the undo button and see its resulting effect, but missed seeing it before.

I had "placed" 8 frames into a cue and clicked "Animate" believing that is where frame animation parameter settings would be. I could not understand why my 8 frames turned into 48 frames with a strange morphing animation effect....but now I do. The Cue Properties controls the frame animation parameters.

Many thanks
 

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  • QuickShowVersion 4.0, Build 1294 Edit Screen1.jpg
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Hi, Lasermaster1977!
I think you need to set up your profile to receive notifications of responses in our forum.

As for animation: in this dialog box, we will be able to select the first and last frames for animation. And also the number of animation frames.
What difficulties did you experience at this step?
View attachment upload_2019-12-16_13-57-47.png
 
Igor, thank you for your reply. Sorry I haven't responded sooner, but I've been sick, but hopefully better now.

My profile has been setup since I joined this forum in 2017, it is set to notify me on responses to my posts BUT I IT IS NOT HAPPENING, NOT EVEN YOUR LAST REPLY TO ME.

Yes, I understand your PNG file example and it is the very thing I referred to in my initial posting "it started doing frame morphs that seems to relate to the Effects and Animate button in the Edit Frame/Animation window".

I am referring to TRUE animation not this MORPHING ANIMATION between 2 frames in as many transitional frames as one desires. This at best is a loose form of animation and at best should be described as an animating "melting" between on image and another image over a defined number of incrementally image frames transitions.

TRUE ANIMATION examples would be like cartoon animation, Disney animation, such as a rotating globe showing the Earth's continents, or a human being walking or running, a horse trotting along, etc..

Having the "EFFECTS" and "ANIMATION" buttons appear in the attachment you provided after selecting the "EDIT/FRAME ANIMATION" cue menu item misleads one to believe it has something to do with TRUE ANIMATION control and configuration.

QUICKSHOW's actual TRUE ANIMATION settings are found obscurely in the CUE PROPERTIES menu and are referred to in small type in the IMAGE and PLAYBACK tabs. In addition, the QS documentation for these tab IMAGE and PLAYBACK functions relating to TRUE ANIMATION is horribly explained and documented FULLY in the user manuals. Boo hiss.

I sure expected better from Pangolin.
 
Hi, Lasermaster1977!
Sorry! I didn't know what your question was right away.

Thank you for your feedback to description about Cue Properties.
We are constantly working on quality documentation and training videos.

You can find a lot of new training materials on our Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/PangolinShows.
We post more recent documentation on the program to the 1st line on our channel on Wikipedia https://wiki.pangolin.com/doku.php/

Also, I'm here to talk to our system administrator about your problems with notifications.

We'll be happy to be of service.
 
Hello Lasermaster1977,

Could you please check your spam folder? According to our forum software, the messages are send.
 
Many thanks for the links, Igor.

Bob, I'm a retired IT network executive director, former email administrator for one of the 10th largest school districts in the nation. Checking my spam folder was the first thing I did.
When I was not receiving Pangolin emails my login and contact email was axxx@swbell.net, so last week I changed both to axxxxxxxx@gmail.com and started receiving email notices for my forum posts. ( I purposely obscured these actuals emails in this reply)

I checked the axxx@swbell.net spam folder and it was empty of any items as I hardly ever mark items as spam and prefer to unsubscribe.

Thanks
 
Dang, 3 years later, after not using QS for all this time, I'm trying to remember what I did to create simple 5 frame animation using images I imported into queues. Using QuickCapture produced a repeating 5 frame animation but there is no way to slow it down slow enough to look good. (and this is not the way I did it before).

What I figured out 3 years ago is shown in the attached screenshot which shows the 9 individual, single frames (cues) in the Images tab in the Cue Properties of the "animated" Cue.

The partial screenshot below that is what I get using QuickCapture.

For the life of me, there is not an obvious way of combining multiple cues into one animation cue using the New Frame/Animation tool editor.

But I just stumbled across the solution that I must have used 3 years ago.

It involves:
1. Opening the first image cue in the Edit Frame/Animation tool
2. Selecting all the points (Ctrl-A) and copying them (Ctrl-C) to the clipboard
3. Creating a new Cue by right-clicking on an empty Cue, selecting Create > New Frame/Animation
4. Adding as many empty "frames" as required in addition to the default frame 1 with Ctrl+Shift+Space
5. Selecting the first empty frame and Pasting the points from the first image cue with a right-click and select "Paste"
6. Saving the Cue and naming it.
7. repeating steps 1 thru 6 for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc additional frames needed.

Is this the only way to do this...using existing image cues with single image frames per cue?

Dude1-9CueAnimation.jpg
WI Cues and QuickTrace result.jpg
 
Last edited:
Igor, you were right, it was simpler to do using a timeline. But why not add the capability to QS so that 2 or more consecutive "Cues", each containing a single-frame image or multiple end-to-end frames and drag the combined selection to an empty Cue resulting in the consecutive Cues to be appended to each other, first Cue to last Cue?

Let me guess, "buy Beyond, it does that."
 
Hi, Lasermaster1977!
I'm not suggesting you buy Beyond. There is no such function there either.
I will convey your wishes to the developers.
In the meantime, in addition to the Timeline, you can also use the Frame Editor, sequentially uploading the necessary animations from files there.
 
I was being ever so slightly cynical on Beyond.

So, there seems to be a caveat to combining frame files into the Frame Editor. I tried doing this a few days ago. I had imported .ild files into QS Cues (which worked perfectly) but had no luck when trying to combine them using Frame Editor.

Am I correct in that the caveat to combining files using Frame Editor is that when importing .ild files into QS Cues, these Cues must first be saved as a native QS .qfrm Cue file? And that it is only QS file formats that can be combined using Frame Editor?

To give you a better understanding for what I'm doing, I'm converting early (1978-1986) laser binary image files (with and without RGB blanking terms) from their various, original Apple IIe binary formats, into an ILDA Format 5 binary file, then importing these .ild files into QS. And yes, I understand that Pangolin's official stance is that ILDA image file formats are not supported, but Pangolin still provides this import capability in QS. The imports work wonderfully once they are a QS Cue image.

Thanks Igor
 
Hi, Lasermaster1977!
I didn't encounter any problems with uploading ild files to the Frame Editor. Conversion to qs format was not needed
 
Hello Igor,

Thanks for pointing me toward the right direction for why it wasn't working for me.
What I found was the within the Edit/Animation UI, File > Open is only useful for loading an initial Frame into the Editor. Any and all subsequent Frames that are added using the Editor's Frame > Add command can only be loaded as an additional image file using the "File > Place" menu command.

Image files can be loaded to a QS empty Cue by:
1. right-click on an empty Cue and select "Import laser frame/Animation"
2. right-click on an empty Cue and select "Create > New Frame/Animation"

Image files can be loaded to a QS Cue that already has one or more Frames by:
1. right-click on existing QS Cue and select "Edit Frame/Animation"
2. from the Edit/Animation main menu select "File > Place" then use one of the Place options.

I'm sorry to suggest that possibly the PDF QS Manual was written with a minimalist approach, but I understand, words can be so expensive. ;)
 
Hi, Lasermaster1977!
We also have an understanding that the manual is not detailed enough and we are working on it to make it more detailed. Thank you for your feedback!
 
Thanks Igor, you guys must be slow but methodical. :)

This is just my opinion, but the 2017 PDF QS Manual is far more informative in comparison to what is currently offered on some of the Pangolin wiki website tutorials.
I have only watched the QS Tutorial on How to Use New Frame or Animation. It should be titled "Some ways to use New Frame or Animation". At best it was an overview from 10,000 feet that mostly focused on creating a new frame using the drawing tools. I definitely think having web-based tutorials is a great idea but for any given topic category if Pangolin's idea is to give "Quick Overview" version, it should also have more focused tutorial versions.

The new manual consists of links back to a wiki-webpage. What if you do not have an Internet connection? Please, include an independent PDF alternative and update your paying customers via email of new manual updates that are available for download.

Thank you for thanking me for my feedback.
 
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