Flash Output Settings (Pano2VR)
From Garden Gnome Software
Pano2VR gives you the added ability to convert panoramic images into Flash movies. Click here to see an example.
Click here to watch a tutorial on the basic settings for outputting a Flash movie.
And to watch a more advanced tutorial for outputting a Flash movie, Click here.
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Settings Tab
Tile Settings
Cube Face Size: The size of a cube face, measured in pixels (height x width). Pano2VR will calculate the best output cube face size based on the original image. However, you can always change this value to what you like.
- If, for example, you have an image that is 6000 pixels wide, each cube face will have a value of 1500 pixels (6000/4). To help output a smaller file size, however, you can lower the cube face size. For instance, a 6000 pixel wide image could be reduced to a 750 cube face size (6000/8).
- Optimal: Pano2VR will calculate the best output cube face size based on the default view (FoV) and the window size.
Image Quality: The overall quality of the image as defined in JPEG images. 90% is the default value, lowering the value below 90 will decrease the quality of the outputted image.
Tile Quality: Here you can set the image quality of the individual cube faces plus the preview image. For example, the zenith and nadir images could be lowered further if their information is not critical.
Sub Tiles: Sub Tiles allows you to choose the amount of tiles for each cube face. These determine how the image is downloaded. A setting of 1, the default, means that the cube face will download all at once and not progressively. A setting of 3, however, will allow for a progressive download of the cube faces and perhaps allowing for a faster download.
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Display
Window Size: AAdjust the width and height of the movie window.
Frame Rate: Adjust the frame rate of the movie.
- TIP: A smaller frame rate can reduce the processing needed on the clients machine. This can be helpful if you have several panoramas on one page.
Render Quality: Adjusting the render quality slider determines the amount of distortion (or waves):
- Lesser quality (low) = more distortion but a faster speed;
- Higher quality (high) = less distortion but a slower speed
- TIP: If your panorama window is small, start with a quality of 7 and disable decrease quality while moving.
- NOTE: This quality setting does not affect the overall file size.
Decrease quality while moving: To increase the response to movements the quality is reduced while moving the panorama. This optimization can produce a popping effect on some content so if you don't like this effect or you are already using a low quality setting you should disable this option.
Change stage quality: Keep this option selected if the panoramic image does not include elements on the flash stage (i.e. vector based controller, your own loading bar, etc.). When this option is not selected it helps to eliminate the jagged lines that appear with elements in the image during movement.
Change bitmap filtering: Same as above but has an effect only on the panorama and not the whole stage.
Scaling: Scaling resizes the window in which the movie will play. Here you can choose how the panorama will be resized when its window's proportions change.
- None: No scaling will occur when the size of the window is changed and the background will be visible when it is larger than the movie.
- With Window: The panorama will maintain its aspect ratio regardless of the window size.
- No Border: The movie will maintain its original resolution but it is scaled up so that no border or background is visible. This setting can improve speed while lowering the resolution.
- Exact Fit: The movie will scale to the window's proportions causing the panorama to distort and the aspect ratio is not locked to the original values.
FoV Mode: This setting ensures that image boundaries stay true to the image's window or scaling option. When the window size is changed, the image is scaled accordingly.
- Vertical: When the image is scaled or window resized, the vertical field of view will stay true.
- Horizontal: Choose this option to ensure the horizontal field of view is most important and is always visible when scaling the image.
- Diagonal: If the diagonal of the image is most important and should stay within the image's frame, choose this option.
- Max: When this option is chosen, whichever dimension is greatest (vertical, horizontal or diagonal) will stay within the field of view when the image is scaled.
Auto Rotate
Enable auto rotation: When enabled, the panorama will begin to move (rotate) when the window is opened/loaded or when triggered by the mouse.
Pan Speed: Pan speed refers to how fast the movie will rotate from left to right (positive number) or right to left (negative number).
Delay: The time it takes for the panorama to begin to rotate (in seconds) again after it has been manually moved by the user.
Return to Horizon: Brings the movie's center perspective (horizon) back into view after it has been manually moved upwards or downwards. A value of 0 will equate to no return, and an increase in the value will return the image to the horizon at a quicker speed.
Start after fully loaded: Enable this option if you want the movie to start rotating only after it has been fully loaded. If left disabled, the movie will rotate while it is being downloaded.
Only in focus: When enabled, the panorama will only rotate when the mouse hovers over it.
Skin/Controller
Skin: Here you can choose either one of the pre-installed skins or choose one that you have created. The file extension used for the skins is .ggsk (stands for Garden Gnome Skin).
- Edit: Clicking this will bring you to the Skin Editor.
- File: Click here to choose a skin. It will direct you to the Garden Gnome Skins folder.
External Controller: When outputting to Flash 8, this option will be enabled. Here you can choose a controller for Flash 8. Further adjustments to the skin can be made in the Loading (Flash 8) tab that appears when Flash 8 is chosen as the output format in the Output section.
- Alpha: Choose the percentage of transparency of the controller.
- Anchor: Pick an area to secure the controller.
- Loading Tab: For Flash 8 you can make simple parameter changes to the loading text, loading bar, and loading image. You can also choose where to anchor the loading text and bar.
Output
Format: Choose to output to either Flash 8 or Flash 9.
Output File: Change the name of the file (if you wish) and choose where to save the outputted image. The default is to output the file in the same directory as the original image. If no change is made here, this is where you will find your outputted image.
- NOTE:
$nis a placeholder and will be replaced with the panorama's file name.
Visuals Tab
This tab was added in Pano2VR 3. Some options found here were/are originally located in the Settings Tab.
Transitions
Select Enable transitions to add transitions. You only have to enable this setting in the first Pano2VR project file within the series.
Transition Type:
- Cross Dissolve: This will fade out one panorama while fading in the next panorama.
- Dip to Color: This option will fade the first panorama to a chosen color then fade out to the next panorama.
Transition Time: This determines how long it takes to change from one panorama to the next including the transition effects.
Effects:
- Zoom in before: When a hotspot is clicked, the panorama will turn towards the hotspot and zoom in to its location before the transition. The amount it zooms in is determined by either the Zoomed FoV setting here in the Transitions section, or by the FoV set in the viewing parameters in each Pano2VR project file. The FoV can only zoom in to the greater number.
- Zoom out after: When the transition effect has completed, the next panorama will zoom out by the amount set in Zoomed FoV. However, you will experience problems if the FoV set in the viewing parameters are the same or lower than what is set in the Zoomed FoV here.
- Wait for transition: This holds the zoomed-in image until the transition effect is complete before zooming out.
Zoomed FoV: Set how far the transition effect zooms in and out.
Zoom Speed: this controls how fast the zoom in and out effect moves.
Advanced Settings Tab
Download/Preview
Type: Choose type of download preview image: Grayscale, Color or Sepia. When None is chosen, no preview image is used during download. Rather, only a background color is shown (color-picker).
Resolution: This represents how clear or blurry the download preview image will appear. This setting will effect the file size. The default setting is 1:4 which is a reasonably good setting. Setting it to 1:1, makes the downloading image as clear as the original image.
Download Order: The order of how the image is downloaded. Choose from:
- None: No particular download order is assigned.
- Default View: This view is defined in Viewing Parameters.
- Random: Parts of the image will download randomly.
Control
Sensitivity: Set the movie's sensitivity to the movement of the mouse. A low sensitivity will cause the panorama to move slowly with the mouse's movement.
Movement: Control of the panorama.
- Mass Simulation: When this is enabled, the panorama will slowly come to a stop - as if it has mass. If not enabled, it will stop immediately.
Flash Context Menu: Options for the right-click context menu within the Flash movie.
Mouse/Keyboard: Mouse and Keyboard controls
- Disable: Select to disable interactivity with the movie via the mouse and keyboard.
- Invert control: Select this to invert the mouse control. When inverted, dragging the movie with the mouse will drag the panorama in the same direction as the mouse. Also, to move the panorama, the user must click and drag (like Google Street View)
Mouse Wheel: Mouse wheel controls
- Disable: Disable interactivity with the movie via the mouse wheel.
- Invert: Invert the interactivity of the mouse wheel. Scrolling down will zoom the movie out (instead of zooming in)
Mouse Cursor: Mouse cursor controls
- Show own movement cursor & Show own default cursor: When both of these options are enabled, the mouse pointer will turn into a bull's eye and directional arrows when the panorama moves. When Show own default cursor is disabled, the system's default cursor will replace the bull's eye.
Local Security: When this is enabled, Flash will be able to communicate with another website, but will deny Flash's access to the local disk. When disabled, Flash can only access the local disk and will not have access to a network.
Custom Cursor Image: Import your custom made cursor here. Check out information on cursors.
Context Menu
The following options are for the right-click context menu.
Add 'Fullscreen' item: Select this to add a Fullscreen option to the right-click context menu.
Hide 'About Pano2VR': Select this option to hide the About Pano2VR menu option in the right-click context menu.
- NOTE: This option is only available when the software is licensed with a company license.
Link Text: Enter text that will appear in the right-click context menu.
URL: Enter the URL that is associated with the text from above.
- NOTE: This option (Link Text+URL) is only available when the software is licensed with a company license.
Hotspot Text Box
Size: Set the size of the text for the hotspot.
- Auto: Select this to have the text automatically fitted within the text box.
Text: Choose the text color.
Background: Choose Visible to show the background of the text box and choose a color for the background. When Visible is not checked, no background will be seen.
Border: Choose Visible to show the border of the text box and choose a color for the border. When Visible is not checked no border will be seen.
- TIP: If you do not want to have the boxes visible at all - only the text - be sure to deselect Visible from both Background and Border.
Locks
Enable domain lock: Enable this option when you wish to secure your panorama only to the specified domains.
- The string of text you enter here is compared with the reported file location from the server. The Flash player looks at the string and if the domain contains part or all of the string then the file is allowed. The latter part of domain is checked so the .com or .co.uk will also be checked.
- Examples:
- mydomain.com is entered in the domain lock:
- mydomain.com = allowed
- www.mydomain.com = allowed
- www.mydomain.com is entered in the domain lock:
- mydomain.com = not allowed
- www.mydomain.com = allowed
- When entering multiple domains in the lock you can separate them by a space, a comer or a semicolon.
- Message: Insert a message that appears if the pano is displayed in a domain other than what is listed in Domain. You may also use html text formatting to change color and size etc.
Enable expire date: Here you can add an expiration date of the visibility of the pano.
- Last Day: Choose an end or expiration date.
- Date Message: Insert a message that will appear when a user tries to access the pano after the expiration date.
Multiresolution Tab
This tab was added in Pano2VR 3.
Basic Settings
Enabled: Select to enable multiresolution output. When selected, the cube face size in the Settings tab is ignored in favor to what is set in the Levels section. The Image Quality and Tile Quality settings will affect the sub tiles generated here.
- NOTE: Allow network access needs to be deselected when testing locally.
Level Tile Size: This determines the size of the sub tiles in pixels.
- TIP: For best results use settings between 250 to a 1000px.
Format: Choose the image format.
- Cubic
- Equirect – This option is only available when using an Equirectangular input image.
- NOTE: Flash best handles the Cubic format, giving optimum performance.
Filename: This determines the file location and naming convention of the generated sub tiles. You may change the name to suit your project, although the placeholders must be used so Pano2VR knows which tiles to use.
Generate Files: This option is selected by default to generate the multiresolution files. Once multiresolution is set up, you can deselect this option to keep Pano2VR from generating the tiles each time the project is outputted.
Advanced Settings
Overlap: Keep selected to have the tiles overlap by one pixel to avoid visible seams in the image. If using tiles from a source other than Pano2VR, this option may need to be deselected for correct tile alignment.
Raw Image Memory: Set how much memory will be used by the host computer for downloading tiles. Leave at default if the host computer has limited memory.
Bitmap Memory: This sets how much memory will be used by the host computer to store the decoded bitmap tiles. Leave at default if the host computer has limited memory.
Switch Bias: Changing this setting will determine at which zoom levels the tiles will change. The higher the number, the sooner the tiles will change. If this is set too high it will require much more processing (downloading and decoding) for the host computer. A good compromise setting is between 0.4 and 0.5.
This all works by comparing screen and image pixels:
- A negative setting will change the tiles when there are 4 image pixels to 1 screen pixel:
- Bias = -1
- Zooming in this will cause the visible tiles to change just before there are 4 image pixels to 1 screen pixel. Zooming out, the tile will change just before there are 2 image pixels to 1 screen pixel.
- A high bias number will change the tiles sooner and will produce aliasing, and will increase processing load:
- Bias = 1
- Zooming in will cause the visible tiles to change just before there is 1 image pixel to 1 screen pixel. Zooming out will change the tiles just before there is 0.5 image pixel to 1 screen pixel.
- Bias = 0
- Zooming in this will cause the visible tiles to change just before there is 1 image pixel to 2 screen pixels. Zooming out will change the tiles just before there is 1 image pixel to 1 screen pixel.
Download Queue Size: This determines how many tiles are downloaded from the server at one time. Leave at default (20 tiles) for optimum performance.
Decode Queue Size: This determines how many tiles are decoded to bitmap at a time. Changing this setting may affect the performance of the host computer. Tile size affects this setting. If the host computer is stuttering when trying to show the tiles, try increasing the queue size if the tiles are small; or trying lowering if the tiles are large. Generally, the default should work well for most projects.
Levels
When you enable multiresolution, Pano2VR automatically sets three levels. The division of the levels is determined by the settings in the Pano2VR settings/preferences. They can be divided either by 4 or divide by Pi.
You can add more levels manually by choosing the Add. The pixel size can also be channged. To remove levels just click the red X to the right of the level you wish to remove.
Embed: Tick this box to determine which tile levels will be embedded in the swf file.
Load at Startup: This determines which level will be used when the player is first opened.
Decode at Startup: This determines which level will be decoded when the player is first opened.
- TIP: If making gigapixel panoramas set you Memory Hint in Pano2VR settings to at least half of your computers RAM, this will speed up the process.
The default is 300MB, if you have 8GB of RAM, set it to 4000MB.
The HTML Tab
Use this tab to make a customizable HTML page to add to your website that includes not only your panoramic movie but also audio. The video below shows you how:
Information on the coding language used to create the HTML template can be found here.
To be able to edit the HTML template parameters, select Enable HTML File.
Externalize: Depending on which you enable, this will export either the separate panorama images or the skin's data and images. This is helpful for those who want more control over your images and/or the skin within a database.
- NOTE: Currently, The preview image (selected in Advanced Settings) will not load when using externalized images.
Template: Here you can choose a pre-loaded template (fullscreen.ggt or normal.ggt). The normal template will give you the ability to add a table that shows the user data; whereas the fullscreen template will not.
Template Parameters
Text, Background Colors: Choose the color of your text and your page background.
Show Userdata Table: Choose to show the userdata table or not.
Table Bordoer, Table Text, Table Background Colors: Use these color pickers to customize your table.
Embed Sound File: Choose "Open" to locate and choose your MP3 of choice.
Sound Title: The title of your audio (MP3) goes here.
Panorama Video File: info coming soon
Enable JavaScript Interface: info coming soon
Template Output
Format: Choose between extensions, .html and .htm.
Output File: If you wish, change the name of the file and choose where to save the outputted HTML file. The default is to output the file in the same directory as the original image. If no change is made here, this is where you will find your outputted image.
- NOTE:
$nwill be replaced with the name of your original image.