To bring up AnimPlayers preferences dialog choose Edit / Preferences from the main- menu or press [Altl]+[P].
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The
upper half of the DisPlay tab contain setting for playback behavior.
High priority
playback |
During playback AnimPlayer’s process priority will be set to high, which most often results in smoother playback if other applications are consuming a lot of processor time in the background, i.e. rendering. It's recommended to use this feature. |
Auto load into cache |
Loads the selected image sequence automatically into the cache. |
Continuous UI update ... |
Updates the user interface (UI) for every frame (i.e. timecode, seekbar, filename). Since updating the UI can be time consuming, playback speed may decrease while playback high resolution footage. Please turn this option off for maximum playback performance. The UI will still be updated but only after every 10th frame or so. |
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 At
the bottom of the DisPlay tab you can configure AnimPlayers internal the Display
Colorspace. Depending
on the current selection (YUV 4:2:2, RGB
16 bit or RGB 32 bit) different sub settings appear on the right side.
Because many different graphic cards / chip sets use different driver revisions, we can only give you guidelines on how to set up AnimPlayer’s colorspace to get the best playback results. |
In general it seems that AMD/ATI chip sets have better hardware acceleration
for YUV colorspace than nVIDIA. Intel onboard chip sets seems not to support YUV at all. Hardware acceleration in RGB 16
and RGB 32 colorspace is available for all manufactures.
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You can also change the colorspace on the fly at the bottom right of the Infobar. This will discard your current cache, so a reload is required. |
If your current graphics configuration doesn't support YUV, the corresponding menu item will not be visible. A graphic card driver update together with the latest DirectX version installed may solve this problem. The downloads page provides links to these resources. |
Memory consumption for all colorspace settings:
- Byte Per Pixel /
- image with dimensions of 1280 x 720 pixel in Mega Byte.
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| 2 Bytes / 1.8 MB |
1 Byte / 0.9 MB |
3 Byte / 2.7 MB |
| 2 Bytes / 1.8 MB |
1 Byte / 0.9 MB |
3 Byte / 2.7 MB |
| 4 Bytes / 3.5 MB |
1 Byte / 0.9 MB |
4 Byte / 3.5 MB |
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YUV 4:2:2 colorspace is used by
DigiBeta, most hard disk recorders and video codecs. Choose this
setting to get the best simulation results if you plan to record
your finals on this kind of equipment.
If using YUV please make sure that your systems Color
quality setting
is set to Highest (32bit).
Playback speed can decrease on high image resolutions,
TV-Field simulation or real time correction of non square pixel aspect
ratios. If that happens to you, please try to switch to RGB 16 or RGB 32 colorspace
for smoothest playback results.
Options. AnimPlayer tries to use the fastest available techniques for optimal playback speed. Unfortunately some graphic cards and / or drivers
don't support YUV color space very well. If you have difficulties while using YUV mode please consider these options: |
Fast JPG loading |
Default and recommended! Enables highest performance while loading JPEG images. Turn this only off if you have difficulties loading JPEG images. |
YUV fallback |
This forces AnimPlayer to use a different drawing method in YUV mode. Enable this only if you see a single colored (green) display area. We observed this issue with onboard Intel graphic chip sets running with Windows® Vista™. |
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If you have any trouble using YUV colorspace with AnimPlayer you should
switch to RGB 16 bit colorspace which has a low memory footprint with reasonable display quality.
A technique called dithering is used to reduce color banding and to improve visual image quality. Dithering only affects the loading time and not the playback performance itself.
Dither options.
Example images show dithering from grayscale down to black and
white to illustrate the options. |
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ordered |
Very fast with good results. Recommended for most cases.
Sometimes produces light regular patterns. |
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diffusion |
Takes more processing time during loading. Adds
a touch of film grain to the image which can be nicer then
the light patterns of the ordered algorithm. |
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Choose RGB 32 bit for critical footage with subtle gradients where hue or saturation shifts occur if using YUV 4:2:2 or RGB 16 colorspace. This mode provides the best possible display quality for playback but also has the highest memory foot print. It is for anyone doing photo realistic CG for feature film or who needs playback with effectively no
color compression at all.
However, if you plan to record your results for TV broadcasting we recommend playback in YUV 4:2:2 mode, because it displays color banding issues which may occur in the final VCR or DVD recording.
Note_1: An existing alpha channel will always be loaded without additional memory costs.
Note_2: AnimPlayer always provides RGB 32 bit display if not in playback mode and "Display original colors" is active. |
This tab contains settings for playback behavior
of the user interface if using fullscreen presentation mode [F4].
Menubar
Toolbar
Playbackbar
Statusbar
Infobar |
If checked the adequate user interface item will be displayed
when switching to fullscreen presentation mode [F4].
If the Menubar is hidden in Fullscreen
mode it always becomes visible when the mouse cursor moves to the very top of the screen. All other items can be shown
using the Menubar or the respective keyboard-shortcuts. |
Span across all monitors |
For multi-monitor configurations the display area in fullscreen presentation mode will be extended across all monitors of your desktop. This can be very useful if you are working with very wide image formats.
Please keep in mind that synchronized smooth playback is only possible for one monitor at the time. You can choose this monitor at the bottom of the Speed menu. |
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Configuration of the default settings of the OpenEXR file format.
Most of these settings are also available through the OpenEXR load dialog.
Default exposure
- Negative values under exposure the image
- Positive values over exposure the image
Default gamma
Gamma value for conversion to display. A value of 2.20 is recommended for OpenEXR.
Preferred rect
Worker threads
This option is only meaningful on multiprocessor machines. It controls how many threads (processors) should be used to load EXR images. More threads improves loading performance. Auto means that AnimPlayer creates as many loading threads as available processor kernels.
Z Buffer name
Sets the name of the Z Buffer channel. Unfortunately only RGBA channel are standardized in OpenEXR, so different applications may use a different name for the Z Buffer (depth) channel. Common presets are available in the drop down menu.
Invert Z Buffer
Inverts the Z Buffer channel. Again there is no standard how the depth channel is saved.
This setting inverts the Z Buffer in full floating point Z space.
Always show EXR load dialog
If enabled every time you load an EXR sequence a special OpenEXR dialog will be opened to adjust the related settings above.
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Configuration of the default settings of the Cineon / DPX file format.
Colorspace
- Logarithmic: Usually Cineon / DPX images are encoded in logarithmic colorspace.
- Linear: Fallback if the encoding seems to be linear, actually not recommended.
Film gamma
This is the gamma of your scanned analog film. A value of 0.6 is highly recommended.
Do not change it until you know what you are dealing with.
10 bit black and white point
Cineon / DPX files are stored with 10 bit color depth per channel which means these values range between 0 - 1023.
- Values below the black point are interpreted as under exposed and will be hard clipped to black.
- Values above the white point are interpreted as over exposed and will be soft clipped to white.
Display gamma
The gamma value of your display. 1.0 is highly recommended, even this may "logically" not be correct.
Load from file
"Black and white points" as well as "Display gamma" can be stored inside the Cineon / DPX file format. If checked AnimPlayer is looking for these values inside each Cineon / DPX file during the load process.
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Skin Theme
Here you can select your preferred user
interface theme. Currently four themes are available. Please go
to the Screenshots page
to see a preview of these themes.
If you choose the Default theme, the
current Windows® theme will be used. All help pages and examples
use the popular Aluminum theme. The BlackTV theme is used for the Fullscreen
presentation mode and the NexOS theme
looks similar the MacOS Aqua interface.
Preserve Windows Vista Aero Glass Desktop
Disables pixlated zoom (nearest neighbor interpolation).
This setting prevents Windows Vista from disabling Aero Glass Desktop effects.
Note: Under some Vista configurations the Aero Glass Desktop will be preserved
but the pixelated zoom is still enabled.
Use Windows® load dialog
If checked the standard Windows® open dialog will be used to select an image sequence.
- If only a single image file of a sequence is selected then the entire sequence will be loaded.
- If multiple image files are selected then only these selected images will be loaded.
Ignore background image
Don't load and draw the background image on startup.
This will also disable preview in load sequence dialog.
This option is for rare cases where users
experienced problems on startup or if you don't like a background image at all.
Ignore PNG file Gamma
Often PNG files have a gamma value stored as part of their meta data (i.e. PNG rendering from 3ds max).
By default AnimPlayer ignores this gamma value during loading which can improve loading speed by 50%.
If disabled a gamma correction according to that stored value will be applied when loading.
Reset all warnings
Most of AnimPlayer's warning dialogs have the option "Don't show this dialog again" which prevent these dialogs from popping up. Pressing the reset button will bring up all dialogs again.
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DisPlay
tab - playback settings