Copyright: Copyright (c) 1992 by Daniel S. Baker


Contents
MiniMovie 1.5

MiniMovie is a utility which displays DIB files that contain multiple bitmap images. The images are shown one after the other to produce a simple form of animation. The µLathe application generates DIB files (called sequences) that can be played with MiniMovie.

Movies

Running MiniMovie

Options

Notes

A $15 dontation for the use of MiniMovie will be graciously accepted if this product is of use to you. Such a donation will entitle you to an authorized diskette version, free upgrades, and the complete C-language source code. Send check or money order to the author at the address below.

Daniel S. Baker

5993 Slippery Rock Drive

Columbus, Ohio 43229

Feel free to contact me at CompuServe:

71551,2300


DIB

Device Independent Bitmap, a Windows graphic format.


Movies

To create your own movie, use a program which supports the .BMP file type (Paintbrush, for example) to create several bitmaps, each one slightly different than the one before it. Each bitmap represents one frame of your miniature movie.

Use the /B option of the COPY command to combine several BMP files into a single DIB file. For example, if you have 4 bitmaps named BITMAP1.BMP, BITMAP2.BMP, BITMAP3.BMP and BITMAP4.BMP, and wish to create ANIMATE.DIB, perform these steps:

COPY BITMAP1.BMP ANIMATE.DIB

COPY /B BITMAP2.BMP ANIMATE.DIB

COPY /B BITMAP3.BMP ANIMATE.DIB

COPY /B BITMAP4.BMP ANIMATE.DIB


Running MiniMovie

MiniMovie can accept an optional command-line parameter. If given, the parameter must be the full path and file name of a DIB file.

If no parameter is supplied, the first thing you will see is a dialog box that will allow you to select and load a DIB. In this dialog, you can also change some parameters which affect the way the animation is played.


Options

To change the rate at which frames are displayed, enter a numeric value into the "Delay" edit field. A value of zero means that the frames should be displayed as quickly as possible; higher values are interpreted as the number of milliseconds that should elapse between the display of successive frames.

If the "Load frames" option is checked, all the frames in the movie will be loaded into memory for optimum performance. This may not be possible if the DIB contains a large number of frames, or if it consists of large bitmaps. If this option is not selected, each frame will be loaded from the disk as needed.


Notes

Once the last frame of a movie is displayed, the movie is repeated from the first frame.

To pause a movie, click the mouse inside the MiniMovie window. To resume, click the mouse in the MiniMovie window again.

The MiniMovie window's size is determined by the size of the first frame. The bitmaps of sucessive frames may be larger or smaller, but the size of the window remains fixed.

MiniMovie does NOT support OS/2 format BMP files. Only DIB files that contain bitmaps which adhere to the Microsoft Windows 3.0 BMP file format specifications are supported.