Digital Workshop

I have a presentation with above 25 pages that current uses a static image on a master page.

I need to be able to have a background video that plays behind all of the pages and loops when it is finished.

If I add a background video to the master page the video is restarted from the beginning each time a page is displayed whereas I want the background to continue.

Is their any way that this can be done in Opus Pro latest version?

Thanks

Nathan

Build the presentation on one Page with a MultiFrame that contains 25 Frames and covers the entire Page.

Each new topic, which would normally be on a new Page, will have to be placed within a new Frame. Use Buttons to move forward and backward through the MultiFrame. I did something similar in a Pub where we had a moving map looped in the background, with different text and voice over narrations which covered many topics.

I am not recommending this for a number of resource reasons, BUT it maybe the only way to achieve a video background throughout the Pub. When you load up a MultiFrame with lots of Frames that contain large Video Objects, Images, Slideshows, Audio, and Text Objects, it takes awhile to load that Page.

Someone with Script experience might be able to determine the exact location within the Video at the end of each Page, then reStart the Video in that location when the next Page is needed. I believe there would be a slight stutter/pause when this happens, but it may be within an acceptable limit.

The alternative is to use windows. Have the video running in the main publication and use an on-show to launch a new window from a different chapter. If you set the background to transparent in the new windows, the content will appear over the top of the video in the background.

If necessary, by using global variables, you can also control the video.

I'd check that it will run on you target machines though, as multiple windows and transparency might cause directX or Vista issues.

Mack

Mack --

What a GREAT solution. Much better than the one I used. Thanks for sharing this.

I did notice I had to set both the Chapter 2 Properties AND the Pages in Chapter 2 to Transparent. At first I just made the Pages Background's transparent, and it didn't work right. I went into Chapter 2 Window Tab and found the "Transparent Background" feature under "Display in new Window." As soon as I also selected that, it works just the way you described. The Looping of the background video is perfectly smooth. You can even use "Always On Top" for the video. WOW!!!! Thanks again!!!!

You are right it is a good solution but .....

I have spoken to Mach this morning because their seems to be a problem when you place text on the new page. The text has jaggys and does not anti-alias correctly which is a real shame. Also transitions and other effects dont seem to work too well irrespective of the way you set the video to be displayed.

The way you can get round the text problem is to give the text a solid background colour and then the text displays correctly but the video wont show through the solid background.

Nathan

Nearly perfect but...

Alpha transparency won't work causing blocking on text . I didn't see this much on my example because my screen resolution is high but up close it does occur.

I've had a play with this and there is no work around - you need the alpha blending if you are using text.

I also played with Fred's idea about setting the position at the start of the each page. It works remarkable well, but there is the normal page change issue although the video appears to play continuously. Whether this is the case with older machine or large videos remains to be tested.

Mack

If you need the anti-aliasing and alpha effects to work, the only way is going to be putting everything on one page and setting the video to be rendererd.

Using multiple windows is clever, but it only draws each pixel on or off, so anti-aliasing won't work. It also really hurts the performance, so forget transitions and animations.

Interesting concepts -- keep in mind you will need a lot of horsepower to drive these kind of projects.

Paul