Mazaika-Animation Help for Mac

Mazaika-Animation for MacOS  —  Preferences

Preferences

Output Video FPS (Frames per Second) - Select FPS for the output video file.

Picture Size for Large Flying Layers (Pixels) - This is the size for pictures inserted in layers that fly at the foreground, shown "close" to the viewer and visually large.

Picture Size for Small Flying Layers (Pixels) - This is the size for pictures inserted into flying layers when they are flying at a distance and seem "small".

Note 1: Usually, higher picture resolution gives you better quality but poorer performance. Fortunately, normally you do not need to set picture sizes too large because they are pictures for flying (meaning "moving") layers only, and it is tough to see the smallest details of moving objects. So, you can quite safely select 300 or 400 pixels even if you intend to export Full HD video. Do not worry about large still images! When the program zooms, pans, and stops over enlarged still mosaic cells, the program shows the original image instead of smaller stored in-memory pictures.

Note 2: The program uses your original images to generate smaller-sized pictures stored in memory and to show it enlarged when showing zoomed-in cells. This means the program should have access to the original images you have used in Mazaika to make and render the mosaic project. Please do not remove or delete the original images after the Mazaika project was saved. If these images were located on any kind of external drive, do not unmount that drive while you work with Mazaika-Animation.

Note 3: Depending on the number of cells in your mosaic and size and format of the pictures that were used as tiles, it may take some time to open the Mazaika-Project. While the project is opening, you may work with Mazaika-Animation in "Draft Preview" mode. That means the program shows layers in low resolution only. Wait until the program prepares layer pictures to see the high-resolution animation and be able to export it into a movie file.

Distance to Small Layers (0 - 90) - It is a distance from the "camera" when Large Flying Layers are replaced with Small Flying Layers.

Sometimes, you may see how large, nice, and sharp pictures, when flying into mosaic, instantly get blurred. In this case, you need to increase this parameter from default 20 to 40 or 50.

Blend With Blurred/Sampled Main Image - When blending correction is enabled, the program blends small tile images with underlaid parts of the main image. By default, the program uses the image in real size that may give sharp visible edges on corrected layer images. If needed, you may try to hide them by blurring the original image before blending. Enable this option to do that.

Preserve Transparency when Blending - When blending correction is enabled, the program blends small tile images with underlaid parts of the main image. If small images are PNG files with transparency, you may preserve the transparent background by selecting this option. Otherwise, parts of the main image will be blended over the whole tile area, disregarding transparency.

At Project Opening Wait For Large Layers Loading - If you check this option, the program will not allow you to do anything until all layer images are prepared.

Multicore Processor Usage - Modern computers usually have more than one processor core. Here, you can set the number of cores that the program may use simultaneously for parallel processing and multithreading.

Reset All Settings To Defaults... - This will reset all program parameters to their factory setting. It will ask for confirmation before resetting.

Close - Close this Preferences panel.