Importing Movies

Movie files are loaded into an image layer the same way images are, except that from the File, Import menu, you need to choose the Movies option instead of the Images option. The File dialog box that opens limits the files to AVI and MOV files.

Once loaded, the frames for the imported movie are shown in the Timeline, and if you press the Play button, the movie will play forward through the loaded frames. Loaded movies will start playing on the frame that is selected when the movie is loaded. For example, if the current frame is frame 20 and the movie clip runs from 30 frames, then the loaded movie will begin at frame 20 and end at frame 50.

Using the Sequencer panel in the Timeline palette, you can change the beginning frame of any loaded movie. More on the Sequencer panel is covered in Chapter 19, “Working with Sound.”

Exporting and Importing an Image Sequence

Movie formats like AVI and QuickTime are great for combining and compressing many frames of images together to make a complete animation, but animated images can also be exported using standard image formats including JPEG, BMP, Targa, and PNG. When an animation sequence is exported to one of these image formats, each frame is given a number that is added to the end of the name. So the first frame is exported as image001.jpg, the second frame is named image002.jpg, and so on.

There are benefits to exporting an animation as an image sequence. First, they are uncompressed, so none of the rendered image quality is lost. Second, the image files are easy to edit; and third, they can still be loaded back into Anime Studio.

To load an image sequence into Anime Studio, simply select the Scripts, Image, Import Image Sequence menu command. This accesses a script that lets you choose the images to load.