How does it work?

Textaizer and the 'plug-in' Videaizer work together. The Videaizer decomposes the source video clip ('footage') into individual pictures. Textaizer then takes each of these pictures to create a text art picture. Each resulting bitmap is then used to build the video clip from these new pictures. The input video clip can be of multiple kind, and except for High Density (HD) footage, almost every codec can be used, as long as the codec is available in the windows system.

Note: users who have VLC player installed do NOT necessarily have the DivX, Xvid, H.264 etc. codes on their systems. They must be installed separately and need to be present in the windows system directory.

The videaizer interface

The Videaizer has an extended interface. The area for the other functions is now fully taken for the video controls, the video windows and the codecs. On the right still the familiar control tabs are found. On the top-right a miniature picture is seen from the video source. This picture is one of the frames of the source video, and can be used to test the effect on the settings.

Video sources

The video source is selected via the main menu: 'Videaizer' 'Open source movie'. This movie is shown in the left video window. When a movie is available, the controls of the video will work. The output video after being 'videaized' is seen in the right video window. The size of the output video is equal to the size of the input.

Workflow: Player Control

Each video window has its own player control. There are buttons for (left to right): play - pause - stop - 1 frame left - 1 frame right - 10 frames left - 10 frames right. The slider below the controls both indicate the current position in the movie; and as a quick way to move to a certain position in the movie. Simply grab the green indicator and drag the slider to the wanted position. The Position info follows the format 'hh:mm:ss,fraction of a second', the Frame indicator shows the current frame and the total amount of frames.

Work flow: Type of artistic output

There are two possible types of movie art: Text Mosaic and ASCII Art. Both are controlled with their respective controls are descibed here and here. Please assure that when the controls for the settings are selected because the Start button also changes function when a different art creator is selected. You need to click on the Video tab again to assign the Videaizer to the Start button.

Media info and settings

When a source movie has been opened, the resume of the movie is summarized here.

• The values for frame rate are copied to the spin box and already set to the right value (in the example above: 25 frames per second).
• Also the frame size is relevant, because the output movie is equal to the input movie size.
• The Begin and End frame is used to render only a portion of the full source. Here you can indicate the start en end values. Make sure you don't select values beyond the available number of frames. The default values are 0 and the last frame (in the example above: 333).

NOTE: If no source movie is loaded prior to starting the 'Videaizer', it will take the current still picture and use that for each frame. The size of the video is the same as the original size of the source picture. So be careful what you are doing... a large picture/video size may freeze your system. This feature is not well tested, and might contain some unexpected issues. If so, please contact APP Helmond.

Create and save a Videaized movie

First select the proper codec into which the movie needs to be transformed. A codec is the compressor of the movie sequence. Uncompressed movie takes several Gb, compressed can be a factor of 25 smaller. For example: one frame of 720x576 is 1.19 Mb uncompressed, and 25 frames per second equals almost 30 Mb/s, so one minute equals 1.8 GB. In contrast: a good quality DVD stream can be 0.9 Mb/s in size, so 100 Mb for 2 minutes. The choice of codec depends on the availability of the codec on the computer system. The available codecs are shown in the box (see picture below), the selected codec is indicated above this box.
Warning: the list of available codecs also include those only for playback, and not for recording. You have to manually find what the codec is capable of. There is no guideline for this (unfortunately).

When all is set, and the Start button shows the text 'Start Videaizing'. Press the Start button and watch the progress roll on. In case you wish to abort the creation (slow, not the right range), press the Cancel button. The resulting video file is now shown, but only what has been processed so far. This video is temporarily stored. To save the file, use the menu: 'Videaizer' 'Save videaized movie'.

FX data points

The Videaizer has a built-in special effects generator. This generator replaces the static settings of the Text Mosaic and ASCII Art settings. There are three types of dynamic effects. With each frame these settings can be changed:

 1,   0,  24,   0,  0
 2,  15,  38,  45, 10
 3,  45,  62,  90, 20
 4,  90, 126,  90, 30
 5, 135,  90, 180, 40
 6, 180,  36, 200, 30
 7, 235,  12, 270, 20
 8, 270,  24, 300, 10
 9, 350,  24, 180,  0

Videaizer uses the concept of Key frames: frames that have pre-defined values. The values between two key frames are interpolated. This ASCII file has the following structure:

• Each line has a series of data points for each key frame. The file contains a series of data sets (here: 9). At least two data sets are required for a proper effect. Each next lines provide the input data for each set. For better readability spaces can be used. Each data point must be separated by a comma. Each set must be defined by a set number, followed by '='. From left to right:
  <set no.> = <frame number> , <font size> , <angle> , <randomness>
• The frame number must start with 0. The last set of data points does not necessarily be equal to the available frames of the footage (or number of bitmaps). In case the number of frames of the last set is smaller than the length of the movie, this last set is used for the rest of the Videaizing.
• The font size must be larger than 4 
• One rotation is given from 0 to 360 degrees (positive value = clockwise rotating)
• Randomness must be in the range from 0 to 100 (percentage of the font size).

The effects file is opened via the menu: 'Videaizer' 'Load FX file'. This file must be an ASCII file of type ANSI. It is recommended to use the file extension 'txt' to easily edit this file in e.g. Notepad.
After loading the file, an echo of the data is shown in the table. This table cannot be edited (use the Notepad file-edit instead). 

Some tips for a proper FX handling:

• when a font is larger than the bitmap size (width or height), the font size is clipped to the maximum allowed.
• the effects between two data sets are linearly interpolated.
• to further rotate after 360 degrees, there are two options: 1. continue to increase the angle (e.g. to 720 deg for a second rotation) or 2. create one more set with angle 0 degrees and for the next frame. For example, to continue to rotate after set 3, an additional set 4 was defined:
      1 =   0, 40,   0, 0
      2 =  40, 40, 120, 0
      3 =  80, 40, 360, 0
      4 =  81, 40,   0, 0
      5 = 100, 40,  60, 0
  Please be aware that the Videaizer interpolates the values between two data sets. So from 360 to 60 (from set 3 to 5) would then result in an anti-clockwise sequence. If data set 4 would start with frame 82, an interpolated rotation value of 180 would result in frame 81. 
• be aware that not all fonts can be rotated: only True Type Fonts () and Open Type Fonts () can be rotated.