SI FAQ: Back-to-Back Clip Play

How do I play several clips back-to-back seamlessly?

Back-to-Back Clip Play You can set up a single Clip Playback object to play several clips back-to-back seamlessly without dropping frames.

In the Clip Playback object editor you

browse to or enter the first clip (and key) file name
press the Cue button to cue it up
enter another clip file name
press Append to add it to the list of cued clips
repeat as often as you'd like...
press the Play button, and all the clips play in order.

You can also append a clip to a list that's already playing by pressing the other Append button (next to the Play, Stop, Endloop buttons).

This is a really cool approach because it only requires a single codec to handle all the clips, leaving the other one free to play other clip elements. Note that if you want to do your own transitions or effects between the clips, then you have to use two Clip Playback objects.

Set Up a Series from an Action
To set up a series of clips in an Action, turn on animate mode and execute the above steps, creating Action Items and Keyframes for the "file name", "cue", "cue append", and "play" Clip Playback object parameters - that is, when you select the Action in the Timeline Editor, you'll see entries for those parameters in the Parameter List pane of the editor (the "cue file names" parameter lets you see a list of all clip files cued, but it's read-only, so you can't set this parameter to create a list). Action Items are executed top-to-bottom for each frame, so the order in the list is important.

But, if you're setting multiple file names (which is the whole point), you have to move the Timeline Thumb forward in time before setting each new file name in Animate Mode. Otherwise each file name keyframe you create would overwrite the previous one. In addition, you need to allow enough time for each cue or append to finish before setting the next file name. The amount of time this takes varies depending on what the system is doing, but one second should be a safe interval. Still, you need to experiment with this interval to be sure you leave yourself enough cushion - for example, see how short you can make it before running into problems.

To summarize, your timing will probably look something like this ( "x" = keyframe ):

                   0 sec     1 sec     2 sec     3 sec     4 sec...
                   |         |         |         |         |
Clip1 file name    x---------x---------x---------x
Clip1 cue          x
Clip1 cue append             x---------x---------x
Clip1 play                                                 x

The timing of appending to the list of playing clips works the same way, controlled by the "play append" parameter.

For lots of details about the Clip Playback parameters and operation, see the "Clip Playback" section of the "DekoCast 2D Objects" chapter of the RocketEngineAPI.pdf document.

last modified 10/20/2005

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