SwingTime FAQ

SwingTime is a simple application that allows you to enter several views of a panorama, enter the number of frames you want to tween to get to the desired point, and lets you output that pan as a sequence of frames.

Q: The application outputs duplicate frames. How do I make it not do that?

A: There has been some confusion as to how to make the application output tweened frames. Each entry in the viewpoint list is made up of 5 items. They are Pan Angle, Tilt Angle, Field of View Angle, Number of Frames, Direction of Pan.

The Number of Frames entry tells the application to output X number of frames from the previous point to the current one. So if you have 2 entries in your list:

12.0902, 23.0042, 22.3342, 1, 0

32.0652, 10.0000, 32.3342, 10, 0

The application would output 11 frames. 1 frame at the original viewpoint and 10 frames that would move to the second viewpoint.

In the list:

12.0902, 23.0042, 22.3342, 10, 0

32.0652, 10.0000, 32.3342, 10, 0

12.0902, 23.0042, 22.3342, 10, 1

The application would output 21 frames. 1 frame for the original viewpoint, 10 frames to the second viewpoint, 10 frames to the third viewpoint. The move would be a swing left then a swing right back to the start.

Why would the first move be only 1 frame and not 10? This is because the program looks at the first viewpoint as the start, there is no location to swing from. So, it captures one frame of the initial viewpoint automatically. On each line the frame count (10) represents the number of frames to output to get to that viewpoint from the previous viewpoint. There is no viewpoint before the first frame.

The last field is the direction field. 0 moves right to left, 1 moves left to right.

Q: What is new with version 2.02?

A: The major improvements are the list editor and a curve editor.

The curve editor allows you to put in ramp accelerations from point to point. The current implementation only supports 100 frames. If you go beyond that, the output will be erratic.