Mosaic

[Frank N]

I wanted to do the "Creating Photomosaics" tutorial by David Nagel. Following the tutorial I created a QuickTime file in SA in a size of 56 x 64 pixel out of the stack of pictures I have chosen. Then I downloaded the photomosaic plugin by David N., dropped it to the right place and so on. Then I have chosen this new preset from the list of presets. After getting the error message telling me that the original movie brush file can't be found, I loaded my movie file I've created. Then SA is always crashing. Originally the pictures I used for the QuickTime mov are sized 499 x 567 pixel. When I create a QuickTime mov in that size and load that as a movie brush it works! But always when I laod the small one, SA stops working. I generated that mov (56 x 64 pixel) a couple of times but it didn't change anything. If it helps I can send a crash report. Thanks in advance.

[Frank N]

After using a different movie compression (in the SA preferences) for the QuickTime file I want to create as a moviebrush it works.

But it remains the question why it didn't work before? Because all prior-versions had the same movie compressions. And from this prior-versions the big one (499 x 567 pixel) worked as well, and the small one (56 x 64 pixel) didn't.

[Synthetik]

One thing to be aware of is the difference between the preload and disk draw options for movie brushes. PreLoad means that the entire movie file is loaded uncompressed into ram when the preset is imported. So even if a particular movie file seems to take up a small memory footprint on your hard disc when it is compressed, that may not be the case when it is uncompressed and stored in ram during the preload process.

Disk Draw means that individual frames are loaded on the fly while you are painting. This is much less memory intensive but could slow things down for interactive drawing.

The movie brush code in Studio Artist 3.5 is not particularly graceful about dealing with running out of memory, so if you load a movie with a large number of frames and/or a larger frame size you can run out of memory and get a crash. Version 4 tries to be smarter and warns you if it thinks you will have a problem with preloading large memory footprint movie brush. It gives a warning and then automatically converts to diskdraw during the import process.

One thing you can do is to edit the factory movie brush preset you will be modifying with your own move and change the movie brush Load Status parameter in the Brush Source control panel from PreLoad to DiskDraw prior to importing your own custom movie file as the movie source brush. There's a similar control in the Movie Background Texture control panel as well.