The following controls are important to use with great care:

• From mosaic controls:
  • Colour engine
  • Flying tile size (manifolds)
  • Clear the mosaic (or not)
• From admin controls 'Animation':
  • Transparency
  • Revert flying path
• Type of input image

These are the basic choices you need to make before attempting to randomly change these parameters:

1. You mainly want to use a tethered camera, booth cam or web cam pictures

When this is your preferred interaction with the audience you should not activate to revert the flying path. The flying path will always start from a full page preview, then fly towards the mosaic. An initial mosaic needs to be made prior to starting the dynamics. The application will always try to match the new picture with the mosaic; and in some cases this will result in pictures having some kind of preferred landing spot in the mosaic. The reason for this landing spot is because the colour of the booth (etc) picture is best represented at that spot in the mosaic.
The mosaic creation will continue until the commercial starts, after which a new mosaic is created from the source picture of the checked source list. This setting will generally lead to a continuously realistic mosaic impression.
The mosaic matching engine will only affect the initial mosaic, and has no influence of the placement of the new snapshots. A nice effect could be to start with a full random picture (engine 'Full randomization') and then let the mosaic rebuild itself with new pictures from either the library or booth (etc) snapshots.
Transparent pictures can be used (line .PNG files). The options for transparency are fully used: 'No transparency' (so basically discarding the alpha channel of the .PNG file), or 'Transparency at start' (where the picture already is made transparent where it needs to be when shown full screen) or 'Transparency at the end' (where the final placement step is to make these parts transparent).

2. You want to fully use transparency and gradually build the source picture

With this preference setting you should first use a valid transparent picture (.PNG format) where the alpha channel is properly made. The transparency settings should be either 'at start' or 'at end'. When you want to build a source picture from an empty canvas you should also activate the option to 'Clear' the mosaic after creation (with the background colour). In this case the initial mosaic is fully wiped out and replaced by the background colour. The mosaic tiles however are still in it's memory.
The flying direction now depends on the tile sources:

• When the sources come from booth, cam etc: the flying path will always be flying into the mosaic, starting at large. The colour matching engine is not used for new snapshots, only for the initial mosaic. The landing spot will be selected based on the the best possible colour match with the source picture.
• As above, but now you have selected the 'Full randomizaton' colour engine. In this case the initial mosaic data is discarded and replaced by an internally managed index that has determined which tiles can be placed, and therefore avoiding transparent tiles. For example: a 12x16 mosaic requires 192 tiles, but 24 of these are 100% transparent, so these positions will be removed from the landing spot index list. The remaining locations are then randomized and build-up one by one. In some cases very small pieces of tiles are built-up and seem to almost disappear in the mosaic. All tiles will always fly into the mosaic.
• As the first option but now you want to use manifold tiles. In this case you cannot use a tethered cam, booth etc. Only pictures that are found in the current library folder are used. There is no option to use new snapshots in the current version. After creating the initial mosaic a fully colour matching mosaic is made. If the option to 'Clear' the canvas as well, also the start of the dynamic mosaic is an empty screen (only background colour). When the dynamics is started the application will rebuild the initial mosaic in 2x2, 3x3 etc tile combinations. Each manifold is loaded from the existing files in the library folder. After completing the mosaic a commercial is forced to start after which the mosaic creation etc is started with the next source picture. In case new pictures are added to the library folder these will be used when a new initial mosaic is created. All tiles will always fly into the mosaic.
• As the first option, but you have chosen to revert the flying path. In this case you should not activate the 'Clear' option because the flying path is now from small to full screen (flying out). When selecting 'Clear' you basically start with an empty screen where small pictures fly out but have no apparent relation with the mosaic. Also the manifolds have not meaning because it will not be active when the 'Clear' option is unselected. Basically, when the 'Clear' is unchecked the manifolds are always deactivated.

Some rules of thumb

• Manifolds are only active when the 'Clear' option is active. Otherwise 1x1 is active and the slection box is grayed out.
• Reverting the flying path will not actively listen to tethered cams etc. It will only show tiles from the existing mosaic.
• The 'Full randomization' engine allows for rebuilding the mosaic from randomly selected pictures. This option will keep listening to new snapshots coming in and will use these when they are found. The 'Clear' and manifold features are fully applicable.
• When snapshots must actively be included only the flying in path can be used (discarding the revert option).
• When the 'Revert flying path' option is active no new snapshots are added to the mosaic.
• Transparency can always be used, building from a clear canvas, or rebuidling a fully visible initial mosaic with new snapshots. The transparency can be set to at start or at end in that case.
• When no transparent source files are use it's better to inactivate transparency to avoid unnecessary bitmap and pixels calculations.

Scenario builder

This is an experimental feature to quickly create the correct flying, snapshot and transparency settings. The settings of these can sometimes be confusing to cater for the several options. The scenario builder is not foolproof, you always need to check if the show is really as you want it to be.

The scenario builder has 6 different controls to set. Some controls are dependent, so if one is set, another may get locked with a preset selection. These are the different settings for each scenario aspect.

• Type of initial mosaic: Start with visible mosaic or Start with background colour. This setting will also determine which kind of flying moment is possible. When starting with a background colour the tile movement will always be flying in.
• Type of movement: Flying in (getting smaller) or Flying out (getting bigger).
• Colour engine initial mosaic : Random placement, Optimized distribution, Force all tiles or Fully randomized. These are the same colour matching engines as in the normal mosaic settings. Only the 'Full randomization' has a special effect when combined with starting with a background colour and using transparency.
• Snapshot interaction: Read snapshots when offered or Ignore new snapshots. When new snapshots are found the application will act as normal: make a copy (or not, when indicated as such), add the new snapshot to the library folder, and add the new file to the list of images, indicating with an 'x' that is was a snapshot.
• Post completion action: Force commercial trigger or Wait until commercial is triggered. In all cases the commercial timer is used to show a new commercial, and therefore replacing the mosaic with a mosaic of the next source picture. When a commercial is forced the commercial timer is overruled. If you want to make sure the mosaic is completed you also need to make sure the commercial timer is set to a sufficiently long period to not accidentally clear the building up mosaic and start all over again.
• Transparency: Do not cut out transparent parts, Apply transparency at start or Apply transparency at end. The transparency is only available when an alpha-channel is found in the source picture.

The settings of the scenario builder will not interact with the other settings of the GUI, but only between each other (like explained above). When you are satisfied with the settings, you must use the 'Create scenario' button to synchronise the builder settings with the other (normal) GUI settings, and save these as a normal project file. Only when you have saved as a project file all settings between the builder and the rest is synced. You can now use the project files for easy retrieval of the builder settings.

When you save the scenario also the current selections (checkboxes) of the source and commercial files are stored. In case you are opening and loading an existing project you should ensure that also the pictures are available. It will not keep the selections by name, only by sequence in the overview. So, adding new pictures after having saved a project might lead to different values from the project saved settings!