Step 1: Prepare for the dynamics.

Follow the 5 steps as explained in the chapter 'My first dynamic show'. We start from here.

We assume you are using a photo booth or a tethered camera, attached to a hard drive to store the snapshots from the camera. The default folder is as installed: 'C:\Users\Public\Documents\APP\Dynamic Mosaic\BoothPics'. We assume that this is the correct folder. You now have to also set this folder location in the photo booth software, or the tethered camera interface. With e.g. Canon, Nikon and Olympus special applications need to be started and running to allow for tethered shooting. In some cases these software can run on the same system, or on a different system. When on different systems you need to use a common external hard drive. It's up to the technician to make the folder locations make fit. You need to test to check if the picture actually arrive in the designated folder. At the moment we have not tested if a server drive can be used for polling for the snapshots.

Step 2b: Activate the web cam

In case you don't use a photo booth or tethered camera you need to use the embedded web cam function to make snapshots and feed these to the mosaic.

Open the 'Camera' tab. Check if a camera is already available, e.g. the built-in laptop camera. If you want to use a different external web cam you need to plug this in and restart the Dynamic Mosaic application. The application can only detect a web cam at start, and not after having plugged in a new camera while running. If the camera has been selected, now also select the video size. Make sure the size is modest, e.g. between 640 and 1024 pixels. The best rule of thumb is 50% of the monitor size will result in acceptable quality pictures.

Activate the camera. In case you want to flip the signal (mirror effect), activate this option. Also set the desired snapshot frequency. When the 'Snapshot' option is not active the camera has no function, and could as well be turned off again. If you want you can test the snapshot function:

• Choose a low value of the snapshot frequency; e.g. every 1 minute (a value of 60 means: every 60 seconds).
• Activate the dynamics (press the 'Start Dynamics' button) and make the viewer tab active (or watch the already detached viewer on your second monitor).
• You should now see a snapshot flying in (after 1 minute of patience). If so, set the correct value of the frequency of snapshot taking, and stop the dynamics.

Step 3: Select the sources

In case you wish to only restrict the source files for the mosaics, you need to open the 'Sources' tab, and uncheck every source picture that should not be sued in the show. With installation comes also several source picture aspect ratios (4:3 and 16:9). You need to also check if the aspect ratio of each selected source file corresponds with the external monitor size. Deselect any source file that does not have the correct aspect ratio. In some cases you need to prepare the source files by resizing them to match with the aspect ratio of your external monitor (e.g. 1650 x 1050) or 825 x 525 in pixels size. There is no need to exactly follow the monitor sizes, as long as the aspect ratio of the source picture is correct.

The same should be done for the commercial pictures and video. Video is not easy to simply resize to the correct aspect ratio. In that case make sure the background colour is e.g. black or white to fill the spaces of the screen. This can be set in the 'Mosaic settings' window.

Step 4: Manage the colours

Each snapshot picture from an external source (booth, web cam, tethered cam) can be filtered to better fit with the colour requirements of the mosaic. First open the 'Colours' tab in the 'Admin' tab. Make sure you have an example of a snapshot available on your hard drive. Double-click on the miniature picture and navigate to such an example picture. Then tweak the colours and brightness, saturation and contrast to your liking. Please remember that the filtering is done in steps: first the BCS steps, then the RGB corrections. In some cases the colour is appearing again, even if you have set the saturation to gray scale. This is because the saturation is not entirely 100% set to gray scale. Some colour is still left. The example below shows a filtering to make all pictures gray scale with a slight increase of the brightness, e.g. to allow to be used in black and white source pictures.

Step 5: Save your settings as a project

When all is set and done you can now save your settings in a project file. This is then useful to restart after closing the application with exactly the same settings. Opening the project will however not activate the camera, and also not keep the choice of web cam in case multiple cams were used when saving the project. You need to remember this yourself.

To save the project, use the menu 'Project' 'Save project' and follow the instructions. All projects are stored in one common location. You cannot select the location of the project file yourself. This location is: 'C:\Users\Public\Documents\APP\Dynamic Mosaic\Projects'.