Basic Operation

The basic compose operation is comprised of dragging and dropping objects (blloon, cast, prop, SFX, and user) from Asset Bin onto COMPOSE stage, adjusting their variables (position, size, color etc.), and set an in and an out frame for each object's on screen duration, then press Record button to register the edit. At this point, a letter 'E' will be flashing above the correspondent thumbnail in the Timeline indicating that scene has been edited. Note: This 'E' indicator is only applied to edited scene(s) of the current timeline session. The 'E' will not show up next time when you reload this same movie from SAVE into the timeline (though the edit is and will be preserved in your saved movie).

You can use the 3 video buttons (play/pause, next frame, previous frame) or the Frame Slider (scrubber) to navigate and playback the scene anytime during composition.

Object Selection

In order to manipulate your on stage object(s) for composition, you must have it selected first. A selected object is framed by a bounding box. By default when an object is first dropped on the stage, it is selected. To "manually" select or deselect object(s), do as follow:

To select a single object: simply click on an on stage object and a bounding box will appear around the object indicating the object is selected.

To select multiple objects: hold down 'Shift' key while click on desired objects one by one. With the first object selected in a bounding box, each of subsequent selections will bear a grey line box around it indicating it's being selected with the group.

To deselect object(s): simply click on any unoccupied space within the Compose Window.

Note: Once you have multiple objects selected, you can perform all (but "Layer") bounding box controls on them in unison. That is: you can move, tilt, flip, resize, change color/alpha and/or delete these objects in unison so long as they stay together and selected. The "Delete" key also works on multiple objects selection.

Switching scenes in Compose Window
To switch to another scene in Compose window you can do either of the following: a) click to select the thumbnail of another scene in the Timeline, or b) simply drag the thumbnail of another scene from Timeline and drop it into Compose window.

Note: Please be aware that the new selected or dropped-in scene will replace the current on stage scene immediately. So if you want to save your current on-stage composition, make sure you record it to the timeline BEFORE you switch to another scene. Otherwise your current composition will be lost.

Change back to Timeline Editing mode
To switch back to Timeline Editing from SC mode, you simply click on the rollover "EDIT TIMELINE" button on the top of Compose Window (the arrow next to the title 'COMPOSE') to go back. Note: you have to be in TE mode in order to access Timeline Assets ('story' and BG clips).