Timeline Assets

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Anatomy of Clip (as Background)

Timeline assets are composition materials to be used at the timeline level for building of a movie. They are used to make up the basic building blocks of a movie, the "scenes". These assets can be movie clips or still pictures (of compatible media) that are accessible from Timeline Asset Bin in Timeline Editing (TE) mode. When you drop a timeline asset (represented by respective thumbnails) in the Timeline strip it makes up a "scene" for your movie. Or more precisely, in Comixware's case, it lays the foundation of a "scene" for your movie. Upon this foundation (or background layer) additional elements can be added to make a more elaborated scene in Scene Composition (SC) mode. So conceptually all timeline assets are "backgrounds" that serve as the "canvas" for scene elements to compose upon. That's why we also call timeline assets "backgrounds" or "BG clips".

There are two types of background clips (timeline assets) in terms of presentation nature: static and animated.

Static BG Clip

These are literarily "backgrounds" of still picture. They can be image files in any of the following formats: JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, or SWF. For instance, a photo from your digital camera is considered a "static" background. When a static background is dropped in the timeline, by default, it creates a one second "scene" of 12 frames long for the movie. This default length of a scene can be changed later in Scene Composition (SC) mode by Scene Length control. So, because of its "time" attribution, conceptually everything at the timeline level is considered a "movie clip" even it is made of a still picture.

Animated BG Clip

These are "background clips" made of animated or moving pictures. They can be movie files in any of the following formats: SWF (Flash), QuickTime, AVI, or MPEG. These clips can be with or without soundtrack. Like static backgrounds, the length of these clips can be customized in Scene Composition (SC) mode by Scene Length control.

Note: A movie clip is called a 'clip' when it's resided in the asset bin, but it's called a 'scene' once it's placed in the timeline. The same distinction should be made for movie in the Preview window. If it's dropped in from asset bin it's called a 'clip'. But if it's incited from the timeline it is called a 'scene'.