BoardMaster Help

If you are not using WAV or MIDI files you can assign the length of time that a panel is displayed by setting the "Total Display Time" in the Panel Timing Dialog box. You can access the Panel Timing Dialog by double clicking on a panel or by selecting a panel with the mouse and then selecting "Timing" - "Panel Timing and Sound" from the main menu. If your are using sound the time a panel is displayed will be dependent on the settings of your sound file.

Assigning Sound to a Panel

To add sound to a panel you need to attach a sound file to it. This is done in the "Image Sound" section of the Panel Timing and Sound dialog. You can access the Panel Timing Dialog by double clicking on a panel or by selecting a panel with the mouse and then selecting "Timing" - "Panel Timing and Sound" from the main menu. Begin by selecting the "Use Sound File" check box. Next, select the "File" button and browse your computer to find the sound file you want assigned to that panel. You can click on the Play button (Black Arrow) to play the sound file that you have selected. Note that the "Sound Time" values change as the sound file plays. This value is the time position in milliseconds or frames of what is being played in the sound file. This time position value is what will be used to determine what portion of the sound file is played when that panel is displayed. To set the sound time for this panel enter the time position, in milliseconds, in the "Sound Start Position" and "Sound End Position" edit boxes.

In the example below we will be playing from time 0 to 982 in the song.wav file. The start time must always be less then the end time. The end time cannot be larger than the maximum time of the sound file. Note that as you change values in these two edit boxes the "Total Display Time" value will be updated and will match. This guarantees that the time that the panel is displayed matches the length (time) of the sound file or the portion of it to be played. You can test your settings by selecting the "Start Test" button under the panel image on the dialog.

A handier way of setting the sound time is by using the "Sound Start Position" and "Sound End Position" buttons. Start playing the sound file from the beginning using the play button (Black Arrow). While the sound file is playing click the "Sound Start Position" button or "Sound Stop Position" button. The sound time position will automatically be captured and entered into the edit box for you.

Once you have created your first panel for the animatic, the "Guess Settings" button becomes important. For example, here we have created a panel and set the sound play time to play from 0 to 982 ms of the song.wav file.

We add another panel to the storyboard and go to set the "Panel Timing and Sound" for the second panel. We want the second panel to play from 982 ms to 2000 ms of the song.wav file. We select the "Use Sound File" checkbox and then press the "Guess Settings" button. The Storyboard software will automatically set the wav file for the second panel to song.wav and set the "Sound Start Position" to 982 ms, which matches the "Sound Stop Position" in the first panel.

This saves time and ensures that when you run your animatic the sound is continuous and clean between panels. Note that you can use as many sound files as you want in a StoryBoard project. The "Guess Settings" button is also import when editing your animatic. Consider the following 3 panels in a project:

We've tested our animatic and found that we don't like the timing, we change Panel 1 and Panel 3 animatic settings as follows:

If we were to play our Animatic now we would be very disappointed with the results since Panel 2 is out of sync. We can correct this by going to the "Panel Timing and Sound" dialog for panel 2 and clicking the "Guess Settings" button. The settings for Panel 2 would then sync automatically with Panel 1 and Panel 3 to look like the following:

Note: In order for sound to "flow" smoothly over multiple images the end position of one image must match exactly with the start position of the next image.

Related Topic: Recording Sound

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