BoardMaster Help - Project Setup

Project Settings

The Project Settings Dialog sets attributes that apply to the entire Boardmaster project.

General Settings Tab

Company Logo and Print Titles

The company logo (image) will be displayed in the upper left hand corner of the storyboard page. To set the logo select the "File" button and navigate to the image. The file path to the image will be displayed in the "Image File Location" edit box. This logo will be printed on the storyboard page and timing summary page. In the edit boxes for "Main Title", "Secondary Title", and "Episode" can have text entered to describe your storyboard project. This information will also be printed on the storyboard and timing summary. The Print Titles will also be displayed on your exported web pages.

Script Location

You can attach a "Script" to your storyboard project by selecting a text file using the "File" button in the "Script Location" area of the Project Settings Dialog. The script file must be an ASCII text file. Most word processing programs will save the file as ASCII text. You can then quickly reference the script that corresponds to a particular panel while browsing through your project. Related Topic: Adding Text to the Storyboard

By default, the time and film footage attached to a particular panel will be displayed on the storyboard page in seconds and feet:frames. If you do not want this information displayed, un-check the "Display Timing Info On Storyboard" checkbox.

Storyboard Captions

By default BoardMaster has five captions that it adds to the Storyboard and Timing Summary when seen and printed. These defaults can be changed.

If you change the text for "Scene" or "Panel" it will change all occurrences or the words "Scene" and "Panel" throughout your storyboard and timing summary to the text you specify. This is great for foreign language users to modify the storyboard captions to their own language or for non-film related users of BoardMaster to customize it for a particular use.

The "Act" "Dlg" and "Efx" captions appear around the text box for each panel and can also be changed. When these settings are changed, it applies to the all the "Act""Dlg" and "Efx" captions of new panels that are added to the project. It does not affect panels that have already been added. To modify these settings for individual panels, see Changing Panel Settings.

You can change the font, style, color, and size of all five captions. To access the "Change Font" dialog, select "Settings" - "Change Font" from the main menu. In the dialog box that appears you will see a sample frame and buttons for the "Scene", "Frame Numbers", "Captions" and "Descriptions". When selected, each button will display a typical font dialog box in which you can adjust all attributes for the font in that area of the frame.

Related Topic: Changing Panel Settings

There are 8 captions that appear on the Timing Summary. These captions can be modified to describe particular aspects of your project, and will be used when the Timing Summary is printed. See About the Timing Summary and Adding Timing Summary Information for a Panel for more details.

BoardMaster has 4 settings for the aspect ratio of your storyboard. The aspect ratio is the width to height ratio of the images used in the storyboard. These are Academy (1.33:1), European (1.66:1), U.S. Widescreen (1.85:1) and Anamorphic (2.35:1). Changing this value will change the width and height of all "Standard" sized panels in your storyboard. Note that BoardMaster clipart has background images for each aspect ratio.

Animatic Settings Tab

Frames Per Second

The Frames Per Second determines how BoardMaster does its timing and film footage calculations throughout the program, and determines what units the user is working in. For those not in the film industry, this should be set to 1000. This allows users to work in milliseconds throughout the software. For those in the film industry, this value can be set to any film footage like 24, 29 or 30 frames per second. Any values input into BoardMaster are then treated and displayed as frames at the given frame rate. Changing this value after a project is started will result in the entire project being updated to the new frame rate.

This is one of the most important values to be set at the start of a project. If set correctly, this value can help to minimize the edit time of your board. This value sets the time to be assigned to new images that are added to your project. You will need to do some math to set this property to its optimum value. If your project will be 22 minutes, and you want to use 200 images in your project, then you will be using an image every 6.6 seconds (6600ms). If you have your project set to 30 frames per second, then the optimal value for new images is 30 frames per sec x 6.6 sec = 198. If you are using milliseconds for your project, this value would be 6600 for the example above.

Guess My Wav Settings

Checking this box asks BoardMaster to try and guess your wav settings when a new image is added to a project. For example, if you added an image, and set the image to play a wav file from position 10 to position 90, when you add your next image BoardMaster will try to guess the settings for the second image. It will set the wav file for the second image to the same wav file that the previous image used. It will set the start of the wav file to where the previous image ended (90), and it will set the end of the wav file on the second image to 90 + the default time for new panels.

Related Topics: Assigning Sound and Time to a Panel and Recording Sound for a Panel

One of the problems with computers is that they don't run at the same speed. Although BoardMaster tries to keep the animatic playing at the same speed on all computers by constantly checking how fast images are loading on your system, checking the system clock and adjusting internal settings, there are some things it can't control. One of these is the speed at which your effects are processed when running your animatic. If you create an animatic on a fast machine and export it to a BoardMaster user on a slow machine, they may notice differences in the speed that the effects are applied to an image. To adjust the speed of the effects for the entire project tweak this number to speed up or slow down the effects for a given machine. A number greater than 1 will speed up the rate that the effects are processed, less than 1 will slow it. Typically you will not need to touch this setting.

Related Topics: Adding Transition Effects and About Animatics

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