The Tango Movie Tool (TMT) allows you to add text, freehand drawing, lines, rectangles, and arrow annotations to individual frames of a movie, and to view any portion of the movie at varying speeds. You can even step through the movie one frame at a time. TMT can be used to view movies annotated by others, or to add annotations to your own movies. As each frame is modified with annotations, a backup copy of the frame is created, so that you will never lose the original frame of the movie -- you can revert to the original frame at any time. TMT was designed to assist Argentine Tango students by enabling them to study tango figures in slow motion, with the added feature of also viewing instructors' comments and highlights regarding the finer points of style and technique, overlaid onto each video frame.
The following controls are used to view a movie that has already been annotated. Such movies are stored on disk as a sequence of JPEG files, one per frame, all contained in a single directory.
Press the Open button to open an
existing movie sequence. A standard File Open dialog box will appear. Browse to the directory containing the movie
frames, and select the initial frame to view.
The Scroll Bar is used to scroll
through the movie. The frames will be displayed as you scroll left and right by dragging the slider-box with the
mouse. You can also use the left and right cursor keys (or click on the left and right arrows in the scroll bar)
to move one frame at a time.
The Selection Bar shows the portion
of the movie that will be played automatically when you press the Play button. The red line shows the position
of the current frame.
The Mark-in button (terminology
borrowed from video editing) sets the first frame of the selection to match the currently displayed frame.
The Mark-out button sets the
last frame of the selection to match the currently displayed frame.
This button displays the first
frame of the selection.
This button displays the last frame
of the selection.
This list box is used to select
the playing speed of the frames, in frames/second. A Pentium processor speed of 233MHz or above should be adequate
to display movies at least as fast as 15 frames per second. The available speeds are 30, 15, 10, 8, 5, 4, 3, and
2 frames per second. The speed may be changed while the movie is playing.
When this button is "lit"
(red), it will cause the playing to go from the beginning of the selection to the end of the selection, and then
repeat from the beginning.
When this button is "lit"
(red), it will cause the playing to go from the beginning of the selection to the end of the selection, and then
reverse direction, playing backwards towards the beginning.
When this button is "lit"
(red), the movie will be played without showing any annotations.
The Play button starts the movie
playing.
The Stop button stops the movie
from playing.
Pressing this button will display
version, URL, and email support information about the program.
The following controls are used to add text, freehand lines, straight lines, rectangles, and arrows to a movie that is stored as a sequence of JPEG images, one per frame, all contained in a single directory.
Press this button to open an existing
movie sequence. A standard File Open dialog box will appear. Browse to the directory containing the movie frames,
and select the initial frame to view (any one of the numbered .jpg files).
Pressing the Scroll button puts
the program in scroll mode, enabling you to scroll to the frame that you want to annotate. Use the Scroll Bar and/or
cursor keys to position to the desired frame. When you are finished annotating a frame, press the Scroll button
again to return to scrolling mode. This will cause the currently annotated frame to be saved to disk. Before any
modifed frame is written, a backup copy of the original frame will be written to the "\original" directory
(which will be created, if necessary, in the same directory that holds the movie frame files).
Pressing the Color button will
cycle through the 4 available annotation colors: black, red, yellow and aqua. The button's color will change to
show the current color that will be used when drawing all types of annotations.
Click the Text button when you want
to add text to a frame. To set the initial cursor position of the text in the frame, click the left mouse button
while the I-beam mouse cursor is positioned where you want the text to begin. Type the desired text. The backspace
key will work during typing. When you press the Return key, the text cursor (which is imaginery -- it doesn't show
on the frame image) will move down to the next line, so that a block of left-aligned text may be entered in "normal"
typing mode. To enter another block of text, press the left mouse button again to set the initial text cursor position.
If you move to another frame, and enter Text mode by pressing the Text button, but do not click the mouse
to establish a starting location for the text, then the starting location of the last block of text from the previous
frame will be used.
Click the Freehand drawing button
when you want to draw freehand lines on the frame. Use the familiar "drag" action of the mouse to draw
any freehand line: press the left mouse button where you want to start drawing; keep the left button pressed as
you move the mouse to draw a freehand path; release the mouse button when you are finished drawing. To draw additional
freehand lines, press the left button and drag the mouse again.
Click the Line button when you want
to draw straight lines on the frame. Use the familiar "drag" action of the mouse to draw a straight line:
press the left mouse button where you want the line to start; keep the left button pressed as you move the mouse
to where you want the line to end; release the mouse button. The straight line will appear in "rubber band"
mode while the mouse is being moved. To draw additional straight lines, press the left button and drag the mouse
again. Lines that are almost horizontal or vertical will be adjusted to be exactly horizontal or vertical.
Lines with a very small length will be treated as mistakes and will not be displayed.
Click the Rectangle button when
you want to draw rectangles on the frame. Use the familiar "drag" action of the mouse to draw a rectangle:
press the left mouse button where you want one corner of the rectangle; keep the left button pressed as you move
the mouse to where you want the the opposite corner of the rectangle; release the mouse button. The rectangle will
appear in "rubber band" mode while the mouse is being moved. To draw additional rectangles, press the
left button and drag the mouse again. Rectangles that are very small in height or width will be treated as mistakes
and will not be displayed.
To draw an arrow on the frame image,
click one of the arrow buttons to select the direction of the arrow. Then click the left mouse button on the frame
image where you want the arrow to appear. When drawing arrows, the mouse cursor will look like an arrow, and the
tip of the arrow that is drawn will be positioned at the location of the tip of the mouse cursor arrow. Once an
arrow button has been selected, each click of the left mouse button will draw another arrow of the selected direction.
Press the Revert button at any
time to erase all annotations from the current frame, and to restore the frame image to its original content.
Please note: the program itself only runs under Windows. However, the sample annotated movies are "image sequences" which can be opened and viewed with QuickTime on the Macintosh. Using QuickTime as a viewer, you can play the movie at full speed, or scroll through it frame-by-frame by using the left/right cursor keys.
Please email the author, Jim Smith, at the following, hopefully unharvestable email address (lower-case and remove the /'s):
T/A/N/G/O/T/O/O/L/2/@/T/U/F/O/X/./C/O/M
Click here to go to my Home Page.
Last updated 10/28/06.