Displaying and customizing a background movie

You can display some or all of a movie file in the viewport background. Background movies appear in the Visualization module only and, when active, they are displayed on top of the viewport background image. If you print a viewport when the background movie is active, Abaqus/CAE displays the current frame of the movie in the background of the printed image.

Related Topics
Displaying a background image
Customizing the appearance of background images and movies

Context:

This section describes how to display an image using the Image/Movie Options dialog box. Alternatively, you can display and customize background movies from the Movies container in the Results Tree or from the Movie Manager dialog box. To display the movie manager, select ToolsMovieManager.

  1. From the main menu bar, select ViewImage/Movie Options. In the Image/Movie Options dialog box that appears, click the Movie tab.

  2. Toggle Show movie during animation to display or hide the background movie while animations are playing.

  3. Select a movie file to display:

    • To display a movie that has been defined for your session, expand the Movie name list and select the movie name.

    • To add a new movie, click ; then enter a name and specify a file location in the dialog box that appears. You can either enter the file location directly in the File Name field or click to navigate to it in the Select Movie File dialog box.

      For newly added movies, the Edit Movie dialog box appears.

  4. If desired, customize the movie's active frames from the Edit Movie dialog box:

    • Activate or deactivate frames at the beginning and end of the movie. You can either drag the Active Frames sliders or enter frame numbers in the Start and End fields to change these values.

    • Toggle on Preview changes in viewport to change the background movie's length dynamically as you adjust its active frames. When this option is not selected, the background movie's active frames do not change until you click Apply or OK.

    • Toggle on Show movie only to hide model data in the viewport. In some cases the model data can obscure the background movie, making movie editing difficult.

  5. If desired, customize the movie's timeline from the Edit Movie dialog box. If you select a frame-based animation as the background movie, you can change the movie's starting frame and ending frame; if you select a time-based animation, you can change the movie's starting time and ending time. To change the ending value, expand the appropriate field under the End column and select Specify. Abaqus/CAE then allows you to enter a value in this field.

  6. Click OK to apply your changes and to close the Image/Movie Options dialog box.

    If desired, you can also customize the scale, positioning, or translucency of the background movie; see Customizing the appearance of background images and movies.