GENERAL

Clicking on the Settings button displays the Player’s Settings menu. Here you can control various aspects of how the images are displayed within the SCRATCH Player.

The buttons on the left side of the Settings Menu give access to the different sub-menus. The labels show the current display resolution and refresh rate, and the resolution and frame rate of the current Construct.

The General sub-menu is split into 5 sections; Play options, View Options, View Selection, SDI / Dual Head settings and on the far right controls for a Remote connection and Custom Command buttons.

PLAY OPTIONS

SYNC

This setting determines how SCRATCH synchronizes itself with the system’s Vertical Synchronization Interval for play back. There are five options: Automatic, Timer, Monitor, Video and Audio. The proper setting depends on your particular play back needs.

Automatic

Automatic sync chooses the most appropriate method for synchronization based on the playback framerate. If the monitor frequency is an even multiple of the framerate of the Player, the monitor vertical sync interval is used as the SCRATCH refresh interval. If the monitor refresh differs from the framerate, Timer sync is used to maintain accurate playback timing.

Timer

Timer sync will run the SCRATCH refresh interval at the true framerate timing regardless of the monitor refresh rate. This results inaccurate timings for playback but some visual tearing of the image may occur when a SCRATCH refresh does not coincide with the monitor refresh.

Monitor

The monitor vertical sync interval is used as the SCRATCH refresh interval regardless of the Player framerate. This will ensure a clean image during playback but may result in skipped frames or stuttering during playback in order to maintain proper playback timing.

Video

Video sync is used in conjunction with the SDI Output option.This option locks the SCRATCH refresh rate to the framerate set in the SDI control panel.

Audio

Audio sync runs the SCRATCH refresh interval at the true framerate to ensure synchronization with reference audio playback. Some visual tearing of the image may occur. This is similar to Timing sync.

FRAMERATE

The playback frame rate of the Player can be set in two ways. First,the FRAMERATE button is a pull-down menu of preset frame rates. Selecting any of these presets sets the Player’s playback to that framerate. You can also set the playback framerate to any value by typing it into the Text Slate. The framerate can be changed at any time, even while the Player is in play mode.

VIEW ASPECT

The VIEW ASPECT button toggles any aspect ratio adjustment on and off. This is useful for checking source images without any aspect ratio compensation by SCRATCH.

ASPECT SELECTION

This pull-down menu allows you to select the aspect ratio for the Player. The options for this pull-down are read from the aspects.cfg file and follow the same usage as the Project aspect ratio settings.

SCALE

The Scale Numerical Slate is used to set custom aspect ratios as part of the Player’s aspect ratio setting. Changing the Scale value by entering a new value in the Numerical Slate will automatically switch the aspect ratio to Custom.

VIEW OPTIONS

VIEW TRANSITIONS

View Transitions allows any transitions that were applied between shots to be enabled or disabled. This can be especially useful when grading individual shots, so that the transition does not interfere with the grading.

MISSING FRAMES

When active, the Missing Frames button replaces the image in the View Port with a selected color any time the SCRATCH play cursor passes over a frame, for which there is no source material available. The color to be used can be set by clicking on the Color box, located just below the Missing Frames button.

Note: If the Missing Frames button is activated, the image freezes on the closest available frame that does exist. This can be an issue when checking a Conform for validity. In this case, it is best to have Missing Frames active, so that it is very clear when a source frame is not available.

USER INTERFACE SETTINGS

INTERFACE SCHEME

The Scheme pull-down allows you to quickly switch the SCRATCH user interface between the default Color scheme, a gray-scale Mono scheme and a Custom color scheme. The Mono scheme is a monochromatic interface scheme which eliminates all color from the SCRATCH interface to minimize color bias. The Custom scheme allows you to define custom colors for each interface element. Customizing the SCRATCH user interface is covered in detail in Chapter 11.

Note: The selection you make in the pull-down will alter the SCRATCH interface throughout the software, not just in the Matrix.

CONFIGURE PANELS

The CONFIGURE PANELS button opens a dialog box where you can control how SCRATCH commands are mapped to an external control surface, such as the Tangent Devices range or Avid MC Color panel. See Chapter 11 – Control Surfaces for more information about setting up and using the external control surfaces.

OUTPUT OPTIONS

ENABLE OUTPUT CACHE

If the Enable Output Cache setting is enabled SCRATCH will check if a frame that is to be displayed has already been rendered to file / cached. If that is the case SCRATCH will use that frame rather than processing the original source media and applying grades / composite. Any change to a shot (e.g. adjust its grade) will automatically invalidate the cached / rendered files and SCRATCH will use the source media again.

PROCESS ON PLAY

When the Process On Play option is enabled - each frame of the timeline that is played in the Player is also written to disk. This is an easy way to render out (part of your timeline) while maintaining an interactive system. Frames that have been rendered out and not changed are not rendered out again. Shots that have been updated are rendered out again - overwriting the previous version. Together with the Enable Output Cache setting you can ensure playback performance.  

LUT EXPORT SETTINGS

There are individual areas for controlling the size and resolution of 1D and 3D LUTs that are generated and saved from SCRATCH.

1D LUT SETTINGS

The Depth and Size parameters ( D: and S: in the interface) in this section control how a 1D LUT is generated when the Save function is used.

The D: parameter is a pull-down menu to choose the bit-depth for the resulting values in the LUT. The choices are: 8-, 10-, 12- and 16-bits.

The S: parameter is a pull-down menu to choose the number of entries in the resulting LUT. The choices are: 256, 1024 and 4096. This value represents the precision of the generated LUT. The higher the number, the more precise the LUT. However, more precision generates a much larger LUT file.

3D LUT SETTINGS

The 3D LUT Settings have Depth and Size parameters similar to the 1D LUT.

The Depth parameter has the same options of 8-, 10-, 12- and 16-bits as the 1D LUT and functions in the same way to determine the bit-depth of the resulting values in the LUT.

The Size parameter is an incremental value that can be set between 8 and 64. This determines the number of divisions on each axis of the 3D cube, which defines the LUT. The higher the number, the more precise the LUT. However, more precision generates a much larger LUT file.