GENERAL

The Guides menu is a sub-menu of the Player Settings menu and is divided into two sections: Guide Presets & Settings and Display Options.

The Guides settings are stored per Construct.

GUIDE PRESETS AND SETTINGS

Guides are on-screen displays that can be used to visualize different rectangular areas of interest on an image. Guides are commonly used to show aspect ratios to be extracted from the current Construct, or customized positions within the image. They are completely flexible and customizable to the specific needs of your production.

ACTIVATING PRESET GUIDES

To activate a guide, select one of the presets from the list on the left side of the Guides menu. The guide can then be turned on in the interface by activating the Guides button in the Display Options section. You can switch guides at any time by selecting a new preset from the list.

CREATING CUSTOM GUIDES

A guide is made up of several parts, or Cages: the base guide area, blanking, action and text safe regions. Each of these Cages can be customized separately from within the Guides menu.

To create a custom guide, first select an existing preset and press the Add/Copy button. This creates a new guide in the list with the same base name as the preset from which it was copied. You can rename the guide by clicking in the Text Slate and typing a new name.

Now you can modify this guide using the X, Y Width and Height Numerical Slates. A guide has an anchor point, which is the lower left corner of the rectangular area; it is defined from that point by Width and Height. All values are specified in pixels.

Specify the values you want to use for each parameter. The guide updates immediately with the new values.

If you want to delete a custom guide, select it from the list and press the Delete button.

Note: Only user-created custom guides can be deleted; the standard presets cannot.

DISPLAY OPTIONS

The Display Options section of the Guides menu controls which Cages of the guide will be visible. Clicking on a button activates that particular Cage.

Each Cage can have its own color, which is set with the color pot to the right of each display option. Clicking on one of these color pots opens the Color Selection Palette where you can choose the color for that particular Cage.

You can also adjust properties of certain Cages, such as the opacity of the Blanking, the percentage size of the Action, and Text safe areas by entering new values into the Numerical Slates for each part.

BORDER

The Border corresponds to the working resolution of the Construct.This Cage gives you a visual representation of the total area that is processed as an output by SCRATCH.

CROP

When the Crop button is active, any portion of an image that extends beyond the Border Cage is blanked out so that it will not appear in the interface. If Crop is deactivated then you see the portion of the image that extends beyond the Border Cage; it will be darkened slightly so that it is visually different than the portion of the image within the Border Cage.

GUIDES

Activating the Guides button turns on the currently active guide from the preset list. This is the overall on/off button for Guides. Each Cage such as Blanking, Action and Text has its own separate button, so that each individual Cage can be turned on or off as well.

BLANKING

Blanking determines whether or not the area of the image outside the currently selected preset guide is blanked out. Blanking is used in many cases to create letter boxed or matted images representing alternate aspect ratio versions.

The blanking option also has an opacity setting that allows you to control how much of the blanking color is mixed in with the image.

Note: The Blanking button is only available if the overall Guides button has been activated.

ACTION

The Action button toggles an Action Safe Cage. This Cage is designated as a percentage of the image size. This Cage is generally used in video production where the image is over-scanned, so that a portion of the total image is not visible on consumer television sets.

TEXT

The Text button toggles a Text Safe Cage. This Cage is designated as a percentage of the image size. This Cage is generally used in video production to designate the limits at which text can be placed, so that it will be clearly visible on consumer television sets.

ABSOLUTE

Activating the Absolute button changes all values for the selected Guide to use an absolute pixel count for the positioning of guides. With this option turned off, guides are scaled to match the resolution and aspect ratio of the current Construct.