CombineZM uses the windows .wmv file type, you should have Windows Media Player 9 or better installed on your computer to use these features. If you would rather use an alternative movie file format such as .avi CombineZM can export all of the frames that make up your movie to a folder of your choice as .bmp files. Then use a program such as VirtualDub to make your movie (this is a freeware program).
There are only three commands on the Movie Menu 'Extract Frames', 'Make' and 'Export Movie Frames'.
Once you have a stack loaded into CombineZM clicking on this button will turn it into a movie clip. You can then use it as it is, or load it into another program such as Windows Movie Maker and change the file format or include it in a longer movie.
Frames from your Stack that are Not Used (i.e. have an * after their name on the title line) will not be included in the movie. You can alter the Used/Unused status with commands on the Choose Frames to Use sub menu on the Stack menu.
You can crop all frames to any rectangular size as the movie is made, just set an appropriate Active Rectangle by dragging a box around the desired area.
After pressing Make a dialog appears here you can set the maximum width and hight of the movie in pixels. The original Frames will not be stretched to fit but will be shrunk if necessary. Frames may be shrunk until both the width and height are less than or equal to the limits you set. The shape of the originals will not be altered, so there should be no distortion. Remember to choose a size appropriate for the device that will be playing the movie, you will gain nothing by making it too big, and will have an enormouse file.
The time between Frames in the Movie can be set in ms (1000=1 second), this controlls how long your Movie will play. 12 frames at 83 ms per frame would play for about 1 second, which is a reasonable rate. You can set this value to 1000's of ms if you want to make a slide show. Using a macro (see bottom of this page) you can insert extra frames that are obtained by blending the frames you provided together. This is necessary to make a movie from a small number of frames last longer but still run smoothely. If you apply this Macro more than once you will get even more Frames added.
The last parameter on the dialog is 'Quality' this is like JPEG quality 0 is poor but a small file size, 100 is best quality but a large file size.
This will take all of the Frames from a Movie clip (.wmv format only) and build a stack from them, if they are small enough and your computer fast enough you can now 'play' them by holding down the Up or Down Arrow key. There is a limit to the number of frames, which equates to the length of the movie clip you can use, 10,000 frames. If you wish to stack the frames from a movie remember there is an upper limit of 255 frames for stacking, use Replace Groups from the Stack menu to reduce the number you have below this figure before stacking. Average and filter may produce errors with verry large numbers of frames also.
As mentioned above use this function to save a set of frames to disk so that you can load them into another program which will make your movie. This function works like Export Rectangles but only saves the cropped area of the frames which are Used, and gives you the chance to provide a file name prefix then adds a number to this before saving in the folder you specify. The cropping rectangle is defined in the usual way i.e. press and hold down the left mouse button while dragging out a box around the desired area. And the Used status of frames is changed with the menu items on the Choose Frames to Use sub menu of the Stack menu. Remember Unused frames are marked with an '*' on the title line.