Transitions act between any two actions. Transitions are destructive in the sense that they combine the last frames of the foregoing action and combine them with the first frames of the following transition to create new frames. Therefore, the two surrounding actions must provide enough frames (i.e., must be long enough) to allow for the specified transition.

One feature of diascope's design is that it allows transitions into transitions.

Diascope knows several types of transitions: cross, luma (built-in), luma (external file), push, put, and take. The syntax of all transitions follows the general pattern

where

duration	=	transition_time
type	=	cross | luma | push | put | take
options	=	opt1[=val1] [opt2[=val2] [...]]

All options are provided either as single key words or in a key=value format. The general options are

If redo is given diascope will forcibly recalculate this transition during the following run even if the transition hasn't been modified. Under normal circumstances you shouldn't need this option.

See below for the action specific options.

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Cross fade between two images

Syntax:

A bit of a fun feature, but if you want your images to spin while cross fading you can specify the amount of revolutions by n.

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Luma fades are generalised soft wipes between two images and come in two sorts: with a built-in luma mask or with any external file that serves as a luma mask.

The built-in luma transition follows the syntax:

where dir specifies the direction of a luma wipe. The abbreviations stand for top-down, right-left, radially inward, and radially outward, respectively.

The only option is

where x specifies the sharpness of the soft wipe: x=1 is very soft, x=100 is very sharp.

Beware, unless you have ppmfilter intalled luma file transitions are abysmally slow to generate...

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Luma fades are generalised soft wipes between two images and come in two sorts: with a built-in luma mask or with any external file that serves as a luma mask.

The luma transition with an external file follows the syntax:

where <filename> specifies a gray scale image. The luma file may be of any format that your ImageMagick installation can handle but it should not have a matte (aka alpha) channel. Example luma files can be inspected here and here.

The options are

where x specifies the sharpness of the soft wipe: x=1 is very soft, x=100 is very sharp. For roll, rfx and rfy specify the fractions of the image size my which the luma mask is rolled during the transition - see the example for clarification. If reverse is specified, the luma file is inverted before use.

Beware, unless you have ppmfilter intalled luma file transitions are abysmally slow to generate...

By the way, the name "luma" was borrowed from the great DV video editor kino which implements such transitions. You can use kino's luma files with diascope, too.

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In the push transition, the following image pushes the preceding one off the screen.

Syntax:

where dir specifies the direction to be top-down or right-left.

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The put transition puts an image onto the virtual image pile.

Syntax:

where dir specifies the direction to be top-down or right-left.

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The take transition takes an image off the virtual image pile.

Syntax:

where dir specifies the direction to be top-down or right-left.

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Diascope's design allows transitions into transitions. This will happen automatically if the duration of an action is too short to separate the transitions. Admittedly, whether you can make something useful out of this is another question.

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