Table of contents Frames User guide

Time Animation Widget
This page summarizes use of the Time Animation Widget for controlling animations in IDV displays.
Time Animation Widget
Each IDV view window has a set of time animation controls above the view window.

The Time Animation Widget controls looping of displays through time when more than one data time is loaded. The time of the data is displayed in the labeled pull-down list on the left. The toolbar of button icons, on the right, controls time animation. Each button works as follows:

Time Animation Properties Dialog
Click on the in the Time Animation Widget to see the Time Animation Properties editor.

The Time Animation Properties editor allows you to change the values that control looping. Drag the top four scroll bars to change their value. The properties include:

You can set the loop Direction:

The Share Times options are used to toggle sharing of animations among displays. You can disable sharing None, share by Absolute time or by Relative indices between two displays. You can group different animation widgets and share among the group with the Group box. The Boxes Visible checkbox is used to show or hide the animation step boxes on the Time Animation Widget.

The Skip Steps boxes allow you to skip time steps in the sequence. Right click on a yellow box to skip that step and it will turn red. Right click on a red box and it will become yellow, indicating that the step is active.

The Reset To menu allows you to select what happens when new data/times are added to the display. e.g., reset to beginning time, reset to last time, keep at orginal time.

Defining Custom Animation Sets
Normally, all of the different times in a display are used to create the set of times that are looped through. However, the second tab in the Animation Properties dialog allows the user to define custom animation sets:

To define your own time set select the Define your own list of times button. The basic idea is that you define a start time, and end time and a time interval. These times can be set from the data, from a fixed time, the current time and relative to each other. An offset (both positive and negative) can be defined as well by clicking on the edit button: .

A simple case would be if you have a mix of satellite imagery (every 15 mintues) and radar (every 7 minutes). You could choose the start time and end time to be set from the data. And you interval could be 5 minutes. This would provide a uniform animation.

Another example is if you are displaying real time data (e.g., aircraft track) and you want to see the last hour at minute increments. In this case your end time would be "Current Time (Now)". You start time would be "Relative to End Time" with an offest of - 1 hour. Your interval would be 1 minute.

For real time you can define a refresh rate (e.g., every 5 minutes). This will automatically update the current time and rebuild the animation time set.

The Round To time can round the base times. e.g., to the nearest minute, hour, day, etc.

 


Table of contents Frames User guide