Working With Videos

[Tip]Tip

The way unpack manager works for videos has been massively upgraded in Wacs 0.9.2. It now generates a whole lot of extra icons and thumbnails from which you can then select the best to represent the set. Although it's actually the unpack manager that generates all these new icons, you don't actually get to see them until you progress to the placement manager wacsplacemgr.

The unpack manager works quite similiarly when working with video files except in so much that it typically only uses two existing files: the video file itself and the official icon file - the rest will be generated for you by Wacs. This is a total new feature in Wacs 0.9.2. In automatically generating the main icon for the video, it will typically offer you about 10 screenshots taken automatically from near the start of the video clip. It will typically also offer you some thumbnails taken from various points through the entire duration of the clip - the number offered varies with the actual duration of the video clip.

If you want a custom icon file and don't like the automatic options you can use a tool like xine or mplayer -vf screenshot to play the start of the movie and save a suitable screen capture. This file should normally be left at the same dimensions as the video clip as it will be automatically resized down to a more reasonable icon size by Wacs. This file should have a similar name to the movie file itself but with a suitable image file extension rather than the video one. Therefore if your video file is called Roxanne-KnittedTopWhiteSkirt.wmv, then the icon for it should be called Roxanne-KnittedTopWhiteSkirt.jpg.