How to make you own Podcast

The program will display text but it's currently disabled.

Adding a website link in the text area will open that website to allow the animation to move over it.

You don't need to know this but it may help.

Wherever you have installed the software there will be subdirectories created for each podcast animation routine. The startup directory is always looked at first if no other directory is called for. Please don't delete this directory.

The animation sequence is saved as a grid. You'll see this when you open the recorder.

Move the mouse over the animation image and click setup to open the recorder.

Select the line in the sequence you want to change.

Select a new picture from the drop down list.

Alternately edit the picture name manually or select 'add picture' to import a photo.

If you use the full web address of an image starting with http://www.etc then the program will download this automatically. This in necessary if you will be sending the fancy dress podcast address to other people who will not have the image on their PC. Each image will only be downloaded once as it's saved in the directory you've selected.

The first pixel of the image will be the transparent colour so make a single colour background to give an outline of your face for example. GIF images are better for transparency than JPG but JPG are generally better for photo size, so try both.

We recommend mp3 or wma sounds.

Select the required line in the sequence then click 'add sound' to import a new sound file.

Or seclet a sound file from the drop down list.

If you use the full web address of an sound file starting with http://www.etc then the program will download this automatically.

If a sound file is longer than the step sequence then only the animations will follow the sequence. The sound files will just loop in their own time one after another.

Select the required step in the sequence.

Manually edit the x and y positions or right click on the image and drag it to the required position.

The 'Random movement' button will set the postions to zero which turns on the automatic scrolling movement.

Manually edit the time to pause at each step or use the slide bar above the time column.

We want to add some more animation controls soon.

All of the routines already available on you PC can be selected from the drop down list.

Existing animation routines can be created in any spreadsheet and imported via the load button using tab delimited files.

Select the 'New Podcast' (new feed) button. You are first asked for a directory name into which the files will be saved. If the directory already exists then it will warn you that you will overwrite the existing files.

The next window allows you to enter your new podcast address. A number of available files are listed below. When you press 'download' this file will be downloaded and imported into your animation sequence. If it's just a standard download it will not have the animation sequences so you will be asked if you want to import the last used animation sequence. The trick here is to load a suitable animation before you download a podcast. The real fancy dress podcasts designed for this software will have their own animation sequences that are automatically imported.