V1.

5 User Guide Addendum

Legal Notices

Published by Toon Boom Animation Inc.

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Montreal, Quebec
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The content of this manual is covered by a specific limited warranty and exclusions and limit of
liability under the applicable License Agreement as supplemented by the special terms and
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those special terms and conditions for details.
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For additional copies of this manual, please contact Toon Boom Animation Inc. at the
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Copyright © 2008 by Toon Boom Animation Inc. All rights reserved.

Trademarks
Toon Boom Storyboard Pro is a trademark owned by Toon Boom Animation Inc. All other
trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Credits
Documentation Development: Peter Cawthorne
Content Development and Art: Toon Boom Animation Inc.

Publication Date
February 2008
 Toon Boom Storyboard Pro v1.5 -
Addendum
This is an addendum to the documentation for the version 1.5 release of Toon Boom
Storyboard Pro.

System Requirements
You must uninstall the current version before installing Storyboard Pro v1.5.
These are the operating system requirements for Storyboard Pro.
Mac OS X
• OS: Mac OS X v10.4 and v10.5
• PowerPC G5 (Minimum) and Intel (recommended)
• 512 MB of RAM (Minimum), 1 GB (recommended)
• 110 MB of available hard disk space for the software
• Video card fully supporting OpenGL with 128 MB of RAM
• Monitor supporting 1280 x 1024 resolution
• Wacom tablets for drawing (optional)
Microsoft Windows and Windows Vista:
• OS: Microsoft Windows Vista, XP and TabletPC
• 2 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor (recommended)
• 512 MB of RAM (Minimum), 1 GB (recommended)
• 110 MB of available hard disk space for the software
• Video card fully supporting OpenGL with 128 MB of RAM
• Monitor supporting 1280 x 1024 resolution
• Wacom tablets for drawing (optional)

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Toon Boom Storyboard Pro - Addendum

Functionality
This section provides a list of the new functionality in Storyboard Pro since the last release.

Automatically Show Waveform

If you enable the Show Waveform feature, the waveform will be automatically computed
when you drag a sound from the Library and drop it into the Timeline.

Auto Save
There is an Auto Save function, by default it is turned off. It can be activated using the
slider in the General tab of the Preferences panel.

The Auto Save function uses a slider to activate the Auto Save period.

Moving the slider changes the value displayed in the slider field (to the right of the slider).
This field shows how often the auto save will occur, it is calibrated in 10 minute increments

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up to a maximum of 360 minutes. Moving the slider to the far left switches off the autosave
feature and displays NEVER, while moving it to the far right sets the auto save to 360
minutes between each save.

Camera Mask During Playback

This feature is accessed from Menu Play > Camera Mask. Use the Camera Mask command
to hide the exterior of the camera frame during playback. The default colour of the mask
is charcoal, but this can be changed in your Preferences.

Camera View Display

It is now possible to display the Safe and the 4:3 areas in the Camera View. This is
donefrom the View > Grid > Show Safe Area and Show 4:3 Area menu commands. This
allowsfor the Safe Area and 4:3 Area to be displayed at the current camera position in
time, whenyou are using the scrub.

Current Frame Split

It is now possible to split a current frame into two panels using the Split Panel At Current
Frame function. Using this option creates a new panel in the current scene with the same
content as the previous panel. The duration of this new panel depends on the position of
the current frame slider in the Timeline.

Default Behavior when Importing Templates

This option is used to determine the default action that will be taken when a template is
dropped in a panel and a template with the same name already exists in the Library.
Templates are copied to the Library only when the preference Maintain A Copy Of
Templates In Local Library is active.

Desktop Icons
The TVG, PLT, TPL and SCAN desktop icons are now standardized.

Displaying Duration for Current Selection

The in duration and the out duration of the current selection are now shown in the Panel
tab located below the Selection Information. This works with both the panel or sound
selection.

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Toon Boom Storyboard Pro - Addendum

Enhanced PDF Export

Changes to PDF Export:
• In the Choose Encoding and Font dialogue, the encoding option has been
separated from the built-in fonts.
• The new Show Page Number option shows the entire page number in the
header. For example; Page 1/5 or Page 1.
• The new Start Page Number option specifies the starting page number.
• The new Sub Page Number option specifies the secondary page number. For
example; /7, as in page 2/7.
If you have already printed a storyboard and you want to insert a page in-
between (like 7A), you must specify A in sub page number. If this parameter is
used, it will increment the sub page number instead of the page number.
This is normally used to insert pages later and not for the page numbering of an
entire board.
• A new option allows the panel to be displayed on the right side with a vertical
layout storyboard.
• A new option allows a bitmap image to be added to the footer area of the PDF.
• A new option allows a panel’s width to be adjusted using the maximum panel’s
height available (and reducing the caption width) with vertical layout storyboard.
• A new option allows the 4:3 area to be displayed in the panels.
• A new option allows control of vertical and horizontal spacing between panels.
• Export bitmap, option added to keep the background transparent background
or create an opaque layer (PSD).

Export to Bitmap: Transparent Background

A Transparent Background option has been added in the Export to Bitmap panel. This is
available using PSD file formats and provides the ability to add a white opaque
background layer when turned off.

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File Names Pattern When Exporting
It is now possible to define sequential file name patterns when exporting to Image
Sequence, Bitmap, EDL and AAF (movie files).
For example:%4s.%2p.%3f.%4F.tga
%4s => shot name on 4 chars (all export formats)
%2p => panel name on 2 chars (all export formats)
%3f => frame on 3 chars (Image Sequence and Bitmap)
%4F => global frame on 4 chars (Image Sequence Only)
Where:
% means it will be replaced by:
s (shot name)
p (panel number)
f (local frame number in panel)
F (global frame number in timeline)
The number in-between represents the minimum length to display it. If the text-value is
shorter than this length, it will be left-padded by 0 (zero).
For example:
If the frame number is 48, and the user specifies the following in file name:
%1f = you will see "48" in file name.
%2f = you will see "48" in file name.
%3f = you will see "048" in file name.
%4f = you will see "0048" in file name.

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Toon Boom Storyboard Pro - Addendum

Import Final Draft Script

This feature is accessed from the Menu File > New Storyboard from Final Draft XML. To
use this feature the user needs to export a Final Draft script with Final Draft Tagger v7. The
XML script is imported using the New Storyboard from Final Draft XML function.

The Import from Final Draft window has an Elements list and an action which can be
applied to each of the Elements.

Elements list
The Elements list is shown on the left side of the window and the action can be chosen
from the Action droplist on the right of the window.

Actions
The Action droplist allows you to choose the action applied to each of the elements in the
Element List
The possible actions are:
• None
• New Shot: Adds a new shot
• New Panel: Adds a panel in an existing shot
• New Transition: Adds a transition
• New Shot Prefix: Uses the element content as the Shot name followed by _

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Combine Successive Elements
Placing a check mark in the Combine Successive Elements checkbox assures that when
two or more elements of the same type are follow each other, the action is not executed
more than once.

Destination Caption Field

Each element script has a destination caption field which can be chosen from the
Destination Caption Field droplist on the right side of the window.
The Destination Caption Field is used to set in which caption field the element's content
will be placed.

Add Caption Field

The Add Caption Field adds a field to the destination caption field list.
Save as default rules will keep the settings defined in the panel for the next time the panel
will be opened.

Opening a Project Without Displaying the

Welcome Screen (MAC OS X)
On MAC OS X, when opening the Storyboard application, it is now possible to bypass the
Welcome Screen and only open the sboard project. To do this double-click on the sboard
project file.

Previous File Backup on Save

When you save the current file, a backup of the previous .sboard file is automatically
made. To distinguish the backup from the file just saved, a tilde [~] is added as a suffix to
the backup filename. Having this separate automatic backup safeguards your recent work
in case of any problems.

Reuse of Imported Layer Names from Images

When importing separate layers from an image (i.e. PSD) it is possible to only use the
images layer names to create the layers in Storyboard.

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Toon Boom Storyboard Pro - Addendum

Optimization
Additional enhancements to the overall efficiency are detailed in this section.

Improved Tablet Drawing Behaviour

The following drawing behaviour improvements have been introduced when using a
Wacom tablet:
• In the Preferences panel, it is possible to force the Wintab tablet messages
instead of the Real-Time Stylus (RTS) messages when running on a Windows
Tablet PC and Windows Vista.

Panel Duration Control

It is now possible to change the duration of the previous panel and the next panel
simultaneously. To do this, hold the [Alt] key while moving the slider between the two
panels. This leaves the start frame of the previous panel and the end frame of the next
panel where they are in time.

Layout and Tool Bar Management

Improvements were made to the layout and toolbar management system.

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Bug Fixes
The following bugs have been fixed since the last version:
• Fixed a problem that occurred when duplicating a panel which had less than 20
frames. The last key-frame was lost.
• There is no longer an artefact created on the side of the drawing canvas if the
pen leaves the drawing canvas while you are drawing.
• Fixed a missing pressure which caused dots or constant pressure at the
beginning of a stroke. The beginning of strokes are now smooth and not broken
up.
• Fixed a problem which previously did not display page numbers when total
pages were greater than 99.
• Fixed a selection problem which occurred when drawing two lines - top-left to
bottom-right and bottom-left to top-right.
• Fixed a problem with the project path in the welcome screen for a mounted
volume (Mac only).
• Fixed a problem which stalled the export until some mouse movement occurred
(Mac only).
• Fixed a problem in which Transitions were not exported when using shots
selection.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when exporting to Harmony or Digital if a scene or a
shot contained at least one panel that had an unmodified camera and a camera
that had been modified.
• Prevented a crash when using the Spread Layer Motion while a camera is
selected.
• Prevented a crash when importing grayscale PSD images.
• Prevented a crash when exporting to PSD.
• Both delete keys can now be used to delete the selection on Mac OS X.
• It is now possible to use the arrow keys on the keyboard to nudge the selection
with the first of last frame transform tool as well as with the Camera tool.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when selecting the Panel tab after undoing the
creation of a panel.

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Toon Boom Storyboard Pro - Addendum

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