FxFactory Developer

FxFactory lets you designate one of the structure inputs of your Quartz composition to receive a Timing Info Structure. This mapping is available under the Inputs section of the plug-in development UI.

Please extract the values in the structure only through the FxFactory Timing Info patch, rather than attempting to extract its values directly.

The outputs of the FxFactory Timing Info patch are as follows:

• Frame contains a value corresponding to the current frame being rendered. This value is an integer if the sequence (or project, when running in Motion) is progressive, or by a fractional value if the image source is interlaced. The fractional component, if present, is always equal to 0.5 and it represents the first field in a given frame (e.g. 2.5 represents the first field in the 3 frame).
• Frame Rate contains the frame rate used by the sequence (or project, when running inside Motion). For example, 29.97 for NTSC, 25 for PAL.
• Frame Rate (Numerator) and Frame Rate (Denominator) contain integer values which express the frame rate as an fraction (e.g. 2997 and 100 for a frame rate of 29.97). The Numerator expresses the number of time units per second. The denominator expresses the number of time units per frame.
• Duration contains the duration, in frames, of the portion of the timeline where the plug-in has been applied.
• Time (in seconds) The current time expressed in seconds of the frame being rendered, starting from the beginning of the clip.
• Time (as a percentage) The current progress, going from 0 to 1, of the frame being rendered relative to the size of the clip. This can and should be used to drive animations meant to fit to the length of a clip.
• Sample Index contains the index of the current sample, which will be greater than zero when the composition is being rendered multiple times per frame. This occurs when the plug-in supports motion blur and the user has chosen to turn the feature on.
• Samples Count contains the total number of samples that will be rendered to generate a single output frame. This number will be 1 when motion blur is off.
• Drop Frame Timecode output is true if the current frame rate is 29.96 or 59.94 and the project is set to use the “drop frame” rule derived from NTSC broadcast standards. In some hosts, this information is precisely obtained through the plugin SDK, whereas in others a unique Timecode Format parameter must be added to allow the user to match the project setting.