Page History: Material Library
Compare Page Revisions
Page Revision: 2011/12/03 03:48
Description
Every experiment created with the program has an internal storage called Material Library. Library may have a multilevel structure with folders, like a computer file system. Any type of stimulus material, such as picture, sound and video and even custom data files can be added as items into Library. All Library content is stored together with the experiment itself in a single ".eve" file, which can be easily taken alone for complete migration of experiments on different computers.
The library items are shown in a sorted list in the Library Panel. Each item there is an unique object which, however, can be reused in different parts of an experiment. If necessary, an item can be duplicated, e.g. for making multiple copies of the same image in the Library.
Practical Use
At any moment you can load new items, delete unused ones and, most importantly, update the existing items that are already used in an experiment. It allows you to easily change your stimuli without modification of the experiment itself.
The storage capacity of the library is limited only by the available disk space but storing very large files, like movies can affects responsiveness of GUI.
Resources have different types which can be used by different elements, for instance, the Rendered element is capable to visualize any resource with a static graphical content. The Audio clip element can play only the audio resources. Different elements can recognize and use only resources of the appropriate type.
Adding Items
Different resources (see supported file types under specific Elements sections) can be imported into the library from external files using the main menu command
Library-Add Resources. Alternatively, you can simply drag and drop files into the Library Panel from a Windows explorer (and, visa versa, if you need to export a certain resource to a file). EventIDE attempts to detect a type of each imported resource by analyzing its file content. If the type cannot be detected this way it is determined by the file extension. If the type is still unknown importing is aborted.
Once resources have been added to the Library they can be viewed on the right hand side of the EventIDE main window in the
Library panel. From there they can be attached to the designated element. Use drag and drop from the library panel to the element panel. To initiate the drag and drop, press the left mouse button and hold it pressed over the selected resources. When the mouse cursor changes its shape to the cross, move a mouse to the designated element in the Element panel and drop the dragged resources. Multiple items can be dragged to a single element (provided that it has an appropriate element type e.g. image or sound) and the element supports the resource lists. You can easily see which resources are currently in the element resource list by clicking on the arrow next to the element's name.
Copy & Paste
You can easily copy and paste resources from one element to another, using windows copying commands. Within a single element, if it supports the resource lists, any single resource can be selected as an active one either in GUI or by designated index property of an element. Using the drag and drop inside of the element resource list you can change the indices and order of loaded resources in the list.
The resources can be also copied and pasted inside of the Library using general window commands. Also you can move the selected elements inside of the Library, using the same drag and drop operations, it is described above.
XAML scripts
XAML scripts are the special type of resources that can be not only imported from the .xaml files but also directly created in EventIDE. Use the menu command
Library-Custom XAML resource, under which you can choose one of the predefined shapes, or select the
Blank option and start your own XAML script. The pop-out editor for a XAML resource with a dynamic preview becomes available if you press a rectangular icon located on each XAML resource in the Library.