6. Useful Tips

6.1 Creating Many Text Slides with the Same Background

It is more efficient to create all of the text slides first (using the "Text Slide Only" option), and then replace the background for all slides. The advantage of this is that the appropriate slide template name is automatically assigned to the new slide and the background image only needs to be loaded once, instead of once per slide. To add the background select the "key" to the left of the slide name (which will show the slide components), highlight "No background image", and select the "Replace" Button. This will make the contents of the screen the slide background.

6.2 Selecting Collaborative Mode

When connecting to a server in the collaborative mode, it is faster to depress the Collaborative Button first, and then select the desired server. The reason for this is that the private and collaborative servers are separate and distinct. Thus, if the server is selected first, a connection with the private server will be established first and then broken when the Collaborative Button is depressed (in order to connect to the collaborative server).

6.3 Improve Slide Show Performance

Each text slide may consists of a background image and an HTML text overlay. When a slide is displayed, the JPEG image is loaded and then the HTML file is parsed and displayed. This can be time consuming, especially on an older machines with a slow processor. To reduce the time it takes to load a text slide, the "entire" slide may be saved as an image and reloaded as an image (i.e. no HTML conversion). This can be done by loading the slide, selecting "Image Slide Only", and then depressing "Replace". The newly created slide is an image and can not be edited subsequently.

6.4 Saving Screen as JPEG Image

The size and aspect ratio of the newly created JPEG image is the same as that of the FXC Display Window. Thus, to obtain the best image quality it is suggested that the FXC Window be adjusted to closely resemble that of the desired JPEG image before saving the screen.

6.5 Procedures to Monitor Weather

FXC procedures have several additional features that are not found on AWIPS. Procedures can be used to continuously monitor data or brief remote users. For example, a procedure can be created that routinely displays the local radar (AWIPS), a video cam (Web), and a graphical hazard product (FXC) to local and remote users.

6.6 Manual Graphic Animation

When using the drawing tool, the graphical annotation is a single overlay that applies to all frames. There are two ways available to generate distinct graphics for each frame to allow animation of manually generated graphic products.
1. The user can generate a graphic for each frame (one at a time) and save the graphic with successive names found in the "Disk Icon" Menu. The graphics are stored as single color graphics and are treated the same way as any graphic D2D overlay. The manual graphics (all frames) can be recalled for display by selecting "Local Graphic" under the "Obs" Menu.

2. The user can generate a manual graphic for each frame (one at a time) and save the underlying image and graphic product as a JPEG image. These JPEG images can be loaded into successive frames and animated. These JPEG images can not be edited, but the user could also save each manual graphic as "Graphic n" (disk icon) and thus be able to modify the original graphic.