VISSIM Tips & Tricks

Some people asked if it is possible to include titles or trailers in an AVI recording directly in VISSIM. While there is no direct functionality, there still is a simple solution without the need for video editing software: Define your title and trailer as background image and place them in the keyframe sequence.

• Click here to view our example
  

Below you will find a step-by-step guide on how to achieve this in VISSIM:

1. Create the desired screen(s) as a bitmap file (e.g. export a slide from Microsoft Powerpoint in JPG format). The best results are achieved if the resulting image dimensions (width & height) are exactly the same as the AVI to be recorded.
   
   
2. Open your VISSIM network and size the VISSIM window to your desired video width & height (best practice: use an *.ini file that sizes the window so that the resulting AVI has the desired dimensions).
   
   
3. Load the bitmap files one by one as background image into VISSIM.
   
   
4. Move the backgrounds to an appropriate location outside the scope of your network (using the background origin functionality). [Tip for advanced users: If you place the backgrounds on the same horizontal or vertical line and offset them by multiples of 1m then the definition of keyframes is much easier. You can achieve this kind of placement by loading all backgrounds without moving or scaling them, saving their parameter files and then editing these parameter files accordingly.]
   
   
5. Switch to 3D mode and navigate to the background image to be included. Make sure it entirely fills the screen. You get best results if you zoom in so far as the background exactly fits the VISSIM network window.
   
   
6. In your keyframe sequence, add a new keyframe and place it at the desired sequence location by defining an appropriate start time. Choose the dwell time taking into account that the AVI runs at least twice as fast as the simulation. Ensure that both the movement time to and from this keyframe is calculated to 0 seconds by defining the start and dwell times accordingly.
   
   
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for all other screen images (backgrounds) you wish to include. You may want to use the cursor keys to move only vertically or horizontally to the next image for keyframe definition as the cursor key steps are 1m.
   
   
8. Record your AVI as usual.

What happens now is that the title/trailer screens appear as defined by the keyframe sequences (see example video). Due to the movement time set to 0s the keyframe transitions appear as a cut (without a visible camera movement). You could even experiment with movement times > 0 for some effects, e.g. from one screen to another (as seen at the end of the example video).