Merrimo User Guide › Comic canvas and pages

Bring in photos, video frames and camera shots on Mac

In Merrimo on your Mac, the Canvas sidebar’s Media mode shows pictures you can drag into your comic: your camera live, your Photos albums, frames from your story’s generated takes and videos, and the images and videos in a folder on your Mac.

Pick a source

The bar at the top of Media mode names what the sidebar is showing: a camera, an album, a chapter’s takes, a video or a folder. Click it to open the source card.

1. On the Canvas, choose Media in the sidebar, then click the name in the bar at the top of the sidebar.
2. In the card, click Camera, Photos, Videos or Folder to see what that source offers. The source the sidebar shows is lit.
3. Click a camera, an album, a chapter, a video or a folder to show it in the sidebar. You can also move through the list with the arrow keys and press Return.

Photos lists your albums as a grid of their key photos, Recents first. Camera lists the cameras your Mac can use, including an iPhone through Continuity Camera and Desk View, each with a live preview once you’ve allowed camera access. Videos lists the chapters that have generated takes, with how many takes each has, then the story’s other videos under Imported Videos, with Import Video… to add one. Folder lists the folders you’ve opened, most recent first, with Open Folder… to choose another.

Press Esc or click outside the card to close it without changing anything.

Search every source at once

Type in the card’s search field to look through all of your sources together. Matches are grouped as Photos albums, Folders, Chapters, Videos and Cameras, and a line underneath names the sources with nothing that matches. Folders match by their name, not by the files inside them.

Use the arrow keys to move to a match and press Return to show it. Press Esc to clear the search and go back to the source you were looking at.

Show a folder on your Mac

A folder of reference images, scans or test renders can sit in the sidebar like a Photos album:

1. Open the source card, click Folder, then click Open Folder… and choose the folder. You can also drag a folder from Finder onto the Media sidebar.
2. The bar shows the folder’s name, and the sidebar shows the images and videos at the top level of the folder (not those in folders inside it). The bottom of the sidebar says how many there are and where the folder is.
3. Drag an image onto the canvas or onto a reference, as you would a photo from Photos. Click a video to see its frames, and drag a frame where you want it, or click Import to add the video to the story.

Files you add to the folder in Finder appear in the sidebar on their own. Click the ⋯ button beside the bar to show the folder in Finder, open another folder, or change the thumbnail size.

Photos and folder images are shown whole, each at its own shape, in rows that fill the sidebar’s width, so the image you pick up is the whole picture. The thumbnail size sets how tall the rows are.

Merrimo remembers the folders you’ve opened on this Mac and which folder each story shows, so they’re still there the next time you open the app. Recent folders aren’t shared with your other devices. If a folder has been moved, renamed or deleted, or is on a drive that isn’t connected, it’s dimmed and marked Not found: click Locate… to find it again.

Look through a chapter’s takes

When you’ve generated takes in the Video Studio, Media’s Videos source lists every take in a chapter, with nothing to import. Each shot is a header with its number, where it happens and what happens, and its takes follow as thin filmstrips, newest first, labelled T1, T2 and so on. A star under the label marks the take the cut uses.

1. On the Canvas, choose Media in the sidebar, click the name in the bar at the top, click Videos, then click a chapter. The bar shows the chapter’s name.
2. Move the pointer along a filmstrip to skim it: a line follows the pointer, and the large view at the top of the sidebar shows that moment. It moves to another take only once the pointer rests on that take’s filmstrip for a moment, so you can move up over other filmstrips to drag the large view out without it changing.
3. Click a filmstrip to open the take below it as its frames. Opening another take folds the one that was open, and clicking an open filmstrip folds it.
4. Drag a frame, or the large view at the top, onto the canvas. A frame that’s already on the canvas shows the page it’s on, and a green mark under its filmstrip shows where it falls in the take.

Control-click a filmstrip or an open take’s frames to choose how many columns open takes use (1, 2 or 3), to open all of a shot’s takes at once so you can compare them, or to close one take or all of them. The … button in the bar at the top also sets the columns and closes every take.

The row under the bar narrows the list: All, In cut (the takes the cut uses) or Not used (takes with no frame on the canvas yet). The menu on the right of that row sets how far apart an open take’s frames are, from every quarter second to every 5 seconds.

Media remembers the chapter and the number of columns for each story, and for each chapter the takes you left open, the spacing of their frames and where you’d scrolled to, so you come back where you left off.