AniEncoder Class

An animated cursor is an animation whose frames are cursor images: every frame of the image is written as one step, with its duration and its hotspot (FrameMetadata.Hotspot, the top-left corner when the frame has none). A still image is written as an animation of one step.

A step lasts a whole number of jiffies (sixtieths of a second): AniEncoder.DurationRounding decides what happens to a duration that is not one. The format has no play count, an animated cursor always loops: an image whose AnimationMetadata.TotalPlays is not null is rejected with an UnsupportedImageFeatureException, never written as an endless animation silently.

Frames whose encoded cursor image and hotspot are identical are stored once and shown again through the sequence table of the file, so an animation that repeats a drawing does not repeat its bytes. Each frame holds one representation, written like a cursor file: a still PNG or a 32-bit DIB, selected by AniEncoder.PayloadFormat.

The container stores at most 256 pixels per side; a larger image is rejected with an UnsupportedImageFeatureException. The destination must be seekable: frames are written as they arrive, with a memory use independent of their number, and the counts and sizes stored at the start of the file are written once the last frame is known.

Metadata (subject to ImageEncoder.MetadataHandling): one Title and one Author text entry (ImageMetadata.TextEntries) without a language or a translated keyword, whose value is Latin-1 text without a NUL character, are stored. Other text entries, a resolution, an ICC profile, EXIF, XMP and an orientation other than ExifOrientation.TopLeft cannot be stored (rejected by default).