OS/2 Shareware

April OS/2 Shareware

If you really want multimedia to shine on your OS/2 desktop, take a look at these excellent third-party applications.

By Christopher Relf

Section Index

Products in this section:

Windows:BiblePro 6.0, Theophilos 2.6, Pagan DayBook II 4.0b, Virtual Rosary 3.5, Prayer Times 4.0, Crucifixion Theme

OS/2:PMView, Albatros Media Player 2.0b6, QuickMotion 2.0, Embellish 2.01, MainActor 1.5

Mac: Uli's Moose 2.0 and Phrase Editor 2.2, DeskBots 1.6, Kineticon 1.4, MyEyes 2.3.2, Yo! 1.0, Kaleidoscope 2.1.1

Linux: Postilon, Ace of Penguins, Code Crusader, GQ, Stamp

Before you install a shareware program that you have downloaded from the Net, you should always check the version information. You could be downloading an old version with limited features, or even an experimental one that could crash your workstation. Generally, the first release version is 1.00 — there may be versions before this one, but they are usually 'under construction' versions. When the author makes a minor improvement, the version number is incremented (for example: 1.00 becomes 1.01). But when a major change occurs (a lot of extra functionality, or a new PM interface, for example) the version number increments to the next whole integer (for example: 1.54 becomes 2.00). A word of warning: if the version code ends with either a or b — beware! Alpha versions (for example, 1.32a) have undergone little testing at all, and beta versions (for example, 2.46b) have been tested at a base level, but have usually been released for others to test. If an alpha or beta release falls over and you lose data, or even suffer hardware damage, you have used the program at your own risk!

PMView

It's been around for a while, and with every release it just gets better. I know that I've mentioned Peter Nielsen's PMView before, but it is really one of those applications that has stood the test of time over many years. It's been around for longer than I've been using OS/2 , and that's a while!

PMView is a robust general-purpose graphics viewing and manipulation utility. Most standard manipulations are available, including section transformation (mirror, rotate, sizing), colour (conversion, alter the number of colours used, gamma correction, brightness, contrast, RGB balance), and almost every file format ever conceived is supported.

The filtering functions are useful for removing (or adding) noise for images, multidirectional contour, edge detection, Laplacian (my favorite) and general pass filters. Note that all of the default filters are highly customisable, and new filters can also be defined with ease.

In slide show view mode, users can have a small control panel and windowed notes on each image of the slide show that they have defined. PMView also has TWAIN support for acquisition using a TWAIN compliant scanner.

Overall, PMView is a powerful and stable graphics utility.

Download the version for your operating system here:

OS/2

Publisher:

Peter Nielson

Price:

$US42

Requirements:

OS/2 Warp 2.11, 486DX2 66, 4M RAM, 800 by 600 (256 colour) video card, supported mouse.

Install instructions:

Download to your local drive, then unzip it (for help click here) and run the EXE file.

Links online:

http://www.bmtmicro.com/pmview/

Rating:

Albatros Media Player 2.0b6

You would definitely know the name Norbert Heller if you owned a Gravis Soundcard and had got it going with OS/2 -- he's the guy that wrote the drivers. This programming project turns out to be a fully functional multimedia suite. This multimedia (video and audio, not stills) player will take just about everything you can throw at it. This includes: MODs (MOD, XM, MTM, ULT, STM, and S3M); WAV, VOC, MID (soundcard dependent), AU, AIFF, MPEG, AVI, MPEG-1 video (CDI, DAT, MPG); FLC, FLI and QuickTime (with an additional codec from IBM).

Albatros is fully drag-and-drop compatible, so you can simply drag any of the above formats onto it, and they'll begin playing. If you already have a player, have a look at its CPU usage. Often, due to MMPM/2 overheads and poor programming techniques, you can't really do too much else when a file is playing. Albatros is extremely undemanding, so you can whistle while you work.

A word of warning: this is a beta release, so it may act up on you, although I had no problems at all. Bravo again, Norbert!

Download the version for your operating system here:

OS/2

Publisher:

Norbert Heller

Price:

Contact the publisher.

Requirements:

OS/2 Warp 3, 486DX2 66, 4M RAM, 800 by 600 (256 colour) video card, supported mouse, MMPM/2

Install instructions:

Download to your local drive, then unzip it (for help click here) and run the EXE file.******

Links online:

http://www.bmtmicro.com/heller

Rating:

QuickMotion 2.0

Testing this application certainly didn't start well. The installation script provided uses ZipLock 2.0, a WIN-OS/2 application, so if OS/2 is the only operating system on your computer and WIN-OS/2 isn't installed, QuickMotion 2.0 is not for you. If you don't have WIN-OS/2 support, but do have Windows 3.11 or Windows 95 installed, you can run the installation routine under that, and then use the program under OS/2. I don't understand why software writers choose to do this sort of thing!

Anyway, once ZipLock has decompressed the installation files into the directory of your choice, you simply run install.cmd under OS/2 and everything should be fine. The installation of QuickMotion 2.0 will copy a few files to your workstation, including a couple of demonstration movies, and a QuickMotion folder to your desktop. The program itself extends MMPM/2 to allow 12 types of QuickTime, QTVR (virtual reality), QT MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) and a Windows-style AVI movie support to OS/2. Another program called QuickFlick is also installed, and is a native 32-bit OS/2 movie player and streaming video/audio plug-in for Netscape Navigator.

If you want to add QuickTime functionality to your OS/2 desktop, then QuickMotion is definitely worth a look, although the demo version is quite heavily crippled.

Download the version for your operating system here:

OS/2

Publisher:

Practice

Price:

$US34.95

Requirements:

OS/2 Warp 3, 486DX2 66, 4M RAM, 800 by 600 (256 colour) video card, supported mouse, WIN-OS/2 (for installation only)

Install instructions:

Download to your local drive, then unzip it (for help click here) and run the EXE file.

Links online:

http://www.quickmotion.com

Rating:

Embellish 2.01

Embellish reminds me a lot of xv, which was released for the Unix platform: visual effects (such as double vision, fisheye, oil painting, melting, swirl, shear) and colour alteration (such as greyscale, contrast, gamma adjust, histogram) are available, as are other special effects including filtering. Several common filters are bundled with Embellish (including contour directional, emboss, gradient) and there's even room for highly user-definable filters. You can open several images at once, with clipboard editing and pasting between them. Much like other viewers, there is a thumbnail view, and TWAIN image acquisition from an attached scanner. Overall, Embellish is powerful, but may contain numerous features that you will never use. Definitely a program to try out.

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Download the version for your operating system here:

OS/2

Publisher:

Dadaware

Price:

$US69.99 (for OS/2 and Windows 95)

Requirements:

OS/2 Warp 3, 486DX2 66, 8M RAM, 800 by 600 (256 colour) video card, supported mouse

Install instructions:

Download to your local drive, then unzip it (for help click here) and run the EXE file.

Links online:

http://www.dadaware.com

Rating:

MainActor 1.5

This one does just about everything! Easy to use for beginners and advanced users, MainActor is a modular multimedia-processing package. You can load, edit, play and save (and convert) all major animation and the most common picture formats. Available for OS/2 and Windows 95/NT, you can easily use you files at home and at the office.

Currently MainActor ships with the following 'loader' modules: AVI, BMP, DL, FLC, FLI, GIF, GIF-Anim, IFF, IFF-Anim3/5/7/8/J, JPEG, MPEG-1/2, MPEG audio layer-1/2/3, PCX, PNG, PPM/PGM/PBM, TGA, QuickTime, and WAV. The list of 'saver' modules is a little different: AVI, BMP, FLC, FLI, GIF, GIF-Anim, JPEG, MPEG-I/II, MPEG audio layer-2, QuickTime, MacPICT, PNG, PPM/PGM/PBM, TGA, Video Data, and WAV. A list of supported subformats can be found at http://www.mainconcept.com/html/formats.html.

A full-featured sequencer with audio and video effects is in preparation, as well as more modules (for instance to support SGI Movies and MOD files). At least check out the Web page -- it's well worth it!

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