A. Screen Gear will take a folder full of AIFF, PICT, JPEG and QuickTime(Moov) files and turn them into an elegant slide show, fading one image or movie into the next while playing your own music. If you don't have any files that's OK too Screen Gear will display stars or a moving line depending whether you have a PowerPC or 68k Mac respectively. Thus the phrase "Screen Gear not just a screen saver..."
Q. Why did we make Screen Gear?
A. Here are some good reasons!
1.) We wanted a tool that could play back pictures, sounds, animation and videos all at the same time.
2.) We wanted a tool that allows you to control the navigation of media elements through the use of the keyboard.
3.) We wanted a tool that keeps prying eyes off your computer when you're away.
4.) We wanted a tool that would allow you to view high resolutions files in any bit depth.
5.) We wanted a tool that's easy to use ( drop items into a folder ) and inexpensive.
Q. Is Screen Gear safe to use every day?
A. Yes, Screen Gear has been tested around the clock 24 hours a day 7 days a week for 5 months with no problems on several information kiosks! It is also under use by people who do multimedia authoring, DTP, accounting and database work without any problems related to Screen Gear.
Q. Who made Screen Gear's cool graphics?
A. My wife Terry. Wouldn't have been able to create Screen Gear without her help and support.
Q. How do you use Screen Gear?
A. Refer to the "QuickStart" or "Using Screen Gear" section.
Q. How much does Screen Gear cost?
A.The shareware fee for Screen Gear is $15 for a single copy.
HOW TO REGISTER
Screen Gear has the following pricing.
1-4 single user licenses, $15 per user
5-9 single user licenses, $13 per user
10+ single user licenses, $10 per user
A Site License costs $150 and covers all locations for your organization within a 160 kilometer radius of your site (100 miles). One big advantage of a Site License is that you do not need to keep track of how many people at your site are using the software.
A World-Wide License costs $500 and it covers all locations for your organization.
Paying for Screen Gear is fairly simple. Open the "Register" program that accompanies Screen Gear. Enter your name, your email address and the number of single user licenses you desire for each program you wish to purchase (or Site or Word-Wide licenses). Save or Copy or Print the data from the Register program and send the data and payment to Kagi. More specifics on the Register program to follow. Kagi handles the payment processing.
If paying with Credit Card or First Virtual, you can email or fax the data to Kagi. Their email address is sales@kagi.com and their fax number is +1 510 652-6589. You can either Copy the data from Register and paste into the body of an email message or you can Save the data to a file and you can attach that file to an email message. There is no need to compress the data file, it's already pretty small. If you have a fax modem, just Print the data to the Kagi fax number.
Payments sent via email are processed within 3 to 4 days. You will receive an email acknowledgement when it is processed. Payments sent via fax take up to 10 days and if you provide a correct internet email address you will receive an email acknowledgement.
If you are paying with Cash or USD Check you should print the data using the Register application and send it to the address shown on the form, which is:
Kagi
1442-A Walnut Street #392-M3
Berkeley, California 94709-1405
USA
You can pay with a wide variety of cash from different countries but at present if you pay via check, it must be a check drawn in US Dollars. Kagi cannot accept checks in other currencies, the conversion rate for non-USD checks is around USD 15 per check and that is just not practical. If you have a purchasing department, you can enter all the data into the Register program and then select Invoice as your payment method. Print three copies of the form and send it to your accounts payable people. You might want to highlight the line that mentions that they must include a copy of the form with their payment. Kagi can not invoice your company, you need to act on my behalf and generate the invoice and handle all the paperwork on your end.
Please do not fax or email payment forms that indicate Cash, Check or Invoice as the payment method. As far as we know, there is still no technology to transfer physical objects via fax or email and without the payment, the form cannot be processed. Payments send via postal mail take time to reach Kagi and then up to 10 days for processing. Again, if you include a correct email address, you will hear from Kagi when the form is processed. Screen Gear has a protection scheme and when you pay, we tell you how to indicate to Screen Gear that you have paid the registration fee. If you do not have an email address, please enter your complete postal address and please remember, we do not know what country you live in so please enter that into the postal address also.
Assuming that Kagi provides you with the registration code: If you do not have an email address you should consider selecting the Postcard Receipt so that Kagi can inform you of your registration code. Kagi transmits the registration codes via email and paid postcard receipt only.
Once you have received your registration number for Screen Gear click the register button in the help window and fill out the information. The registration information has to be typed exactly as it appears as it is case sensitive. Alert, after you have recieved your registration information please keep it in a safe place.
QUICKSTART
• When we created Screen Gear we wanted to make it easy to use with minimal work on the part of the user. To this end all you need to do is open the "Screen Gear ƒ" folder where the
Screen Gear application is located. Double-Click the "~Screen Gear" application and click the "OK" button dialog (Only present on non-registered versions of Screen Gear). Finally select "Start" from the "File" menu and you should see the instructions on how the help and preference dialogs work. Please view these 4 screens to gain an understanding of how the various dialogs of Screen Gear work. If you would like more control over the viewing of these files press the "?" key while viewing the files and a keyboard navigation window will appear. That's all there is to it, simple!
• If you really want to make Screen Gear a screen saver then you need to make sure that Screen Gear is started every time the computer is started. You can accomplish this by going into the "Screen Gear ƒ" folder and single click the "~Screen Gear" icon. Next select "Make Alias" from the "File" menu and an alias called "~Screen Gear alias" will be created. This next part could be a little tricky so read carefully! Open the "System Folder" icon by double-clicking it's icon. Find the folder called "Startup Items" inside the "System Folder", it should be toward the bottom of the folder if you are viewing the contents of the folder by name. Once you have located this folder double-click on it's icon. You may see other items in this folder or you may not, it doesn't matter either way. Then drag the "~Screen Gear alias" into the "Startup Items" folder, close the "Startup Items" folder and the "System Folder". That's it, now every time you start your computer ScreenGear will automatically start as well. Let's go over this again but in outline form this time.
1.) Go into the "Screen Gear ƒ" and single click the "~Screen Gear" icon
2.) Select "Make Alias" from the "File" menu, an alias called "~Screen Gear alias" will be created
3.) Open the "System Folder" icon by double-clicking it's icon
4.) Open the "Startup Items" folder found inside the "System Folder"
5.) Drag the "~Screen Gear alias" inside the "Startup Items" folder
6.) Close the "Startup Items" folder
7.) Close the "System Folder"
• There are a few of you who are wondering why Screen Gear uses 2600k of memory. The answer is there are many different sizes of monitors and different resolutions available on each system. We want Screen Gear to run without adjustments to it's memory right from the start. Screen Gear needs a minimum of 800k to operate at a 640 x 480 resolution (15 inch monitor) at 256 colors. The preferred setting of 2600k will work at resolutions of 1024 x 768+ (17 inch or larger monitors) at 16 bits or thousands of colors. Adjust the memory of Screen Gear to fit your needs, here's how.
1.) Quit Screen Gear if it's running
2.) Single click the "~Screen Gear" icon
3.) Select "Get Info" from the "File" menu
4.) Adjust the "Preferred size" box to the desired number (Careful, don't go below the 800k set for the minimum size)
5.) Close the "~Screen Gear Info" window
6.) Double-click the "~Screen Gear" icon to start Screen Gear again
That's all there is to it! If you would like more detailed information on uses of Screen Gear, refer to the "Using Screen Gear" section.
USING Screen Gear
• Screen Gear will take a folder full of AIFF, PICT, JPEG and QuickTime(Moov) files and turn them into an elegant slide show, fading one image or movie into the next while playing your own music. If you don't have any files that's OK too Screen Gear will display stars or a moving line depending whether you have a PowerPC or 68k Mac respectively.
• First we would like to set some simple ground rules to make sure that you get the most out of Screen Gear. The Screen Gear application can be placed almost anywhere on your computer and it will operate fine, but for maximum performance keep Screen Gear and any files that you are using in the "Screen Gear ƒ" folder. Make sure that any other file types other than AIFF, PICT, JPEG or QuickTime(Moov) stay out of the "Screen Gear ƒ" folder. Don't change the name of the "~Screen Gear" application. The reason for these precautions are limited to the keyboard navigation features. If the precautions are not followed, navigating forward and backward via the keyboard during a presentation could deliver undesirable results.
1.) Keep Screen Gear and any files that you are using in the "Screen Gear ƒ" folder.
2.) Keep no files other than AIFF, PICT, JPEG or QuickTime(Moov) in the "Screen Gear ƒ" folder.
3.) Don't change the name of the "~Screen Gear" application.
• To display or listen to an AIFF, PICT, JPEG or QuickTime file type with Screen Gear, just place the file in the same folder as the "~Screen Gear" application. Then you can do one of the following as long as Screen Gear is running and is the front most application(currently active application).
1.) Select "Start" from the file menu.
2.) Press the Command-S key
If Screen Gear is running and you have previously selected a sleep corner then move your mouse to that sleep corner. Or lastly wait until Screen Gear has timed out because of no activity (that could be a long time depending on your settings).
• Press “?” to see a list of commands for pausing, speeding up, slowing down, and so on. The commands are listed here for your reference:
Play: P (Works after pausing; causes program to play continously)
Pause: spacebar (This is a toggle; press it again to continue)
Next: right arrow
Previous: left arrow
Speed up: up arrow
Slow down: down arrow
Set speed: 1–9 seconds per frame, use the number keys
Jump to the first slide: F
Jump to the middle file: M
Jump to the last file: L
Play in random order: R
Sound volume control: S then 0-9 ( 0 turns the sound off )
Help for these controls: ?
Stop: mouse click
• The images will be shown in alphabetical (or numerical) order by name, so you can set the order by adding a letter or number to the front of each name — for example “aBook,” versus “bBook” and so on.
• All images and movies will be displayed in the center of the screen. Each image will be shown at the physical dimensions specified for that particular file. If that size is bigger than your current screen can accommodate, the image will be adjusted to fit your screen. This can cause some distortion to the image.
• If you have selected the "Fill the Screen" option in the preferences this will cause all pictures and movies to fill the entire screen. Note: If the files don't maintain an aspect ratio similar to the monitor i.e. 160 x 120 or 320 x 240 or 640 x 480 etc. The images will become distorted and may cause undesirable results. Although this can cause some amusing effects.
• Unless you have a very fast computer and hard disk drive, the size of your images may affect the rate at which the screen changes, because larger files or compressed JPEG's will take longer to load. You can resize your image(s) to fit your monitor at 72 dpi non compressed or keep the files at their original size and wait the extra loading time.
• If you have a movie that you would like to play on top of a picture(this is the same for QuickTime sound files) all you need to do is have the movie follow directly after the picture — example “aPicture,” then “aMovie”. If you don't want the QuickTime movie or sound file to play over your picture(it will by default - remember any picture that the movie follows) then create a small totally black picture. This file is black so you won't notice it on the black background. You can copy and rename the file as necessary to use it in multiple places.
• If you pause a movie by pressing the space bar you can continue the movie where you paused by pressing the right arrow. If you press the left arrow the movie will play backwards and will start looping until you stop it. Pressing the pause key and then pressing the right arrow automatically places you in the pause play mode. This will cause Screen Gear to stop displaying the next picture or movie until you press the right arrow key again. This is perfect for presentations so you have control over the playback of the slide show. To place Screen Gear in the auto play mode just press the P key and the screen will automatically change to the next picture and will continue there after.
• There are many different ways to combine your files to create all sorts of cool effects, don't be afraid to experiment. Another feature is that you can change the order and add or remove files without having to restart Screen Gear. This allows you to see your changes quickly.
• If you place an AIFF file into the Screen Gear folder you can have a music file or several music files playing in the backgound. The AIFF files will play independantly of pictures or QuickTime files. In other words if the music is longer than the 10 seconds that the picture is set for displaying the music will continue to play to the next picture and so on. Once the music is done and you have no other AIFF files to play, the music will start over from the beginning with the first AIFF file. If you want to maintain proper navigation of the images make sure that the AIFF files are always last by pacing a "z" as the first letter in the name of the file.
• If you would like to adjust the volume while Screen Gear is running you can press the S key and then press any number from 0 - 9. The number 9 would set the master volume to the loudest setting and the number 0 would turn the sound off. Once the S key has been pressed the volume control remains active until the picture fades to the next. This will allow you to adjust the volume without constantly pressing the S key.
HELP WHAT DO I DO?
Q. Oops, I forgot my password and I keep getting locked out of my computer when Screen Gear activates! What do I do?
A. The best thing to do is force Screen Gear to quit by pressing and holding "option and command" and then pressing the "esc' key. This should allow for you to save and then quit any open applications that you may have. After no applications are running restart the computer. FYI you should restart the computer anytime you force an application to quit. Once you have restarted the computer start Screen Gear if it's not already started. Then go to the "Preferences..." menu option under the "File" menu and check the "Password" check box. From here you have two options, you can enter a new password or select the "No Password" button. That's all there is to it.
Q. I keep getting these irritating messages that say that I'm out of memory. What do I do?
A. There are primarily three reasons for this type of problem.
1.) The file that you are trying to view is larger than the memory currently allocated to Screen Gear. You can fix this if you have enough RAM by quiting Screen Gear and selecting "Get Info" from the "File" menu and increasing the number in the "Preferred size" box.
2.) The monitor size or bit depth or both are set to a large number. This could be a problem with big monitors. That's why we've allocated the 2600k to Screen Gear to support the big monitors. Again you can fix this if you have enough RAM by quiting Screen Gear and selecting "Get Info" from the "File" menu and increasing the number in the "Preferred size" box.
3.) You don't have enough RAM on your computer. Try reducing the bit depth of the monitor if you don't need it or turn on virtual RAM in the control panels. Although the later is not recomended because of lack of performance, but it will work in a pinch. Lastly you could buy some more RAM, it's much cheaper these days.
Q. I want to register Screen Gear but I don't have access to the Internet. What do I do?
A. Good question, just open the "Register" program that came with Screen Gear fill out the information and print it. Place the printed paper and your check in a self addressed envelope and mail to (Kagi 1442-A Walnut Street #392-M3 Berkeley, California 94709-1405 USA).
Q. I can't find the register program or I don't have a printer to print and mail the registration form and I don't have access to the Internet. What do I do?
A. You can always get a fresh copy of Screen Gear and the register program from <http://www.screengear.com.gu/>. If you don't have a printer and you don't have access to the Internet just put your "Name, Company, Address, City, State, ZIP or Postal CODE, Country, Phone Number on a piece of paper. Place the paper and your check in a self addressed envelope and mail to (Kagi 1442-A Walnut Street #392-M3 Berkeley, California 94709-1405 USA).
KNOWN CONFLICTS
Screen Savers
• Never use Screen Gear while another screen saver is active. Using any screen saver while using Screen Gear as a screen saver may cause unpredictable results, or predictable depending on how you look at it. An example might be as follows: you are doing a presentation using
Screen Gear and you have another screen saver running in the background set to become active in 5 minutes. Now lets also add that your presentation is self running. At around 5 minutes after you start the presentation the other screen saver becomes active and blows the presentation. Oops we wouldn't want that!
• Moving Screen Gear to a different folder while Screen Gear is running will cause unwanted results. Quit Screen Gear before you move it to a different folder. Better yet move the files you would like to view into the folder with Screen Gear and you won't have to restart
Screen Gear to view them.
• Having your go to sleep time set too early, or not moving your mouse to a non-sleep corner before you do a task that requires processor activity but not user activity, may cause Screen Gear to sleep when you don't want it to.
• When an Apple language kit such as JLK, KLK, CLK is installed and you want to use keyboard navigation during a slide show, make sure that before you start, you select "U.S." language from the menu. Otherwise you might not get the desired results from your keyboard.
• If you try to view a ( PICT, JPEG, MOOV or listen to an AIFF or MOOV ) file that was created on anything other than a Mac you might not be able to use the file. The reason is that the other platforms don't use resource information and Screen Gear relies on this information to identify the file types. If you would like to read these files you will have to use ResEdit to open a resource fork and type in the file type. Or you can open the file with your favorite Mac graphic, movie or sound editor and re-save the file.
