• To display or listen to an AIFF, PICT, JPEG or QuickTime file types with Screen Gear, just place the files in a folder. From the "File Menu" choose "Designate File/Folder" to locate the folder with the files you would like Screen Gear to present. Next make sure Screen Gear is the front most application(currently active application) and select "Begin..." from the file menu.
Hint: You can use a similar procedure to jump to an image while Screen Gear is displaying an image by pressing ‚åòD and then locate the file you would like to view. You may need to turn on the disable mouse to ensure that Screen Gear doesn't detect mouse movement and wakeup.
• Now that you have a file or folder selected you can activate Screen Gear by moving your mouse to a sleep corner, providing you have activated the sleep corners in the preferences. If Screen Gear doesn't activate Immediately check your sleep corner delay settings.
• Another way Screen Gear can be activated is by letting Screen Gear time out due to no activity (that could be a long time depending on the settings in the preferences).
• While a presentation is running you can press the “?” key to view a list of keyboard navigation commands if they aren't disabled in the preferences.
• Images will be displayed in the center of your screen while movies can be located anywhere on the screen. Each image will be shown at the physical dimensions specified for that particular file. If that size is larger than your screen can accommodate, the image will be adjusted to fit your screen. (this can cause some distortion to the image). Selecting "Full Screen" allows the image to be stretched proportionately to the size of your screen. Selecting the "Fill the Screen" will cause all pictures and movies to fill the entire screen. Some images may become distorted, although this can cause some amusing results.
• 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 take longer to load. You may want to resize your image(s) to reduce the file size for faster loading.
• The files will be presented in alphabetical / numerical order. You can change the order by adding a letter or number to the front of each name — for example “aBook,” versus “bBook” and so on.
• If you want a QuickTime movie to play on top of a picture then just name the movie so it will follow directly after the picture. Make sure you have your view set to view by name and take a look at the files included with Screen Gear. They are organized as follows:
SG01 "PICT" image file
SG02 "PICT" image file
SG03 "PICT" image file
SG04 "QuickTime" file
SG05 "AIFF" sound file
Files can be an alias as well.
The image being displayed along with a QuickTime file will be presented for the duration of the QuickTime file only. When the QuickTime file is done playing Screen Gear will move on to the next file regardless of your seconds per frame settings. This is so you can synchronize audio(narration) tracks with images for presentations.
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 colored picture. This file should be the same color you selected as your background so you don't notice the difference. You can copy this file and rename it or make an alias of it (saves space) as necessary to use it in multiple locations.
• 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 tells Screen Gear to stop displaying the next picture or movie until you press the right arrow key again. 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 interesting effects, don't be afraid to experiment. To add/remove or change the order of your files just go to the file location and make the necessary changes and begin the show.
• If you place an AIFF file into your file folder you can have a music file or several music files playing in the arranged order. AIFF files play independently of images or QuickTime files. In other words if the music is longer than the 10 seconds the picture is set for displaying, the music will continue to play through to the next picture and so on. Once the music is finished and there are no other AIFF files to play, the music will start playing from the beginning of the first AIFF file all over again.
• If you would like to adjust the volume of Screen Gear while it's playing you can press the S key and then press any number from 0 - 9. The number 9 would set the 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 file fades into the next file. This will allow you to adjust the volume without constantly pressing the S key. Note: If you aren't fast enough in changing your volume settings and your image changes to the next image while you're in the middle of setting the volume, you could accidentally change the frames per second settings. The audio levels in Screen Gear are not dependent on the system volume levels.
