Frequently Asked Questions

 

Frequently Given Answers

Q. The screen saver does not appear to be synchronized to the music - what should I do?

A. Here are a few hints, tips, tricks, and techniques to get the most out of using the two programs together.

Q. I'm having a problem related to sound, spectral analysis, or sound sync. What should I do?

A. CD/Spectrum Pro is a demanding application that exercises the majority of your sound card's functionality. Generally speaking, CDSPro uses the same set of functions that would be used if you were to record and play back CD audio using the Windows CD Player and Sound Recorder. Therefore, a minimum system requirement for CDSPro is that you be able to perform this task; record and play back CD audio using the Windows CD Player and Sound Recorder. All multimedia systems should be able to do this with no trouble. However, some drivers exist that can't handle this task properly. If you are unfortunate enough to have one of those drivers, you should contact your computer or sound card manufacturer for a replacement driver.

If you are having a problem which is related to CDSPro, first ensure that the problem does not occur with the system tools. Try recording and playing back CD audio using only the Windows CD Player and Sound Recorder (close CDSPro before performing the test). If the problem is related to a media file (MP3, WAV, etc), try playing the file with the Windows Media Player. If the system is behaving properly and CDSPro is not, then visit our technical support page for more information on filing a problem report.

Q.  The Random module resets (starts a different display) every 16 seconds or so. How can I increase or decrease this time period?

A. The timeout value for random modules is set under the Random module. Choose the Random module you’re interested in (the primary ones that come with our screen savers are “[R] Saved Settings” and “[R] Saved Sound Settings”), and then click on the Random module. Under the Random settings you will see a Duration field. This is the number of seconds that pass before the Random setting you are running chooses another display. The default is 16 (seconds).

Q. Why would I sometimes experience a lockup or video anomaly?

A. Some people with lesser known sound cards or video cards have reported cases where the computer will lock up or display video anomalies when running one of our products. It is important to note that in Win95 and NT, applications (like ours) need help from poorly written drivers or faulty hardware to lock up the computer or taint the display in this way.

We've also noticed that the majority of the people reporting lockups with CDSPro have been using ESS or Crystal sound cards/chips. We have found that getting updated drivers is the only way to get these systems stable enough to handle CDSPro. We do not provide drivers - you must contact your sound card or computer manufacturer for them.

For video anomalies (most often manifesting themselves as small boxes which stay on the screen after the saver exits), the problem is probably due either to a problem in your video driver or to the way the driver is configured. There are several things you can try that may resolve the problem.

If the previous suggestions don’t fix the problem, please follow the instructions on our technical support page to obtain further help. This will give me more information about your system and drivers.

Q. Why does the screen saver start and stop or run slowly?

A. There are a number of potential causes for this:

  1. The most common cause of this is that there is an anti-virus program running that has been configured to scan the drive when the screen saver is started. The solution is to disable this feature of the anti-virus software when you wish to use the screen saver. Many anti-virus programs can be configured to scan the drive at certain hours of the day, this may be a more suitable workaround for systems operating in an environment where viruses are a concern.

  2. Another common problem is that a registry monitoring program has been installed on the system. These types of programs can drastically reduce the performance of some programs, including our screen savers. A good solution for this is to only run these programs when you install new software.

  3. The “Animation Speed” slider in the “Main Settings” panel for the screen saver may not be set at the “Fast” position.

  4. You may have a slow system. While our software should run quite smoothly on Pentium based systems, it’s possible that another program may be running in the background and stealing cycles from the screen savers.

Q. Why don't the colors in The Psychedelic Screen Saver "shift and undulate "in high/true color display modes?

A. While the screen savers should still work in high/true color modes, you will only get the palette animation effects in 256 color video modes. In order to get some of the effects that they use, the screen savers use a palletized video mode. This means that colors are referenced by index rather than by RGB value. By using a palletized video mode, the screen savers can change the RGB value that corresponds to a particular palette index and the result is that all of the colors on the screen that use that index are immediately updated. Neither high or true color modes use a palette, so it is not possible to achieve the effects without manually updating the entire display. Since updating the entire display is far too slow, I didn't code the screen savers to do it.

If you have Microsoft’s DirectX extensions installed then you can use the "Display" panel inside the Psychedelic Screen Saver configuration dialog to set the video mode that the screen saver will run in. The screen saver can only provide this feature if the DirectX extensions are installed on
your system. You can find out if you have the extensions installed by selecting the "Display" panel. If there is a message telling you that they are not installed then you can download them from Microsoft’s web site at: http://www.microsoft.com/directx/

Q. Why am I having trouble connecting to the CDDB server(s)?

A. By far, the most common cause of trouble connecting to the CDDB servers is when you are using CD/Spectrum Pro on a computer that is behind a corporate firewall. Most firewalls do not proxy the port(s) used to communicate with the CDDB servers, so this function will not work from behind those firewalls. To work around this problem, CD/Spectrum Pro now supports the HTTP protocol for communicating with the CDDB servers. So to use the CDDB from behind a firewall, simply choose a server with the letters 'http' in the name. CD/Spectrum Pro will gather the proxy information automagically if you are using MS IE - some other browsers don't set the proxy information in the standard locations, so you may have to configure the proxy yourself using the "Choose Server" dialog on the CDDB page of the CDInfo dialog.

Q. Why do I have to keep reselecting the screen saver every time I boot my system?

A. This is a known problem with Win95.  Microsoft has documented the problem in a knowledgebase article that can be found on their web site.  The URL for the article is http://www.microsoft.com/kb/articles/q141/5/43.htm

Q. How do I remove SS Runner (Runner.EXE) from my taskbar?

A. To remove SS Runner from your task bar you need to follow the following steps:

1) Right click the SS Runner icon on the taskbar and select close from the popup menu.
2) Right click on the taskbar itself and select "Properties" from the popup menu.
3) Select the "Start Menu Programs" tab in the "Taskbar Properties" dialog.
4) Press the "Remove" button.
5) Double click on the "Startup" folder in the tree view in order to see its contents.
6) Select "Runner.EXE" (or "Runner") and press the "Remove" button.
7) Confirm the removal by pressing the "Yes" button.

At this point, SS Runner has been removed from your taskbar and will no longer be run when your system is started.

Q. I've activated the password protection on my Windows NT system but when I run the screen saver and then move the mouse I'm not prompted to enter my password. Why does this happen?

A. When you run the screen saver on a Windows NT system the screen saver has to run for about seven seconds before the operating system will prompt you for a password. This has nothing to do with the screen saver, this is a (very useful) feature of Windows NT.

Q. Is it possible to synchronize the spectrum/savers to another source, such as LINE-IN (my home stereo), RealAudio, etc?

A. If you can record and play back the source using the Windows Sound Recorder, then CDSPro should be able to sync the spectrum/savers to that source as well. If not, then your sound card / driver will not allow it. For more information, please see this other FAQ item.

Q. I have entered the registration code, but the program still tells me I need to register. What's wrong?

A. The most common cause of this misunderstanding is when someone purchases one of the screen savers (or one of the joint packages which contain a screen saver plus CD/Spectrum Pro), and the other screen saver remains unregistered. As described in our registration materials, The Psychedelic Screen Saver, The Kinemorphic 3D Screen Saver, The Hypnogenic Screen Saver, and CD/Spectrum Pro are three separate software products. 

You can see which programs are registered by looking in the information dialog. From CD/Spectrum Pro, click on the "About" or "Register" button. From either screen saver, right-click on the desktop, choose Properties, the screen saver page, click the "Settings" button, then the "About" button. When the information dialog comes up, the titlebar will contain the name and version of the program which launched it. Below that, in the middle pane, will be listed which programs are registered (if any).

Unfortunately, if you purchased the wrong product, we won’t be able to fix that. The registration code assigned to you will work only with the products for which you paid. And, obviously, once your registration code has been dispensed, there is no way to “take it back” or “trade it” for another. The best thing to do in this case is to download and use the software you did purchase, or go back make an additional purchase for the software you originally wanted. (The moral of the story is “please pay close attention to which product(s) you are purchasing.” <g>.)

Q. What do you do with the registration information (address, phone number, email ID, etc...)?

A. Most of the information we request is used to validate credit card orders. We also use it to verify the identity of people who later ask us to resend their registration number due to hard disk crashes, etc. We absolutely do not give your information to anyone else - you will not end up on a mailing list, telemarketing list, or other such list because of us (we hate those lists too).

Q. What is Synthesoft's official upgrade policy?

A. Out policy on upgrades is that, by registering a particular version, you are entitled to use any and all versions up to but not including the next major version.

For example, if you register version 2.1 you are automatically registered for all 1.x and 2.x versions but not for 3.x versions. Basically, you get updates to the version you registered and a discount to upgrade to a new version if there is an upgrade fee.   

Q. How can I capture the images that the screen savers generate so that I can use them for my wallpaper, WWW pages, etc…

A. The 'W' and 'S' keys can be used to capture images and animations while the screen saver is running.

W - Set the current desktop wallpaper to the frame of the animation that is currently being displayed. The file will appear in your Windows directory as a numbered BMP file (like BACK0001.BMP, BACK0002.BMP, etc…).

S - Capture the current screen to a file in the Screen Shots subdirectory in the directory where Psych was installed. If you hold down the S key each frame of the animation will be captured to a numbered file (like PSY-0001.BMP, PSY-0002.BMP, etc…). 

For more information about keyboard commands, please refer to the online help section for the appropriate screen saver.

Q. Will there ever be a Macintosh version of Synthesoft products?

A. Unfortunately, no. We've considered implementing Macintosh versions of our products, but the amount of time and energy required to maintain two separate forks of the source code prohibits us from doing so. Instead, we will apply our energy toward adding new modules, effects, and features to the Win95/WinNT versions. Our apologies to all of the Mac users out there.

Q. How can I write a screen saver or a similar program?

A. If you are interested in writing screen savers for Windows 3.1, there is a source code sample in the Microsoft Windows 3.1 SDK called BOUNCER that should be helpful. If you are interested in writing a 32 bit screen saver for Windows NT or Windows 95/98, you might want to check out a sample in the Microsoft Win32 SDK called FRACTAL.

To write After Dark modules, you'll want to get a copy of Berkeley Systems' After Dark Module SDK which should be available somewhere on their WWW site at: http://www.berksys.com/

Most of the interesting code in CDSPro uses the multimedia APIs and some OLE/COM. You can find documentation on everything we did with those APIs in the Win32 SDK online help, or on MSDN.

Specifically, folks seem to be interested in the spectrum analysis portion of CDSPro. We use standard Win32 multimedia APIs to gather the data. You should be able to find all you need in the online help for the Win32 SDK. To process the data, we use a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) - although there are other transformation functions available. Unfortunately, the FFT is too complex to describe here, or in email - so your best bet would be the local library. Be prepared to invest a hefty amount to time to reach "FFT Nirvana" - for me it was several months.

Q. What are the *.PSY, *.KIN, and *.HYP files?

A. These files are files which contain one saved display each (for either the Psychedelic, Kinemorphic 3D, or Hypnogenic screen saver, respectively). You choose a display as your default by choosing it in the Choose Display tab.   You can also make shortcuts on your desktop to the display files so that you can launch the appropriate screen saver with different settings just by clicking on the shortcut. The display files that come with the screen savers get installed when you run the setup program. They should show up in the drop-down listbox that contains the "Saved Displays" under both the Choose Display tab and Edit Displays tab.

Q. Which video cards are able to accelerate Kinemorphics?

A. Since the 3D graphics that Kinemorphics uses are produced entirely by OpenGL, any video card/driver that accelerates OpenGL-based programs will accelerate Kinemorphics. For a partial list of the many cards that accelerate OpenGL-based programs, see http://www.opengl.org/Products/Accelerators.html. 

At this time, 3dfx-based cards are unable to fully accelerate OpenGL. However, 3dfx are working on software that will allow OpenGL acceleration and as soon as it becomes available, it should be able to accelerate Kinemorphics as long as it is a complete implementation of OpenGL.

Q. How can I improve the frame rate for Hypnogenics?

A. There are a number of things that you can do to improve the frame rate:

1) Use the “Image Quality” slider on the “Auxiliary Settings” panel to lower the image quality.  This reduces the number of computations the screen saver must perform in order to compose a frame of the images.

2) Use the “Video Mode” panel to force the screen saver to run in a lower resolution video mode.  640x480 resolutions are usually quite fast.

3) Use the “Video Mode” panel to force the screen saver to run in a 256 color mode.   Like #1, this reduces the number of computations the screen saver must perform in order to compose a frame of the images.

Note that you’ll need to have Microsoft’s DirectX extensions installed in order to use the "Video Mode" panel inside the Hypnogenic Screen Saver configuration dialog. You can find out if you have the extensions installed by selecting the "Video Mode" panel. If there is a message telling you that they are not installed then you can download them from Microsoft’s web site at: http://www.microsoft.com/directx/

Q. I’ve noticed that some of the Display names are prefixed by “[D]”, “[R]”, “[S]”, and “[SEQ].” What do these prefixes mean?

A. These prefixes are a naming convention. They indicate that the Display:

[D] – Contains the default values for a particular module.
[R] – Uses the “Random” module.
[S] – Has been authored to take advantage of the sound synchronization capabilities.
[SEQ] – Uses the “Sequencer” module to display a specific grouping of Displays.

Q. Once I registered, I thought I would get a CD or documentation in the mail - where is it?

A. We do not ship any media, documentation, or other materials  - the software you download from our web site is fully functional and contains the online documentation. We distribute our products only via the World Wide Web (WWW). This way, any updates we post are immediately available to you for download.  

Also, we do not maintain any mailing lists, so for example we cannot email you to notify you when new versions are posted - just check the web site once a week or so (we probably average a new build every 2-3 weeks, sometimes more frequently, sometimes less).