Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22
Appendix A | Appendix B | Appendix C | Glossary | Index | Legal Stuff | License


Chapter 7 - Using the Media Cleaner Wizard

Using Preconfigured Settings | Sample Movies | Choosing Sample Movies | Saving Settings for Future Use | Starting Compression

The Media Cleaner Wizard is a helpful system that interviews you about your movie and needs. The Wizard then sets your compression parameters based on your answers. If you are new to compression, this helps you get started without needing to know any "arcane" details, such as codec choice, frame rates, keyframes, etc.

To get started, select "Media Cleaner Wizard" from the Windows menu. After the window opens, the Wizard will prompt you to open a movie.

Once you've opened a source movie, the Wizard will interview you. Simply answer the various questions by clicking on the choices or sample movies that most closely represent your requirements or preferences and press the "Continue" button to go to the next screen.


Using Preconfigured Settings

You can also choose a preconfigured setting at the beginning of the interview with the "Choose Setting" button.

This will allow you to choose a preexisting setting which will be used on your movie and move you to the end of the interview. This feature is useful if you have previously compressed a similar movie and saved your settings, or want to use a pre-configured setting, such as "2x Cinepak."

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Sample Movies

The Media Cleaner Wizard uses sample movies to illustrate what the various parameters look or sound like. These sample movies are pre-compressed and are stored either on your hard drive (if you chose a "Full Install" or "Medium Install") or on the CD-ROM (if you chose a "Minimum Install").

NOTE: If you have a slower machine, the movies may only play one at a time; whichever movie the cursor was over last will play. You can change this by choosing the "Preferences..." option in the Edit menu, and selecting or deselecting the "Wizard: only play movie under cursor" checkbox.



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Choosing Sample Movies

The examples shown in the interview are not samples of your current movie - this would require Media Cleaner to compress your movie multiple times for each page of the interview, which would be very slow (changing pages could take a few minutes on a mid-range machine).

Instead, we've chosen three different movies that represent common aspects of movies you may be compressing. The sample movies include a low-change "talking" sample, a high-change "action" sample, and an "animated" sample with sections of both low- and high-change. You can switch between the sample movies at any time with the pop-up at the bottom of the Media Cleaner Wizard screen. We suggest that you pick the movie that most closely matches your content. If your movie has multiple content types, you may want to switch periodically between the three sample movies to see how the different parts of your movie may look once they are compressed.

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Saving Settings for Future Use

Once you are done with the interview, the Media Cleaner Wizard will use the information you provide to create a unique settings group with which to compress your movie. You may save this settings group for future use by clicking the "Save Setting" button. You will be prompted for a name.



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Starting Compression

To start the compression of your movie after you have completed the interview, simply press the "Continue" button. You may also press the "Start" button on the Status Bar.

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