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 13 - News & Updates and Preferences

News & Updates | Changing Your Preferences | Changing the Interface | Minimize Preview | Appending Settings Names to Movie Names | Changing Sample Movie Display

News & Updates

The world of digital video is constantly changing. A major issue is trying to stay current with the latest releases of software and codecs. For example, during 1996 there were four updates to Movie Cleaner, three versions of QuickTime, a couple of new codecs, and several updates to the MacOS.

To help you stay current, we've made Media Cleaner capable of notifying you of changes in multimedia technologies as they occur. We hope this will help simplify your job as a multimedia producer.



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How News & Updates Works

Media Cleaner looks for an active Internet connection when it is first launched. If it finds one (such as a browser that is currently open), Media Cleaner will use this connection to talk to a special server Terran maintains and download the latest news.

Once the message is downloaded, Media Cleaner will check the date of the news to make sure you haven't seen it yet. If it's new, Media Cleaner brings up a dialog with the note and two buttons. Click on the "More Info" button to launch your browser and visit the appropriate site for complete details, or click the "OK" button to get rid of the dialog.

If you have a modem, and you are not using OpenTransport, Media Cleaner will ask you if you wish to receive News & Updates. If you select this option, your modem may dial when you first launch Media Cleaner.

NOTE: You can turn off the News & Updates feature in the Preferences dialog if you do not wish to be notified of the latest releases, codecs, etc. You can also control when Media Cleaner checks for news, as well as which browser you would like to use.


Reviewing Older News & Updates

If you want to go back and read a message that you have recently dismissed, you can make Media Cleaner display recent messages with the "Review News & Updates" option in the Internet menu. This will reset the date, and show you the recent News & Updates messages.

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Changing your Preferences

Changing the Interface

You can alter the textures and backgrounds of Media Cleaner in the Preferences dialog. Simply select your "Favorite Color" and the interface will change to a texture and background based on that color.

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Minimize Preview

Selecting the "Minimize preview while compressing" option causes Media Cleaner to display a thumbnail of the movie instead of the full image in the Output Window during compression. This option also deactivates the Before/After slider.

Choosing the Minimize option will speed up processing, and is often used with Batch Processing to improve performance.

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Appending Settings Names to Movie Names

Checking the "Append Settings to File Name" option will cause Media Cleaner to add the name of the settings group used to compress a movie into that movie's file name. This option is very useful if you are making different versions of a movie, and wish to track which movie was made with a particular setting.

NOTE: Names over 32 characters will be truncated, so we recommend keeping your settings group names short.

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Changing the Sample Movie Display

If you have a slower computer, the movies in the Media Cleaner Wizard window may only play one at a time ­ whichever movie the cursor was over last will play.

In the Preferences dialog, check the "Wizard: Only play movie under cursor" option if you only want one movie played at a time. Deselect this option to make all the sample movies play at once.

NOTE: Playing all the movies at once on slower machines may cause some movies to play poorly.

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