Microsoft Cinemania 1994 (Preview Edition)/Microsoft-CinemaniaPreviewEdition94-Win31.iso/misc/cnmnia94.txt

Text File | 1993-08-25 | 13KB | 349 lines

=======================
MICROSOFT CINEMANIA '94
=======================

Multimedia is a new technology, and the new combinations of
hardware and software can present a variety of potential
performance and configuration problems.  This file contains
information on:

o Setup
o Windows mode
o Video display
o Correcting sound problems
o Single- and double-clicking
o Playing film clips
o Playing the Cinemania '94 Demo
o Recovering hidden windows
o Improving the quality of printed material
o Removing the CD-ROM disc in error
o Screen Savers
o Improving performance


SETUP
-----
If Setup is interrupted by a loss of power, a power surge,
or some other unplanned-for incident, Setup creates
a temporary directory called ~msstfqf.t. You should delete
this directory before you run Setup again.

Orchid ProDesigner II VGA video driver:
If you are using an Orchid ProDesigner II VGA video driver,
Setup may fail.
See your dealer about getting an updated driver
OR
use the standard VGA driver.


WINDOWS MODE
------------
We strongly suggest that you run Cinemania in Enhanced mode
while using Cinemania '94. To see if you are running Windows
in Enhanced mode, choose About Program Manager from the Help
menu of Program Manager (or About File Manager from the
Help menu of File Manager). In the bottom section of the
dialog box that appears, you should see "386 Enhanced Mode."
If you do not see it, you can force Windows to run in Enhanced mode,
by typing WIN/3 or WIN/E at the DOS prompt when launching Windows.


VIDEO DISPLAY
-------------
More Than 256-Colors:
If your video display uses more than 256 colors or has a
resolution higher than 640x480 AND you experience display
problems, open Windows Setup, choose the Options command,
and select a 640x480, 256-color display.

Less than 256-Colors:
If your video display uses less than 256 colors,
Setup switches your display into a grey scale video
mode to improve the appearance of the displayed
images. Cinemania '94 appears on your screen in grey.

Cinemania '94 is designed to run at VGA (640X480) resolution
with 256 colors. If you installed the previous version of
Cinemania, you had the option of installing
a palettized VGA driver if your display was less than VGA.
(This driver gave you a 16-grey display so that the many
photographs in the program could be seen to best advantage.)
Cinemania '94 removes this palettized VGA driver during
Setup. There is a very slight chance that other applications
may use this palettized VGA driver. If this is the case, simply
reinstall this driver.

Video drivers:
Cinemania '94 may encounter display problems when using
accelerated video drivers, video drivers with a lot of colors,
or high resolution video drivers. Make sure you are using the
latest video drivers for Windows available from the video card
manufacturer.
To find out what video driver you are using, go to the Windows
Program Manager Main group window and double-click the Windows
Setup icon. There you will see the name of the video driver
currently in use.
If you are having display problems, try installing the standard
VGA video driver that comes with Windows. (Make sure the video
driver is compatible with your specific video card.) For
instructions on installing the driver, see Help within
Windows Setup in the Main program group in the Windows Program
Manager.

Obtaining Updated Drivers:
Contact the manufacturer of  your video card for updated
Windows display drivers. Their phone number should be in
the manuals that came with your video card or
personal computer.  Another option for obtaining updated
drivers is the Microsoft Download service, an electronic
bulletin board that can be accessed via a modem
at (206) 936-MSDL (6735).

Drivers provided on the MSDL are compressed with the PKWare
utilities, and are in the form of executable files
(.EXE extension).  It is best to download the file or files
you need into an empty directory to your hard disk, or a
blank formatted floppy.  To decompress these drivers
after downloading them, either:

o From Windows File Manager:  double click on the filename
(e.g.,  the appropriate file ending in .EXE) that you downloaded.

-or-

o From the DOS prompt:  change to the directory containing
the downloaded file, type the filename, and press ENTER;


CORRECTING SOUND PROBLEMS
----------------------------
If you don't hear anything when you play animations,
dialogue clips, film clips, or music make sure that:

o You have a sound card installed.
o You have a speaker hooked up to the jack on your sound
  card (not to the CD-ROM drive).
o The volume is set to an audible level.

You can test sounds with the Sound option in the Windows
Control Panel.  If you hear no sound when testing sounds,
open the Drivers option to check the sound driver files.
These drivers must be compatible with your sound board.
Make sure that drivers for wave files are displayed in the
Drivers dialog box.  If necessary, set up your sound board
again. If you still can't hear sounds, call the sound board
manufacturer to verify that you are using the correct drivers
and that there are no hardware conflicts.


SINGLE- AND DOUBLE-CLICKING
---------------------------
In Cinemania '94, single-clicking is the standard.
You single-click buttons, commands, hot text, icons,
and list items to navigate through the product.

The only thing you must double-click in Cinemania '94
is the name of a movie in a ListMaker list to move
it to the entry field so you can edit it.
You can  double-click items in other lists, but this action
is a short cut only. For example, to go to a movie listing
from the Contents list, you click the title of the movie,
then click Go To Subject. However, you can choose to
double-click the title instead.

When in doubt, always single-click.

NOTE: Be sure to single-click the audio icon  (the small
loudspeaker) to play a dialogue or musical excerpt.
If you double-click the audio icon, the first click
starts the excerpt and the second click immediately
causes it to pause.


PLAYING FILM CLIPS
------------------
It is best to run only one media element at a time.
If you start a film clip and then want to switch to
something else (such as a Demo), click the Stop
button or let the film clip play through to the end.

If you have a 16-color display or a Dell 256-color
display, you cannot display the film clips at
full-screen size (an option in the Drivers AVI
dialog box.) You can find directions for changing
the option in Cinemania '94 Help in the Exploring
a Movie Listing (Expanded) topic. Click the Film
Clip button hot spot on the Help screen).

As a general rule, you should not remove the CD-ROM
disc while you are running Cinemania '94.

Windows NT:
If you are running Windows NT, you cannot play the
film clips.



PLAYING THE CINEMANIA '94 DEMO
------------------------------
It is best to run only one media element at a time.
If you start a media element such as a Demo or a film
clip and then want to switch to something else, stop
the first media element before you start the other one.

In a few cases, moving the mouse over the screen while
the Demo is loading will cause skips and breaks in the
sound. If this happens, keep the mouse still until the
Demo has started playing.

ATI Mach 32 display driver:
If you are using an ATI Mach 32 display driver, you may
experience problems (distorted images) running the
Cinemania '94 Demo. In the Program Manager,
open the "mach32 Utilities" program group, and click
"FlexDesk Control Panel".  Select the "Advanced..." menu,
and turn "Device Bitmaps" to "Off". Alternatively, edit
the WIN.INI file. Under the section "Mach32",
change the "DeviceBitmaps=on" line to "DeviceBitmaps=off".

Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 display driver:
If you are using the Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 display driver,
and try to play the Cinemania '94 Demo, the program will
crash. Contact the manufacturer of your display card
or driver about a card or driver which offers more
complete graphic support.


o RECOVERING HIDDEN WINDOWS
-------------------------------------
Sometimes small or minimized windows, such as those from
the Search or History features, can become hidden behind
the Cinemania Controller.

If you use Search and then minimize the Topics Found window,
you may not be able to find the minimized icon. If this
happens, pressing ALT-F6 either once or twice will bring the
Topics Found window to the front of the Controller.
(Before clicking the icon to open the window, try moving
the icon to another location to force it to appear in a
more convenient location the next time.)

If the History window becomes hidden behind the Controller,
simply press the History button on the button bar to bring it back
to the top of the Controller. To prevent the History window
from becoming hidden, drag it to a location away from the
Controller and it should continue to appear at this location
whenever you open it.


IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF PRINTED MATERIAL
-----------------------------------------
If you want to print information from Cinemania
and would like to change the text formatting,
use the Copy command on the Edit menu to copy the
text to the Windows Clipboard.  You can then open
another Windows application (such as Microsoft Word
for Windows), use the Paste command to paste the text
into a file, format the text to meet your requirements,
and then print it.


REMOVING THE CD-ROM DISC IN ERROR
---------------------------------
As a general rule, you should not remove the CD-ROM
disc while you are running Cinemania '94.

If, while running Cinemania '94, you eject the
Cinemania '94 disc from the CD-ROM disc drive,
insert a disc for another program, and then
click hot text (say, a movie title in a
review), you get a System Error message:
  "Cannot read from drive D:"

Reinsert the Cinemania '94 disc, and then click
Retry. You may have to click Retry several times
before the disc is recognized. If you are still
unable to return to Cinemania '94, click Cancel,
and close Cinemania '94.


SCREEN SAVER
------------
If you use a screen saver accessory, you should be
aware that the screen saver will become active even
while you are playing film clips. Either turn your
screen saver off or set it to save your
screen every 30 minutes or more.




IMPROVING PERFORMANCE
------------------------
Cinemania uses a lot of your system memory to display
graphics and film clips.  If you find that Cinemania runs
slowly, consider doing the following to improve your computer's
performance:

o Close all programs in Windows and in DOS that aren't
necessary for Cinemania '94. This includes screen
savers, shells, and TSRs.

o  If your computer is a 386 or higher, set up a
permanent Windows swap file on an uncompressed hard drive.
Windows usually creates a temporary swap file,
but if your hard disk is full or fragmented, this
temporary file can become unavailable. Make the size of the
permanent swap file at least 2048K.
See your Windows User's Guide for more information.

o  If you have a 386 with only 2MB of RAM and you encounter
out-of-memory errors, or if sound is not continuous and
the Demos are slow, choose About Program Manager from the
Help menu in the Program Manager window, and make sure
you're running in 386 enhanced mode. If you're not, exit
Windows and at the DOS prompt, type win/3

o  If your computer runs at 20 MHz or slower and you have
only 2 MB of RAM, use a 16-color driver for your display,
even if you have a 256-color card.  To change the display
driver, click the Windows Setup icon from the Program
Manager Main group window, and then from the File menu,
choose Run. From the Options menu, choose Change System
Settings. Change the Display to standard VGA or another
compatible 16-color video card driver.

o  Run Cinemania without the SmartDrive device driver.  To
disable SmartDrive, open the CONFIG.SYS file in Notepad,
change the DEVICE=SMARTDRV.SYS line to
REM DEVICE=SMARTDRV.SYS
Save the edited CONFIG.SYS file, and then reboot.
Or, open the AUTOEXEC.BAT file in Notepad, change the line
SMARTDRV.EXE
to
REM SMARTDRV
Save the AUTOEXEC.BAT file and then rebot.

o  Defragment ("clean up") your hard disk by running a disk
defragmentation program. For example, MS-DOS 6.0 includes
a utility called Microsoft Defrag. (Be sure to run the
utility in MS-DOS, not in Windows.)

o  Make sure that your CD-ROM drive is MPC-compatible (that
the drive can transfer data from the CD at 150 KB per second
while using less than 40% of the CPU bandwidth AND that the
drive has an average seek time of less than one second.
Check the documentation that came with your CD-ROM drive
to see if it meets these standards.

o  Add more extended memory to your computer. You can
determine how much extended memory is available by typing
MEM and pressing ENTER at the DOS prompt.  You need a
minimum of two megabytes of memory to play sounds and film
clips and to run Demos.

For comprehensive documentation on improving performance,
consult your Windows manual.