Schtick is an After Dark[tm] module by Time Warner Interactive Group which interchanges between playing QuickTime[tm] movies over backdrop pictures and displaying still images. You can turn off the backdrops, set the time between QuickTime movies, and set the "Hop" rate of movies--the number of seconds to play before the movie hops to a different part of the display.
After Dark is a screen saver program developed by Berkeley Systems Inc. After Dark consists of a single file called After Dark which is placed in your Control Panels folder, and comes with a number of modules that you can run one at a time, which are placed in the After Dark Files folder. After Dark normally takes over when your computer has been idle for a specified time. Originally the idea behind After Dark was to keep things moving on the screen to prevent a static image from being displayed so long that it becomes permanently burned into the display phosphor. This is less necessary now because of the higher quality engineering going into current displays, but people still buy After Dark for the second (and more significant) reason: After Dark is fun.
Setting up Schtick is easy. First, if you don't have After Dark installed, follow the Berkeley Systems Inc. instructions and add it to your Macintosh. Then, just copy Schtick from the CD-ROM to your After Dark Files folder, normally found just inside the System Folder.
To run Schtick, start the After Dark control panel from wherever you keep it, usually the Control Panels folder, by double-clicking on it. If After Dark appears in the Apple Menu (which is the menu associated with the Apple logo at the top-left of the menu bar on your main display), then you can start After Dark by selecting it as though it were a menu item). When the After Dark control panel appears, Schtick should appear alphabetically in your list of After Dark modules on the left side of the After Dark dialog box. Select Schtick to see the Schtick controls immediately to the right of the module list.
The top button of the Schtick controls, "Where To Look" is how you tell Schtick where to find QuickTime movies, stills and backdrops. The folder we set by default is on the CD-ROM, where all the original materials are, but you can easily change this by selecting a different folder on your hard disk and copying some of the still, backdrop and movie files over.
Schtick searches the folder you select, plus any folders within that folder, for movies, and plays them in random order without playing the same movie twice, until it runs out. Schtick searches a folder called "Backdrops" for backdrop "pict" files, and a folder called "Stills" for still "pict" files. There is no technical difference between the backdrop files and the still files, except that backdrops tend to be larger and Schtick displays them behind movies. This is why there are two different folders.
The Backdrops and Stills folders must be immediately within the Schtick folder that you select. If they don't exist when you change the search folder, Schtick will create a Backdrops and a Stills folder for you. Since movies, on the other hand, can be anywhere inside the folder hierarchy and Schtick will still find them, a folder for movies is not automatically created.
When Schtick works, it makes lists of available backdrops, stills and movies. It then alternately plays a few movies and then shows a few stills for as long as you let it.
To leave Schtick while in Demo mode, you have to press the mouse button once. To leave Schtick in normal After Dark mode, just move the mouse around; it may take a couple of seconds for the machine to notice you're trying to get its attention.
