Microsoft KB Archive/108698

Cinemania ’94: Readme.txt Contents

PSS ID Number: Q108698 Article last modified on 12-21-1998

1994

WINDOWS

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========================================================= 1994 WINDOWS kbreadme kbmm

= SUMMARY =

The following is the complete text of the README.TXT file that comes with Cinemania 1994.

NOTE: This Readme document refers to the Microsoft Download Service (MSDL). As of 12/31/1998, the MSDL service is no longer available. To download support files, visit one of the following Microsoft Internet sites:

http://support.microsoft.com/support

ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles

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===================================================== 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.

= REFERENCES =

KBCategory: kbreadme kbreadme kbmm KBSubcategory:

= Additional reference words: kbhowto 1.00 1.10 =

Version : 1994 Platform : WINDOWS ============================================================================= Copyright Microsoft Corporation 1998.