ScreenTime Photo & Video v. 1.0.4c

By Dale Farris, Secretary Golden Triangle PC Club September 2002 Ever wonder how those neat screen saver programs get made? Would you like to make a screen saver yourself? With this nifty program from ScreenTime Media, ScreenTime Photo & Video, you can make all sorts of neat screen saver files for your own personal amusement, or send to others. When you think about the ubiquity of the screen saver function on most all desktops all over the world, unless IS staff has disarmed the function, you have some idea how important screen saver files are to so many companies. Function of Screen Savers In the very early days of computers, when we worked with extremely limited computer monitors, mostly in the older DOS, monochrome monitor days, computer users did need to be conscientious about turning off their monitors, in order to prevent data or images from being "burned in" on the inside of their monitor. To the rescue of this annoying problem came the invention of computer screen savers. In these early days of computing, screen saver programs did just what the name says, save the screen from having images "burned in" on the inside surface. The purpose was to send to the inside of the monitor continuously changing data, to prevent a static image from being written to the inside of the monitor after a user left their machine on for a very long time without closing down their system. When this did happen, it was obviously apparent to the user, and over time this made it difficult to see other data sent to the monitor, since the inside of the device was permanently marred by the "burned in" image. Screen savers thus had a very important role in the very beginning days of computers, and all computer owners quickly learned to make sure their selected screen saver came on after a set period of limited activity, or remembered to power off their system if they were not going to be using it for a long time. Now we have far more advanced computer monitors that are engineered much differently from the early, monochrome monitors, and we no longer have to worry about images being "burned in" on the inside of the monitor. This has freed up screen saver developers to create various screen saver files that are now more focused around content or entertainment than serving to protect the monitor from damage. You can now find many extremely complex screen saver files today that in some cases rival some applications. The After Dark program is probably one of the most well known set of screen saver files that received a great deal of attention from thousands of computer owners, and represents what developers can now do with screen saver files that no longer serve any real utilitarian purpose. In addition, with most all computers capable of activating screen savers, unless this setting has been turned off or made inaccessible, as is the case in many educational, library, or corporate organizations, this presents opportunities for clever developers to design screen saver files that integrate company information, advertise company products, or inform owners about various programs or services. In addition, as evidenced by the After Dark programs, screen savers can also be heavily marketed as games or other types of entertainment. With the increasing interest in taking the screen saver approach to informing customers, this naturally increases the demand for software that will assist in this process. The massive explosion of digital cameras has also increased interest by home computer owners in creating their own customized screen saver files that integrate their captured digital images. ScreenTime Photo & Video arrives on the market to meet this greatly increased interest in screen saver software. ScreenTime Photo & Video is a super program that will appeal to developers, as well as home computer owners with the creative desire to design their own screen saver files. Brief Description ScreenTime Photo & Video makes it easy for you to create fun and entertaining screensavers from your photo & video images. You can quickly create screensavers of all your memorable and important moments, and send them to family and friends. ScreenTime's screen saver creation tools ensure that you get beautiful results in no time. ScreenTime Photo & Video Options The ScreenTime Media folks produce two versions of this neat program, one for personal use, and a commercial version. Professionals interested in developing screen saver files will definitely want to work with the commercial version. The focus of the program is to give program developers the tool that will support their effort to give their customers a screen saver that displays their desired customized information. ScreenTime Media pioneered the concept of a professional screen saver creation tool in 1995, turning what was a multi-thousand dollar custom programming job into an affordable, reusable application. In other words, they put the programmer in the box! Since then, they have continued to refine and improve the program, resulting in the power built into the latest version. Reliably playing back a screen saver across many different platforms is way more difficult than what ScreenTime Media figured back in 1995. While they found it was relatively easy to develop software to do simple screen saver stuff, they also found it was much more difficult to make a screen saver with an installer and an engine that would really do the right things on NT, XP, and 2000 machines (and Mac OS 8, 9 and X). ScreenTime Photo & Video will do this, and more, suiting the high expectations of today's program developers. ScreenTime Photo & Video supports Mac OS 8, 9, and X, as well as Windows 95, 98, 98 SE, 98 ME, 2000, NT 4, and XP. Whatever platform customers are one, ScreenTime Photo & Video will work on their system. On OS X for the Macintosh for example, ScreenTime Media programs do not play back Flash through QuickTime, which limits performance and many cool Flash MX features. Instead, their software plays back using the native Flash engine. That’s a pretty high level example of the power of this program, but even down to the lowest level of functionality the engines in ScreenTime Media programs seamlessly work with each platform, solving problems that you will never know about and will never have to care about. Another key feature of this program is its ease of use. The program started out in the Mac world, and it is now as equally easy to use on a Windows machine as a Mac machine. You’ll be able to figure out how to use the software very quickly, and the program will enable you to provide your customers a seamless experience using it. The program is also very reliable, and the company supports their product the way they would like to get support from others. Product Features -A super easy StoryBoard interface, which makes creating a screen saver as simple as dragging your photos onto the StoryBoard, and clicking the "Build Screen Saver" button  -An easy one-click e-mail installer lets users share their screen savers with family and friends - The ability to add text captions or music to your custom screen savers and change background colors - Selectable transitions between pictures and customizable window settings - An option to create self-running slideshows for easy-to-create presentations - An authoring environment, which features individual scene controls, full screen preview, and a "build as movie" option - Users can also create a single-file, compressed installer for simplified distribution of 100% windows compatible screen savers - Easy as Click, Drag and Build - Image formats supported include JPEG, BMP, PCX, DIB, AVI and MOV - Distribution is unlimited for non-commercial personal purposes Supported File Types ScreenTime supports many image, video, and sound file types, including: BMP   JPG   JPEG   PCT   PCX   AVI   MID   MP3   WAV Function in Business Most computer users enjoy and regularly use screen savers, and millions of screen savers are downloaded every day all over the world. With a screen saver, people can customize their personal space with a message, game, or information that's important to them. What better way to customize personal computer space than with a screen saver that's custom tailored to their interests? Just look around in your own company. How many users have screen savers that they downloaded from the Internet? How many have already figured out some way to set up their screen saver to display photos of their family on their computer? This is the neat thing about advertising with screen savers. People download screen savers because they want to see them. Screen savers provide the perfect medium to deliver branding and company information in a fun, entertaining, and unobtrusive manner, and to a willing audience. Because the user chooses to download the screen saver, screen savers are truly the ultimate in opt-in marketing. Now, with ScreenTime Photo & Video you too can begin to tap into this wide open market. How Does It Work? The ScreenTime Project window appears when the program is opened. The window is divided into the main Menu, the Button bar, the Storyboard, and the Information bar. The Information bar contains general information about your screen saver project, and the Button bar contains toolbar icon buttons that you use to perform common tasks, such as Open, Save, Cut, Copy, Paste, Soundtrack, Preview, Build Screen Saver, and Build Movie. The Menu bar includes File and Edit, and the Project Menu allows you to customize the Settings window and customize the Preview Monitor. The Scene Menu allows you to add and modify individual scenes, and copy and apply attributes of one scene to another scene, and the Help Menu opens up answers to user questions about the software. The Storyboard is where you add, view, arrange, and edit the elements of your screen saver project. Create a screen saver by dragging and dropping images, video, and sound files into the Storyboard. Each picture or video on the Storyboard is an individual scene. Each scene displays the scene number, file name, thumbnail view, and a row of icons representing that scene's display settings. ScreenTime plays your scene in sequential order, according to their scene number. There is no limit to the number of images or videos you can put into a ScreenTime screen saver. Resize the project window and use scrollbars to view the entire contents of the project. There are two scene types, including Image Scenes and Video Scenes. Image Scenes contain a single picture, such as a JPEG or a BMP file. Video scenes contain a movie, such as an AVI file. The thumbnail view provides a basic idea of the image's size and placement on the monitor, the background color, and the caption. The icons below the thumbnail view represent the scene's display settings. These indicate if the scene contains an image or video, the duration of the scene, transition effect, and whether the scene contains a sound. When you drop a file onto the Storyboard, a new scene is added to the Storyboard using the default settings. You can control the way the scene is displayed by adjusting parameters in the Scene Settings window. This allows you to adjust the size to actual size, full screen, inset, or double size, and to adjust the background color, length of time the image is shown before moving to the next scene, length of time an image can be adjusted to equal the duration of the sound in that scene, and the number of times a video will loop before moving to the next scene. You can add sound to scene images, using WAV and Midi sound files. You just drag and drop the desired sound file directly onto the image scene, or browse to find and select a sound file. Sound can be added to image scenes, but not to video scenes. You can also add captions to both image and video scenes. Choose from any font installed on your computer, as well as the caption position and other attributes. Adding a soundtrack is also very easy. You can choose WAV or MP3 files to play in a continuous loop as your screen saver runs. If any image or video scenes contain sounds, these will overlap the Soundtrack. Transitions provide a blend between one scene and the next. The transition styles are numerous, and you can select the number of seconds the transition effect should last. Transitions rely on the speed of the computer the screen saver is run on, so slower computers can affect the speed of any set transitions. The Preview Monitor can also be customized. When your screen saver is selected in the Windows Display Properties control panel, the Preview Monitor is displayed. You can use this to identify your own screen saver. You can place any BMP file in the Preview Monitor that is used to help identify your screen saver. The chosen BMP picture will automatically resize to fit the space provided, so it is best to choose a small picture, as the actual dimensions are 150 pixels wide by 112 pixels high. When your are ready, then you select the Build Screen Saver button on the Button bar. This will ask you to save the project, and after it has been saved, the Build Screen Saver window will open. Complete the Customize Check List and you can install your screen saver directly onto your computer. If you wish, you can also share your screen saver with others. You select the Build Installer button, that creates a self-executing installer program. This creates a single .EXE file that contains everything needed to install your screen saver on another computer. When your screen saver is installed, it becomes the active screen saver. Click the Install Screen Saver Button, and this sets up your own screen saver on your machine. You can then open your screen saver in the screen saver control panel. You can adjust all the settings for your own installed screen saver, as you can with other screen saver files, such as the adjustment of time when the screen saver is activated after no activity. Whenever your computer is idle for the amount of time you set, your screen saver will run. You can Build a Movie also in this program. A Movie is a stand-alone file that plays all by itself, exactly as you created it in ScreenTime Photo & Video for use as a screen saver. The movie includes all the software necessary to play the movie. In addition, you can select the Build Installer button, that will create a self-executing installer program that will run your movie on other computers. When you are working in ScreenTime Photo & Video, and create various images, add sounds, or add video files to a screen saver project, you can use the program to save in Project files the content and configuration for each screen saver you build. This creates .STP file types, custom to ScreenTime Photo & Video. If you have created and installed a screen saver to a machine, you remove it in one of two possible ways. You can locate the original installer program and double-click it, and choose the Remove button from the dialog box. Or, you can go the Windows Add/Remove Programs option in the Windows Control Panel, select the screen saver you want to delete from the list, and then click the Add/Remove button to uninstall the screen saver program. Typical Uses of the Program While ScreenTime Photo & Video does present many options to typical home computer users, I think the most significant application of this program lies in business. With this program, companies can now easily create customized, informative screen saver files that they can either install on computers they sell to customers, or provide to their customers with other products they may be selling. The screen saver files can contain substantial information necessary for transacting business, or important marketing information designed to help move other product lines. In addition, the screen saver files can be designed to attract the interest of passers-by, in marquee environments, on showroom floors, in conventions, or other environments that present an opportunity to sell products to customers. There is just no limit to the creative adaptation of this super program that opens up many new opportunities to customize information that runs in screen saver files. Price $199.00 10,000 distribution license $299.00 unlimited distribution license $  29.95 ScreenTime Photo & Video Personal Edition System Configuration Requirements Pentium 90 or faster processor Windows 95 or later 32MB RAM 20MB free hard disk space 10MB hard disk space for temporary working files Color monitor with 256 colors or more Note:  Playback of screen savers may require more RAM, especially if you use true color (24-bit) images or digital video clips. About ScreenTime Media Founded in 1992, ScreenTime Media is an independent software development company based in Southern California. ScreenTime Media produces and distributes high quality screen saver creation tools for web and multimedia professionals in more 30 countries. ScreenTime Media produces high quality software, and backs it up with outstanding customer support. Intel, IBM, Paramount Pictures, Chiat Day, Ford, and Mercedes are using ScreenTime Media software products to inform, entertain and interact with their audiences. ScreenTime Media makes their living from their screen saver creation tools that work well the first time. When you call during their business hours, you’ll talk to a real person. If you send an email, you’ll get an answer. Their full time technical support personnel, backed by the programmers who write the code, are in the office every day. They do one thing, and they do it well, which keeps them focused on customer satisfaction. In 1995, ScreenTime Media shipped the ground breaking CineMac for Director program, which for the first time enabled non-programmers to easily create professional quality screen savers. In 1997, the company released ScreenTime for Flash, the first screen saver creation tool for MacroMedia Flash, and in 1999, they released ScreenTime Photo & Video professional edition. ScreenTime Media's products have become the industry standard for professional screen saver creation, and the release of ScreenTime Photo & Video Personal Edition is ScreenTime Media's first consumer targeted product. Their 30-day money back guarantee is evidence that they are here to do right by you. So, give them a call and talk about your upcoming projects. They will give you the straight dope about which product is the best solution, discuss tradeoffs such as file size versus speed, or whatever concerns you have, before and after you buy their product. Contact Sandra Lai Online Marketing Specialist Representing ScreenTime Media sandy@screentimecom Also - John Pattenden ScreenTime Media P.O. Box 461537 Escondido, California 92046-1537 760-747-5995 FAX 760-747-5994 800-622-7723 858-486-9165 info@screentimecom sales@screentimecom www.screentime.com