Initial Folder: Here you can nominate a folder (directory), or select one using the Browse... button, that will be the initial folder opened when browsing for sound files and cue files. For example, you could have a folder on the C: drive called scs_files, and in that folder create a folder for each show plus a folder to be a repository for all the sound effects wave files you download off the web or record off sound effects CD's etc. Then by setting this Initial Folder to C:\scs_files you will find setting up and editing cue files much easier.
Warning! The Initial Folder may be translated as "$(InitDir)" when storing in a cue file the path of a sound file (see Portability). If you change your Initial Folder then SCS may not find such sound files. You will need to go Edit mode and re-select those files. For this reason it is recommended that you set your Initial Folder to a master folder for all your shows as suggested above.
'Double-Click' Timeout: Many computer users are so conditioned to double-clicking the mouse that sometimes they double-click when they mean to single-click. If SCS didn't specifically watch out for this, you could end up firing two cues instead of one, because the first click would fire the intended cue and the second click would fire the next cue assigned to the 'Go' button. To prevent this happening accidentally, SCS ignores a click that occurs within a set time of the previous click. The default timeout value is 0.4 second (400 milliseconds). However, you may adjust that timeout using this 'Double-Click' Timeout field. Typically you would reduce this timeout if you have consecutive cues that you do need to fire rapidly. However, be careful not to reduce this too much. You may well find that just reducing the timeout to 0.3 second is all you need to do.
If you change this timeout then one other setting you will probably need to change is the Windows setting for the Double-Click speed of the mouse. Under Windows XP you can set this from Start / Settings / Control Panel / Mouse. I guess this is similar under other Windows versions. I have found that if I double-clicked within the Windows Mouse double-click time then SCS didn't get notified of the second click. So I had to make the Windows Mouse double-click time shorter - then it worked OK. One problem with this is that if you make the Mouse double-click time so short that double-clicks are not recognized as 'double-clicks' then you can no longer double-click to start a program from the desktop! You can, as always, start a program by a single click on the icon followed by pressing Enter.
Max. No. of Audio Files to Pre-Open: SCS pre-opens audio files so they are immediately ready for playback. By default the number of audio files pre-opened (excluding hot key files) is 5, but you can specify a higher or lower number in this field. The number must be between 2 and 50. By specifying a low number you may save memory and improve performance on some computers.
Max. No. of Video Files to Pre-Open: SCS pre-opens video files so they are immediately ready for playback. The maximum is 2 for SCS Standard users (and for the demo), but the maximum is 5 for SCS Professional and higher license levels. The default values are set to the maximum for the license level (2 or 5). Changes to this field take effect the next time you start SCS.
Video Playback: By default, this drop-down list is set to "Use DirectShow for video playback". Before the release of SCS 10.7.0, video cues were played using a Windows Media Player API, and you can revert to using WMP by selecting "Use WMP for video playback". If you need to do this, please email us and let us know why you need to revert to WMP. The email address is support@showcuesystems.com . If you change the Video Playback option you must then close and restart SCS.
| Tip: Whenever a cue or sub-cue completes, SCS looks through the cue list for audio and video files that can be pre-opened. However, to minimize interference with currently playing cues, SCS will generally not pre-open an audio file while another audio file is playing, and will not pre-open a video file while another video file is playing. This is particularly important for video files, as buffering a video file can noticeably interrupt the playback of another video that is playing. So if you need to run several videos back-to-back then ideally you need to set Max. No. of Video Files to Pre-Open to at least the number of videos to be played back-to-back, up to the limit available with your license level. If SCS has not pre-opened a video file when it is required for playback, there will be a slight pause while buffering is started. |
Time Format for Cue Lengths, etc: Here you can indicate how you want cue lengths and other times displayed. Basically it is a choice of displaying minutes if the cue length is a minute or more; always displaying minutes; or display in seconds only.