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We assume you have read above and know how to run CdMio on your system.
As you do it for the very first time, a window named "cdmio..." and a tiny window
called "Tiny Vu-Meter" should pop-up. The first one is the main window : with
it you can control any feature of CdMio. The second one is a "Applet" (more on
this later). If you can't see these two windows AND your monitor isn't turned
off (...), read any error message and consider turning off applets (read below).
You can contact the authors, describing the problem and the error messages,
but please DO NOT POST CORE dumps !
CdMio is a CD-Player, so it has a couple of controls you should be used
to. Anyway, here is a short list of these standard controls (they are performed
by pressing the appropriate button around the large display) :
- > : Play current track.
- - : Pause CD.
- [] : Stop CD.
- :: : Eject or Close CD tray (you can close tray manually as well).
- |< : Jump to previous track.
- >| : Jump to next track.
- << : Skip back 30 seconds.
- >> : Skip forward 30 seconds.
. As of version 0.03, you must have a (audio or data) Cd inside your Cd-Rom
reader in order to start CdMio. Track selection can be performed by clicking
one of the numbers listed on the display : the list will show up only if a
valid audio Cd is in your reader. You can set Cd master volume and left-right
balancing with the "<<" and ">>" arrows near "Volume", "Left" and "Right"
labels. It seems that some Cd-Player doesn't support some of these features
: you can run your preferred mixer and act on your sound card controls. The
time is shown on upper-left corner of the display : by clicking on it you can
cycle between elapsed and remaining time for the current track (these two modes
are labelled "E" and "R" on display). You can choose three different play-modes
:
- "->" : Cdmio will play every track once, then stop the CD.
- "<>" : Cdmio will repeat the current track as long as your CD burns
out :-) .
- "()" : Cdmio will play the entire CD and loop it at the end.
Applets are simple graphical effects providing you some kind of "information"
about the track you are playing. As of version 0.3 there are three "major" applets
with slightly different flavours, making up eight different applets :
- "Flint" mode 1 : stereo Vu-Meter. Works by detecting peak value of the signal.
- "Flint" mode 2 : as above, except it evaluates RMS value.
- "Raist" mode 1 : displays the waveform of the signal.
- "Raist" mode 2 : as above, with a sort of "glittering" effect.
- "Fistandantilus" mode 1 : performs spectral analysis of signal.
- "Fistandantilus" mode 2 : as above, with glittering effect.
- "Raist" mode 3 : as mode 1, only "dotted".
- "Raist" mode 4 : as mode 2, only "dotted".
At your first startup, you should see the applet # 1. You can cycle
through the eight applets by pressing the "A" button. If you close the applet
window, pressing the "A" button will start cycling from applet # 1. Applets
are configurable (well... up to a certain extent !) : you can press the "><"
button to show the configuration panel. Here's a brief description of options
:
- Sample length : this value is related to the number of bytes the program
uses to process and display informations in the "applet" window. To be more precise,
"1" means 2 bytes, "2" means 4 bytes, "5" means 32 ... (Yeah, just "two raised to
n" !!!). This parameter affects the behaviour of the Vu-Meter only internally
(mainly when used in RMS mode), while fixes the width of the applet window
for both "Raist" and "Fistandantilus".
- Frames Per Second : this is the number of updates per second CdMio will
try to perform. On not-so-quick machines you could be in trouble with rather
"Cpu-Expensive" applets such as "Fistandantilus" (which performs a lot of calculations
!) . In these cases, you can try to decrease this value (Tasslehof is currently
developing with a K6-2 450 and 64 Megs of ram, both with Sawmill and Enlightenment
window managers. CdMio with Fistandantilus @ 45 Fps takes up "only" up to 2.0
% of CPU time, with a "Seti@Home" client running in background.).
- Preamplification : if the signal sampled by your sound card if a bit low,
you can "play" with this parameter (this only works with "Fistandantilus"). However,
as a general rule, it is much better to "use" all of the dynamics you can, which
means that you'd better try to increase Cd-Line gain on your sound card to
minimize noise.
Currently, this panel is only used for the applets. In future versions
it is very likely to be false : check out !
You can customize CdMio behaviour by using the main display and the "options"
panel. Anyway, as you find a combination of options you like most, you can
set up CdMio to use these ones every time it is run. This is done by editing
a file called ".cdmiorc". It is created automagically the first time you run
CdMio and should look like this :
samlenvu=16
samlenwa=512
fpsvu=30
fpswa=30
preamp=0.15
redt=10.0
applets=1
warmup=1
volume=25000
left=100
right=100
startapp=1
swap=0
. As you've probably understood, these are simply the values of some parameters
and "logical variables" that control the behaviour of the program. Before describing
the various entries of this file, a word of warning about the syntax : each
line must carry only one option, and each line must be terminated by a carriage
return, otherwise the funniest things could happen (most probably some options
could not be recognized). The order of the options is immaterial. Ok, here's
the options :
- samlenvu : this option specifies the number of bytes processed by the Vu-Meter.
It MUST be a power of two in the range 2 ... 1024.
- samlenwa : the same as above, referring to wave scope and spectrum analyzer.
- fpsvu : the number of times per second CdMio will try to update the Vu-Meter,
ranging from 0 to 100.
- fpswa : the same as above, referring to "Fistandantilus" and "Raist", ranging
as above.
- preamp : the amount of preamplification for the spectrum analyzer ("1.0"
means no preamp) .
- redt : this option is quite critical. It is the delay in milliseconds between
consequent sampling on the sound card. This number should be kept at the lowest
rate (10 is good for me) without getting too much CPU overload. Higher values
could cause applet delays and frequent "Buffer underrun" errors in syslog queue.
Only change this if you need.
- applets : "1" means you want to use applets, "0" means you don't (it is useful
if you can't get them working at all...)
- warmup : "1"will show the ugly "warmup screen" (this could be better in future
versions !), "0" won't.
- volume : sets Cd player volume, ranging from 0 to 25000. It is the format
internally kept by CdMio, allowing you fine tuning :-) .
- left, right : sets the balancing of left and right channels, ranging from
0 to 100.
- startapp : the # of the applet to show at startup, ranging from 1 to
8 according to section 3.2 .
- swap : only used in the Vu-Meter, swaps left and right channels in the
applet.
Currently is not supported (we'll work on it !), it's the "db" button.
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