First of all, thanks for your interests in downloading and using Power Movie Effects (previously named SEMERT, Simple and Easy Movie Effects in Real-Time). This useful program is more than a QuickTime movie player. By using this program, you will experience the real power of Power PC.
Like most people who rarely bothers with README files, you have probably already played around with Power Movie Effects before reading this text file. That's OK, cos I do this most of the time, too. However, if you still don't understand what exactly does SEMERT do, please read on.
Power Movie Effects is, as its name implies, a program of doing movie effects. You probably see many visual effects in TV shows and movies. You might wonder how they can do some of these effects, such as rotating and moving the TV or movie screen around. You will find your answer with Power Movie Effects, since it provides some effects alike.
To run Power Movie Effects, double click on the its icon. After you double click on it, you will see a shareware notice (yes, it is a shareware). Click on OK button and you will see the title screen. Click on the title screen and you will see a dialog box from which you can choose a QuickTime movie file. Choose any QuickTime movie file from here.
After you have chosen a movie file, you can see a movie window with title "Playing Movie". This window is the QuickTime movie itself. You should be able to see the movie that you have selected. The other window is the Tool Palette. You can also see the menu bar. These are the 3 main parts of Power Movie Effects. Their funtionalities are explained below:
The "Playing Movie" Window:
This window performs basically the same function as Apple's Simple Player or Movie Player does, except that you can not double click on it to play or stop the movie. If you haven't used Simple Player or Movie Player before, then you are probably new to QuickTime applications. However, the window itself is very much self-explainatory. Just play around with it and you should be very comfortable with it.
The Tool Palette:
This is the "tool box" that lets you access most of the movie effects SEMERT offers through icons:
This is the Lens, or Glass Ball/Crystal Sphere, Tool. After you have selected it, you can click on the Playing Movie window. Now you will see an effect which looks like lens applied upon the movie.
This is the Magnifying Tool. The usage is the same as the Lens Tool. The only difference is that it magnifies the movie directly instead.
• Option-Click on either one of the Lens or Magnifying Tool would deselect them. In other words, would remove them from the window.
This is the Free Rotation Tool. It lets you rotate the movie freely about the center of the movie.
This is the Moving Tool. It lets you move the movie around.
• Only one of Lens, Magnify, Rotate, or Moving tools can be selected at a time.
This is the Rotate Counter-Clock Wise tool (RCCWT). After you have clicked on it, the movie will rotate itself in the counter-clockwise direction.
This is the Rotate Clock Wise tool (RCWT). After you have clicked on it, the movie will rotate itself clockwise.
• Only one of the RCCWT or RCWT can be selected at a time.
This is the Trace Tool. After you have selected it, move or rotate the movie and you will see some traces of the old frames where the movie used to be at.
This is the Automatic Zoom-In & Zoom-Out Tool. After you have selected it, the movie will be shrunk to the upper-left corner and then be enlarged to the original position and size. This process continues until you turn the tool off.
The Menus:
Apple Menu: You should know this menu if you use a Macintosh!
File Menu:
Open Movie: Lets you open a QuickTime movie file. You can only open one movie file at a time since SEMERT will need the maximum CPU time while playing a movie. Having two movies playing at the same time will slow down the frame rate even if you have a PowerMac 8100.
Open Background Movie: Lets you open a "background movie". This will be explained later.
Close: Close a movie. After you have closed a movie, the Open Movie function will be enabled so you can open another movie.
Quit: Quit from the wonderful program, SEMERT.
Values Menu: Allows you to change the parameters of effects.
Movie Scale Menu: Allows you to change the scale of the foreground movie. Foreground movie will be explained later.
Special Menu:
Movie Wall: Lets you have a wall of movies. It is so cool to have a movie wall. Check it out!
• While in the Movie Wall mode, you won't have any access to the movie controls. The following lists some movie controls via keyboard:
Space Bar or Return Key: Stop or play the movie.
Left Arrow: Step backward.
Option-Left Arrow: Jump to the beginning of the movie.
Right Arrow: Step forward.
Option-Right Arrow: Jump to the end of the movie.
Up Arrow: Louder volume.
Option-Up Arrow: Set the volume to the maximum.
Down Arrow: Lower volume.
Option-Down Arrow: Shut-down the volume.
• Also, Power Movie Effects is optimized for the 16-bit color. Set your monitor to 16-bit color depth for optimum performance.
Lens Inversion: This function would make the Lens and Magnify tool flip horizontally and vertically.
Hide Cursor While Clicked: This function makes the cursor disappeared when doing effects.
Negative: This function would invert the movie.
Remove Red, Green, Blue Channel: These three functions remove the corresponding color channels from the movie (i.e. if you remove all of them, the movie would be black).
Background Movie: It lets you play a background movie behind the foreground movie. You have to select the Trace Tool icon to see the background movie. The background movie is the movie that plays at background in the place of the black area while you move or rotate the movie. The background movie can be opened through the Open Background Movie in the File Menu.
Same Fore- and Background Movie: It lets you have synchrounous background movie as the movie you selected in Open Movie. You have to set the Trace Tool and Background Movie to have this functioning properly.
• Thus, to have the same foreground and background movie, you will have to enable the Trace Tool, Background Movie, and Same Fore- and Background Movie.
Reset Menu: All the functions in this menu are disabled in the demo version. The registered version will make your life much easier... trust me.
Use Digitizer as Foreground Movie: This one is only for QuickCam users. If you want to change the foreground movie source from your QuickCam, enable this function. Thus, you can apply the effects to the digitized movie in real-time.
Well that's all folks! Having read this far, you should know your way around Power Movie Effects now.
To register your copy of Power Movie Effects, please send in $19.99 in cash or check (U.S. currency only please) to the following address for registeration:
Chao-Kuang Yang
532 Arboles Street,
Monterey Park, CA 91754
U.S.A.
Please make the check payable to Chao-Kuang Yang. Thank you in advance if you are going to register your copy of Power Movie Effects!!! The registered version will have the shareware notices removed.
Please use the Registration Form (included with the Power Movie Effects) to register since it would save me a lot of time so I can program more PowerPC sharewares.
I hope you will have a great time playing with Power Movie Effects. Any comments and bug reports will be appreciated. If you are not satisfied with Power Movie Effects, please tell me why and what should be done to make it better for you. You can reach me at the following e-mail addresses:
Internet: chaoyang@usc.edu
American OnLine: Mark Yang
LAMG: Chao-Kuang Yang
You don't have to register your copy of Power Movie Effects to give me comments. Just tell me how you feel about this program.
Please do not alter, distribute or have more than one backup of either the registered or unregistered version of Power Movie Effects without permission. It is a violation of copyright law.
