iScreensaver Designer Guided Tour

iScreensaver Designer, Editing Movie Screensaver options :

Movie Content
View Macintosh version

The Edit a Movie panel allows you to choose a QuickTime-compatible movie format, including Macromedia Flash, MPEG, AVI, various codecs of MOVs, and more. Here you can customize many of the screensaver display options.

Help for this section:

Choosing a Movie File : Choose the Movie you wish to use as the module for your iScreensaver. Make sure it is a QuickTime-compatible movie file. These types of files can include Flash, MooV, MPEG, Midi, MP3, DV Video, etc.

  • File : This is the actual filename of the selected movie. Macintosh users should be aware that movies on Windows will need to have the correct suffixes - '.mov' or '.swf' or '.mpg' - for Windows machines to assign them to the correct file reader.
  • Info : Reveals further information about the screensaver, such as Size, Type and Creator for Movie files.
  • Path : Describes the folder location of the Movie file. NOTE: on some systems, there is a 255 character limit to the path. If you encounter problems, please try using fewer sub-directories and/or shorter folder names.
  • Select... : Browse your hard drive for your selected movie. Click 'Select...' to open the editor to change settings for your screensaver. If you are opening this window without a movie file selected, then the button will be automatically chosen and the open file browser will appear for you to choose a file.
  • Play : Starts the selected movie file in the Preview window.
Preview : Allows you to view the file you have selected, however it is not an actual estimate of the way the final screensaver will look on-screen. To see that, choose 'Full Screen' on the Content panel. If the movie was saved with a standard QuickTime controller, you will see the playbar at the bottom of the preview, but this will not be seen in the final screensaver.

Playback Options : These options will affect how the selected movie plays in the final screensaver.
  • Background Color : Click here to open the system's Color Picker to choose a background color. If you are using a Stretch Mode of 'Fill Screen' you will not see the background color.
  • Stretch Mode : Determines the way the screensaver is mapped onto the screen during sleep.
    'Actual Size' makes the screensaver the same size as the original movie regardless of monitor resolution. This assists in displaying all frames of the movie on slower machines.
    'Proportional' resizes the screensaver to match either the width or height of the user's monitor resolution.
    'Fill Screen' stretches the screensaver to the edges of the monitor. This may reduce frame rate on slower machines and could change the aspect ratio on some monitor resolutions.
  • Show Cursor : This is normally unchecked. If checked, this will do two things: First, the cursor will be visible during screensaver operation. Second, the screensaver will not respond to mouse clicks or mouse movement, which allows the user to interact with onscreen buttons. Please visit our support website for more information about creating interactive movies.