_____ _________________________________ / /\ / \ / / \ / ___________________________ \ / / \ / /\ /\ \ / / \ / /__\__________ _____ / \ \ / / \/ \ /\ \/ \ \ / / /_________________ \ / \ \ \ \ / / /\ /\ \/ \ \ \ \ / /_________/__\______________/__\ \ \ \____/ \ / \ \ / /____________________________________________\ \____________/ \ / / / \ / / / \ FISH /\ / / \ / \ / / \____________________________________/ \/___________/ Brought to you by Fish.. The Big Alternative Scroller Instructions OVERVIEW Welcome to the Big Alternative Scroller (BAS). With BAS you have a self-contained Titling programme on one (1) disk. The software enables you to type in credits, display info, etc. and scroll them either vertically or horizontally on your monitor screen and likewise onto video tape. There are up to 20 fonts of differing styles and sizes which should suit most applications of the programme. Up to 4 colours can be defined from 4096 and utilised as backgrounds, text shades and drop shadows. Spacing of words and letters can be achieved easily and all information including font style, colours scroll speed, etc. can be saved as a file on disk and easily recalled anytime for further editing or changes. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS The Big Alternative Scroller requires an Amiga computer with a minimum of 1 megabyte of RAM and should work on Version 1.2, 1.3 and 2.0 of Kickstart. Only one disk drive is required. The software does not require Workbench or any other proprietary programme in order to operate. Because the programme runs under its own code and not Amiga Dos you will not be able to multitask with any other software. BAS has been tested on A500's with ram expansions and hard drives - also A/B2000 machines with 68020 and 68030 based accelerator cards. Optional requirements are a genlock for video use and a mug of tea. GETTING STARTED Apologies for the copy protection, but considering the price of the Šsoftware it had to be included. Nevertheless, if your copy of the Šprogramme should fail or perform incorrectly, give us a call and we Šwill endeavour to help you sort out the problem or failing that Šreplace the software free of charge. Start your Amiga by placing the BAS disk in drive DF0: after 7 seconds you will see a title screen and within 40 seconds from booting up, the main menu screen will appear. All the programme loads into available memory, therefore freeing the drive (if you only have one) for saving your files onto a specially formatted data-disks. THE MENU The BAS does not use standard Amiga Dos type menus or the mouse (except in particular ways, which will be discussed) but is based almost entirely on key presses. In order to keep the programme simple and fast the keyboard has been assigned the appropriate commands and you should find after a very short time using the software, that producing Titles and credits will be second nature. The main menu has various sub-sections which are accessible by pressing keys F1 to F10 at the top of the Amiga keyboard. These in turn utilise further similar key presses to perform a specific task, but in all cases there are on screen prompts telling you what keys to press, so you cannot really go wrong. The programme comes with instructional text which can be immediately Šviewed by pressing F1 on presentation of the main screen menu. This Šinformal but instructional copy should give you a good idea of the Šprogrammes capabilities and at the same time provide you with copy to Šexperiment with, feel free to chop, change or abuse the text and when Šyou've had enough, clear the screen and get to work. It could be said Šthat this software does not really require a manual, and that is true Šas the presence of a HELP screen and numerous simple on screen prompts Šshould be all you need. Here is a summary of available commands: F1 - VERTICAL SCROLL: All the numbered keys on the top row and numeric Škeyboard on the right, control the speed of scroll, ranging from the Šslowest speed 1, to the fastest 9. F2 - HORIZONTAL SCROLL: Same as above, but text will always scroll Šfrom right to left of the screen. F3 - EDIT TEXT: Key commands available are: Arrow keys: move cursor 1 character. Shift + Left or Right arrow keys: Move cursor 1 word. Shift + Up or Down arrow keys: Move text 1 line. Shift +Delete Key: clears all text on screen. Numeric keypad: Pageup, Pagedown, Home, End. F1 - F3: Set colour of subsequent text. F5: Toggle shadow on/off. F6: Pound sign (£). F7: Copyright symbol ( ). F8: Left justification. F9: Centre justification. F10: Right justification. Left shift key + F1 - F10: Select font from bank A. Right shift key + F1 - F10: Select font from bank B. Esc: To return to the editor. Help key: Shows HELP screen with key prompts. F4 - SET SCROLLER PARAMETERS: Up and Down arrow keys move the left Šmargin marker. Left and Right arrow keys move the right margin Šmarker. This allows you to set the screen text width for vertical Šscrolling only. Text can therefore be positioned anywhere on the Šscreen. By holding down the Shift key + Up/Down arrow keys, a marker can be Špositioned to indicate where the text will horizontally enter the Šscreen. The marker indicates the top of the text. F1: This toggles either a continuous or single scroll. A continual Šscroll is best used for displaying information. Whilst the single scroll is best for credits and titles for video work. The text will pass through once and scroll off the screen leaving the background colour. NB: After setting your margins in either vertical or horizontal mode you must first return to the edit screen (F3) in order to re-format the text for scrolling purposes. F5 - SET COLOURS: F1: Set colour 0 (Background colour) F2: Set colour 1 (Pen 1) F3: Set colour 2 (Pen 2) F4: Set colour 3 (Pen 3 or shadow colour) Look closely at the Default text colour settings. The background colour is a rich blue. Colour 1 or Pen 1 has been set to a light blue and is used for most of the copy. However, Colour 2 or Pen 2 is set to a very light green and has been used to highlight certain key words. For the drop shadow on the lettering, Colour 3 or Pen 3 has been defined as almost black. Note well that if you do not want to use a drop shadow effect on your text, then Colour 3 could be used as another highlight shade. The colours are set using a simple principal of altering Red, Green and Blue values, by pressing the R, G and B keys on the keyboard. In principal any one of 4096 colours or shades are assignable to the keys F1 to F3. The way the codes work are relatively simple. Take just one pure colour ie. Red, assuming the Green and the Blue values are set to 0, then by pressing the R key on the keyboard, you can start at 100 (which is the darkest red) through to F00 (the brightest red) ie. 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, A00, B00, C00, D00, E00, F00. Obviously, the same progression will apply to Green, ie. 010 to 0F0 and Blue 001 to 00F. By combining these codes many other colours can be achieved. Also by holding down the shift and pressing the appropriate colour key, it is possible to work back through the colour codes. Here are some to be getting on with:- Black 000 (or colour zero - genlockable) White FFF Yellow FF0 Powder Yellow D80 Orange F80 Powder Blue 047 Purple A2A Powder Green 09B Brown 950 Shadow Green 050 Red F00 Shadow Blue 068 Green 0F0 Shocking Pink F09 Blue 00F Grey 375 For those of you that are curious Cyan 07C about the code. It is all just Pink E08 Hex to me. F6 - SET SHADOW: By utilising the arrow keys a drop shadow can be positioned quite effectively under your main text. There are some limitations, but this should not really present any problems in practise. Remember that in F3 (Edit text) mode, pressing F5 will toggle the shadow on or off. F7 - SET SPACING: Quite simple really. All you have to do is press the Right arrow key to space the characters in your text further apart, and by pressing the Left arrow key, bring the characters closer together. The Down arrow key will space the words in your text further apart , and by pressing the Up arrow key, bring the words closer together. This is a global setting and will affect your text, it cannot be applied to single letters or words. This is not true of kerning as such, but nevertheless can give interesting results. F8 - DISK MENU; F1: Load Text - presents you with a listing of available files from the disk that has been accessed. Use arrow keys to choose named file and press enter or return. F2: Save Text - presents you with a listing of available files from the disk that has been accessed. Type name of file, then press enter or return to save file to disk. When saving a file to disk, all parameters and setting are also saved and can be loaded again for further editing. F3: Delete File - Simply gives you the option to delete unwanted files from your data-disk. F4: Format Disk - This option allows you to create a special data-disk for saving your files. Because BAS uses it's own unique code, in order to save work you must only use disks that have been formatted by this option. A very large number of files can be stored on one disk. It is also possible to copy or back-up your data-disks using Duplicate or DiskCopy from Workbench. 0 - 3: By pressing any of the numbered keys from 0 to 3 a drive can be selected for any of the above options. Drive DF0: is the default. F9 - SET KEYBOARD TYPE: The programme defaults to a Great Britain Keymap. For those of you with American (USA) keyboards, press F2. A USA keyboard has a # symbol above the 3 instead of a £ sign. EXTRA INFO: The mouse has a particular feature within the programme. For instance, by holding down the Left mouse button whilst in EDIT TEXT mode, the flashing cursor can be made to disappear. This allows you to use still text for video titling. Also when in active Vertical or Horizontal scrolling, by holding down the left mouse button the previous lower speed can be accessed. Likewise holding down the right mouse button will access the next highest scroll speed. INTERLACE & FLICKER: The software operates in High Resolution full Overscan mode and produces an interlaced screen. It was primarily designed to be used with Video, which is an interlaced signal itself. You will probably experience varying degrees of shimmer and flicker when viewing the scroll on your monitor. This is most apparent when scrolling small text at fast speeds. It is highly unlikely that you will have any serious application for this. We would suggest that careful choice of colours, font and scrolling speeds will get around most display applications. THE THINGS YOU CANNOT DO...YET! 1. BAS will not multi-task with any other software. 2. It is not possible to install the programme onto a hard-disk, or copy the software for back-up purposes. 3. You cannot mix different fonts within the same file. 4. At present the software does not support loading in of ASCII files from other word processing programmes. 5. You cannot import other fonts into the programme. 6. The Big Alternative Scroller will not make you a cup of tea, but it should make producing titles and credits much easier. We will hope to address many of the above points in Version 2 of the programme, in the meantime HAPPY SCROLLING. IMPORTANT NOTE: When using the programme to produce titles for video, please make sure that you are already genlocked before booting-up the system. This will ensure that you will have a glitch free picture. For further information and software support contact: ALTERNATIVE IMAGE PRODUCTIONS 6 LOTHAIR ROAD, AYLESTONE, LEICESTER LE2 7QB TEL:(0533) 440041 FAX:(0533) 440650