DOT MATRIX SCROLLER ------------------- written by Andrew Ives in 1993. Dot Matrix Scroller is a video-titling program intended for use in adding scrolling captions to videos. I wrote it mainly for my own purposes on my A1200 with Datel genlock. I found that writing a scrolling caption took too long on something like Dpaint and Scala etc were beyond my budget. I came up with this, written on a 2Mb A1200 on Devpac 2. HOW TO USE IT: ------------- It was written with user-friendliness in mind and is therefore all colour coded. On loading, all the letters highlighted in red show which keys to press. Here is a quick run-down of what they do:- T - Use this to Type your message into the scrolltext buffer. As you type, the letters will appear in the buffer. Some of the punctuation is on the keypad. F1-10/Del/Help have further symbols too. Press ESCape to end. <- backspace deletes a letter. When you press ESCape, a block appears showing where the message is to end. The buffer is only as long as it looks. If you overflow, it loops back to the beginning again. The allocated space is ample for most purposes though. P - Play. This plays your scroll text in the position stated. The screen will go blue, and if you have your genlock on you will see your video. Press the right mouse button to start the scroll and left to end it. If you have a three buttoned mouse, you can turn it off with the middle button without returning to the menu. F1-6 - Changes the "ink" colour of the text as shown. The menu's colour changes, so you can see what you've selected. Up/Down - Changes the speed of the scroll. 4 is about average. B - Toggles the black Background on or off. W - "W"here toggles whether the scroll is at the top or bottom of the screen. Q - Quit. G - Toggles Genlock sync on/off. You should set this on when you have your genlock installed. Pressing G without a genlock WILL cause a crash. Don't do it. You should become familiar with the keys very quickly as it is so simple to use. DIFFERENCES ON DMS2 =================== The main difference with DMS2 is that you can load your own font into the scroller. This font must be 8x8 and that's why Powerfonts8 by Kefrens was included on this disk. You must save your font as Userfont.fnt like the example one on here. If you change the order of the characters, you will cause yourself aggro so don't do that. I recomment that you only save Userfont.fnt to a copy of this disk, because if you overwrite the original, you won't know what order to put the characters in. Apart from this font difference, the whole program is the same. Read "A plea from the author" if you have any trouble with this. ABOUT THE PROGRAM: ----------------- The program was written on an A1200 with WB3 and has been tested on an A500 with WB1.2. It has only been tested with the Datel "Pro" Genlock, so if it doesn't work with your particular genlock or setup, don't get at me about it. Dot Matrix Scroller is free, but I can't afford to go around writing all day for free, so if you find it useful and use it a lot please do feel guilty. (Only joking) Anyone who feels like kissing up and getting in my good books could do so by sending me some PD or something. Anyone doing this will get themselves a copy of the source code should they want to alter the program themselves (Devpac II assembler). It is all nicely modular and thoroughly commented too. (Send me some AGA pictures or scaleable PageSetter 3 fonts/clipart) They may also get a version of Caption Machine with 8 pages and about 15 fonts. (My own version) Also, anyone out there who knows how to test if a genlock is present, please let me know. The hardware reference manual isn't too great around this matter. Any suggested improvements/bug reports to:- Andrew Ives, 4 Sandpiper Close, Haverhill, Suffolk. CB9 0JH. England.