Media Preferences

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MediaPlayer Sounds TV

Important
You may have to refer to the documentation for your audio or video card in order to understand the controls that are shown in some of Media's control panel.

Note
If you don't have enough RAM or CPU capacity to Enable Real-Time Audio, the box will be grayed out, and the text will explain the minimum requirements necessary for real time.

Important
Depending on the exact model of video card you have, the items in the Video Input and Audio Input menus could be mislabelled - the Tuner item might actually choose the composite 1 signal, for example. To correct this mislabelling, go to the Input Names tab.

Media Preferences

The media preferences application lets make your audio and video settings in one place. When you launch Media, you see a window that displays a list of "subjects" (Audio Settings, Video Settings, etc.) on the left and a panel of controls on the right. Selecting a subject brings up an appropriate set of controls.

The subject list depends on the cards and devices you have attached to your computer. Furthermore, the configurations of the controls that are presented (on the right) when you select a subject depends on your hardware's manufacturer - some devices provide more controls than others.

The following sections looks at the subjects and controls for a typical system.

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Audio Settings

The Audio Settings panel looks like this (if you have a sound card with the commonly used AC97 chipset):

The Audio Input and Audio Output menus let you select the cards that are used for audio input and for audio output. Only those cards that are attached to your computer are displayed in the menu.

The Channel menu only appears if you have a multi-channel audio card.

Check Enable Real-Time Audio if you want to improve audio improve audio performance, but only if you have RAM to burn. Real-time audio is set to "on" by default in systems with 64 MB of RAM or more; it is set to "off" in systems with less than 64 MB of RAM.

Checking Show Volume Control on Deskbar puts a Media icon in Deskbar's Status View. You can click to pop up a menu that lets you open Media and Sounds preferences or the MediaPlayer application.

Click the Restart Media Server button to make your changes take effect.

Audio Mixer

Highlight Audio Mixer to bring up a control panel that lets you balance the audio levels from the applications that are currently producing sound. Each time you launch another application, the Audio Mixer panel expands to add another control; you'll see either one or two volume sliders depending on whether the sound is mono or stereo.

Old Programs applies to obsolete audio applications.

The System Beep slider doesn't appear until you've actually caused the system to beep, this is set in the Sounds Preference application.

Audio Input

Click an audio input in the subjects list to bring up the audio input control panel for that device. (The panel shown here is for an emu10k-based audio card).

Source lets you select the sound source that audio recording applications will record from. The menu here lets you choose from Line In, Mic, CD and others (Remember, the configuration is hardware-dependent).

Analog Record Level and Mic Boost let you alter the gain (or volume) of the input signal.

Audio Output

Click an audio output in the subjects list to bring up the audio output control panel for that device.

The sliders are volume controls for the different signals that are card handles. The slider labelled Mixer is the output of the Zeta audio mixer - in other words, it's the sum of the signals that you saw in the Audio Mixer panel.

Video

The Video Settings panel of the Media preferences looks like this:

The Video Input and Video Output menus lets you select the cards or devices that are used for video input and video output. Only those devices that are attached to your computer are displayed in the menu.

Check Enable Real-Time Video if you want to improve video preformance, but only if you have plenty of RAM. Enable Real-Time Video is set to "off" by default.

After you make your selections in this panel click the Restart Media Server button to make your selections take effect.

Video Input

The video input panel lets you set up your video input signal. The panel's configuration depends on the device that you're receiving from; the panel shown is for the ... video capture card.

The Controls tab lets you choose your Video Input and Audio Input (the ... has its own audio hardware). If the video input is Tuner, you can also set the Channel you want to watch. The other controls, on the right side of the panel, fine-tune the picture.

The Options tab lets you set the image size and color resolution. The four checkboxes are filters that are applied (if checked) to the picture:

- Luma Coring (luminance) - reduces anti-aliasing artifacts
- Chroma Comb (chrominance) - enhances color consistency
- Gamma - automatically corrects screen brightness
- Error Diffusion tries to remove visual anomalies and static. These settings are checked "on" by default.

The Input Names tab lets you reassign the items that appear in the Video Input and Audio Input menus that are presented back in the Controls tab. You would only do this if the menu items are mislabelled, as discussed above. The Video 1 selection becomes the first item in the Video Input menu, Video 2 is the second item in that menu, and so on. Note that this doesn't affect your hardware or your video applications, it just makes the controls presented here easier to deal with.

The Hardware Setup tab asks you to describe your terrestrial location and the hardware you're using. The Video Format in the U.S. is NTSC-M and in Europe PAL or SECAM. The manufacturer of your video capture card can use any one of several Tuner brands; the most common is Philips, but check your card to be sure. Set Tuner Locale according to the method of broadcast transmission in your local area.

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