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The Enounce™ 2xAV™ Plug-In
for Version: 3.06
Copyright © 1998-2001 Enounce, Incorporated
Powered by Enounce™ Time-Scale Tailor®
Libraries
US Patent #5,175,769 (Additional patents pending)
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You can download and try the Enounce™ 2xAV™
Plug-In before you buy it! Enounce makes the 2xAV Plug-In available for free for a week.
If after seven days you decide you're happy to let others control your playback speed, you
owe nothing. If you decide that you like being able to control your playback speed, you
can purchase and register your 2xAV Plug-In on-line.
Download Free Trial of 2xAV™
Plug-In for RealPlayer®
You will see a reminder of how many days you have left in your trial
period once a day and after installation. You can choose to continue the trial or buy the
2xAV Plug-In at any time.
After seven days you will have only minimal use of your 2xAV Plug-In until
you go through the purchase and registration process.
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To buy the 2xAV™ Plug-In, go to the Enounce 2xAV Plug-In Purchase Page web
page.
If you are using the free trial version of the 2xAV Plug-In, you can
purchase the unrestricted version of the 2xAV Plug-In by clicking the "Buy Now"
button when the reminder dialog comes up, or you can launch the 2xAV Registration Utility
from the Start Menu on the machine on which you will be using the 2xAV Plug-In.
The 2xAV Registration Utility can normally be found from the Start menu
at:
Programs -> 2xAV for RealPlayer -> 2xAV Registration
This program will remind you that it needs to connect to a registration server over the
Internet in order to register your Plug-In. With your approval it will attempt to make the
connection,and then lead you through a simple three step purchase and registration
process.
- In Step One, you will be asked to enter your name and a valid email address;
- In Step Two, you will be shown a URL to the 2xAV Plug-In purchase page of the web site
from which you downloaded the 2xAV Plug-In. When you click on this URL, your web browser
will take you to the web site from which you will purchase the 2xAV Plug-In.
When you have purchased the 2xAV Plug-In, you will be given a serial number. Please copy
the serial number into the box labeled "Enter Serial Number", and press
"OK". You do not have to browse to the purchase web site shown in
step two, unless you want to purchase additional serial numbers in order to use the 2xAV
Plug-In on additional machines.
- In Step Three, you should press the "Register and Unlock" button to complete
the registration of your 2xAV Plug-In.
When registration is complete, the 2xAV Plug-In will be unlocked on the machine that
you used to register. We will also send an email message confirming your registration to
the address you provided during the registration process. Please keep that email message
for reference.
Software Activation via email: If you do not wish to register
electronically using the Registration Utility described above, Click
Here to get information on how to activate your Plug-in via email.
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Please browse to our support page for the
2xAV™ Plug-In or go to www.enounce.com/contact.html
for information on how to contact us.
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Table of Contents
There are two ways to launch the 2xAV™ Plug-In SpeedBar from within
RealPlayer.
When RealPlayer® is in normal view mode and
the 2xAV Plug-In has been properly installed, a 2xAV button appears on the RealPlayer
toolbar, as shown below:
To bring up the 2xAV SpeedBar, click on the  button on the toolbar.
If RealPlayer is in compact view mode the RealPlayer toolbar (shown above) is not
visible. In this case, you must select the 2xAV menu choice from
the RealPlayer View menu.
To switch between normal and compact view modes in RealPlayer, select either Normal
or Compact from the RealPlayer view menu.
Clicking on the button brings up the 2xAV™ SpeedBar.
The slider on the SpeedBar controls the RealPlayer's playback speed. A
setting of 2.0 (as shown in the figure) results in playback twice as fast as normal. If
the slider is set to "1.0", playback occurs at normal speed. A setting of
"0.5" results in playback at half normal speed.
Feel free to move the slider at any time, even (or especially!) while
media is being played: 2xAV gives you immediate control over
your playback speed! Once the slider is selected you can use the left and right
arrow keys on you keyboard to change the speed as well.
When RealPlayer is embedded in a web page a 2xAV Floating SpeedBar will
pop-up over the web page and a 2xAV task item is added to the task bar. This
floating SpeedBar has the same behavior and control over RealPlayer's playback speed as
the SpeedBar described above. If the floating SpeedBar is not visible it may be
behind the web page you are viewing or minimized to the title bar of the web page you
viewing. For more information on the options associated with the 2xAV Floating
SpeedBar, see the Advanced Properties section below.
Checking the SpeedLimit box turns on the 2xAV™ Plug-In's automatic
SpeedLimit™ mechanism. When this box is checked, the 2xAV Plug-In will attempt to
play media as fast as you request, so long as that speed doesn't cause gaps. Gaps can
occur if your Internet connection isn't fast enough to deliver media as fast as you are
trying to play it, or if your computer isn't powerful enough to process media fast enough
to keep up with your requested speed.
In the SpeedLimit™ mode, if the 2xAV Plug-In detects gaps it will
slow down the playback speed. The "thumb" of the speed slider will remain where
you set it, but the blue "thermometer" in the center of the slider may get
shorter, showing you that SpeedLimit has momentarily lowered the playback speed in an
attempt to avoid gaps.
Please see the section When All You Can
Have Is Not Enough for more information.
To verify or modify the 2xAV™ Plug-In properties, click on the
Properties button on the SpeedBar. The following dialog box will appear:
In addition to "About" information, and a hyperlink to the
Enounce™ web site, the 2xAV tab of the
properties dialog contains settings to control the operation of the 2xAV™
Plug-In. These settings are discussed below.
The 2xAV™ engine can be set to any of three states:
On Normal: This is the normal setting. The engine uses our patented
digital signal processing algorithms to play back media at the rate you specify;
On Chipmunk: This setting is just for fun. It lets you change playback
speed the way you used to be able to do with an audio tape: put your finger on the record
and make it go around faster or slower. Faster makes people sound like
"chipmunks"; slower makes them sound like Darth Vader.
Off: This setting turns off the 2xAV engine. All playback is at normal
speed.
Note that you can change engine settings while audio is playing back, but
the engine settings only take effect after you stop playback. That is, the new settings
will be in effect the next time you start playback.
The 2xAV™ Plug-In software engine can trade off processing efficiency
and audio output quality. The Playback Quality slider on the property page controls this
tradeoff. For best quality, set the slider to the leftmost position. For most efficient
processing, set the slider to the rightmost position. The setting selected
determines the amount of CPU used for processing, so increasing the quality may cause
"gaps" in playback if the CPU cannot process data fast enough.
To prevent rebuffering when playing streaming media at speeds greater than
1.0, you may have to change your RealPlayer® Connection speed
settings. RealPlayer and RealServer™ technologies support streaming media at speeds
faster than the encoded bitrate through the RTSP protocol. RealPlayer will cap the
connection speed at the 'Normal' setting however, thus causing rebuffering when playing
faster than normal. If you get rebuffering, you might want to increase your connection
speed settings. To do so:
Start RealPlayer
Pull down the View Menu, choose Preferences
Click on the Connection tab
Set your Maximum bandwidth as high as it can go (10 Mbps LAN)
Increment your Normal bandwidth up one notch from its current position.
For instance, if you were at 56Kbps Modem, try 112Kbps Dual ISDN, or 256 Kbps DSL. Be
carefull with this setting however, because if you set it too high, RealPlayer may
initially choose a higher bandwidth encoding which could be beyond your connection's
actual bandwidth. RealPlayer does have the ability to change the enoding bitrate on the
fly however, and so even if this was set too high, the player would adjust to your actual
bandwidth.
On the Buffered Play group box, choose 'Buffer entire clip up to
available memory'
Continue to adjust these settings to suit your needs.
Click on the Performance Tab
On the Clip Cache button, make sure it is enabled and at least 4 MB in
size.
Click on the Transport Tab
Click on the Auto Configure button to setup the transport settings
When that is done, click on the RTSP Settings... and ensure that HTTP is
NOT selected.
The Advanced Settings tab of the Properties dialog box controls the
interaction of the 2xAV™ Plug-In with a browser:
If the "Floating 2xAV Controls Window over Browser" checkbox
is checked, a floating window containing the 2xAV Speedbar will appear whenever a web page
contains a RealPlayer ActiveX control or RealPlayer Netscape plug-in, but the same web
page doesn't contain a 2xAV ActiveX control. In other words, a floating SpeedBar will
appear if the designer of the web page has not provided a SpeedBar on their page.
If you check this box, you will be able to control the playback speed of all web content
that uses an embedded RealPlayer object..
If the "Floating Window" checkbox is checked, you can control
what happens when you close the 2xAV SpeedBar.
If you set "Close to Title bar", when you close the SpeedBar,
a "2X" icon appears on the title bar of the browser. You can reopen the SpeedBar
either by clicking on the icon, or by refreshing the web page.
If you set "Close normally", when you close the SpeedBar no
"2X" icon appears on the title bar of the browser. You must refresh the web page
in order to reopen the SpeedBar.
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The 2xAV™ Plug-In software engine is capable of slowing down or
speeding up almost any form of media, either from local files stored on your computer or
"streaming media" being delivered to your computer over the Internet.
But sometimes we can't have everything we want. Even with media playback.
Sometimes you might want to play faster than your computer, or your
Internet connection, or your media server, can handle.
When that happens--and we'll explain why it may--you can get rebuffering
pauses or gaps in your playback.
Rebuffering pauses occur when the RealPlayer®
is playing back streaming media, and it's run out of media to play. It is possible this
could be prevented by changing your connection settings, however. See Optimum RealPlayer Settings for more information.
Gaps occur when the RealPlayer can't decode media fast enough to play it
at the speed you want.
When your player is playing back streaming media, it can't play material
any faster than it gets it. If your Internet connection, or the server from which the
media is coming, can't deliver media as fast as you want to play it, the player may pause
from time to time as it "rebuffers" media. When the player has finished
rebuffering sufficient media, it will continue playing.
Many forms of media are stored and delivered to your player in an encoded
format. Your player decodes this media into a form that can be played. The process of
decoding media requires varying amounts of computing power. If you are trying to play an
encoded media stream twice as fast as normal, your computer was to process twice as much
data every second, using twice as many computations. If your computer is not fast enough
to decode the media as quickly as you want to play it, there may be gaps, or short
silences, in the playback.
The simpliest solution to both of these problems is to slow down. If you
have turned on the 2xAV Plug-In's SpeedLimit™ feature, the 2xAV Plug-In will try to
prevent pauses and gaps from occurring, but will also repeatedly try to play at the speed
you have requested. For best results, don't request a speed that is significantly faster
than your player can manage.
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Release notes for version 2.0 of the Enounce™ 2xAV™ Plug-In.
RealPlayer® Version 6
If you are using RealPlayer version 6, which is not the most recent
version of the RealPlayer, the 2xAV install program can not successfully shut down your
player if it is running while you are installing the 2xAV Plug-In. If you are using
RealPlayer version 6, be sure to shut down the RealPlayer, and the "StartCenter"
program in your system tray, before you install the 2xAV Plug-In.
RealPlayer® Version 7
If you are using RealPlayer version 7, which is not the most recent
version of the RealPlayer, the 2xAV uninstall program can not successfully shut down your
player if it is running while you are uninstalling the 2xAV Plug-In. If you are using
RealPlayer version 7, be sure to shut down the RealPlayer, and the "StartCenter"
program in your system tray, before you uninstall the 2xAV Plug-In.
The 2xAV install program can successfully shut
down RealPlayer 7 if the player is running when you try to install the 2xAV Plug-In.
However, Enounce still recommends that you shut down the RealPlayer before attempting to
install the Plug-In. |
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Copyright & Trademarks
Copyright © 1998-2001 Enounce, Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
Please review our Privacy Policy
Enounce™, 2xAV™, and SpeedLimit™ are either
registered trademarks or trademarks of Enounce, Incorporated
in the United States and/or other countries.
RealPlayer® and RealPlayer Plus® are either
registered trademarks or trademarks of RealNetworks, Inc.
in the United States and/or other countries.
Last modified: April 15, 2002
$RCSfile: usersguide.php,v $ $Revision: 1.6 $ |
