Flicker IV: Sound start |
|
|
Flicker is about enjoying the modern multi-media experience. This new version of Flicker is a big step on from where the previous version left off. In the sound department a big effort has gone into making the world of tracker music accessible to newcomers. This is now the easiest first thing to do with Flicker.
Flicker behaves in the manner of all standard RISC OS desktop applications. Its operation revolves around one main window, called the projection. From the projection, the main Flicker menu is accessed.
The upper part of the main menu is to do with vision, the lower, sound. Go to the item, NC album. Moving right will lead to the Notable Computations album. Use the radio buttons to select a track, and click on Play the selected track. Note the ticked Volume menu item in the screen shot below, confirming that at one level, Flicker is set to play sound. The tune should now play. If it does not, Flicker or your machine may be configured with the sound muted or another application may be fighting for control of the machine's sound system: see this Guide's troubleshooting section.
Composers typically set their chip tunes to play repeatedly until a user requests a new tune. Sometimes the end of the loop blends seamlessly back to the start, especially if the music is targeted for use in a computer game. More often, if the music is intended to be a free stand item, it will have a proper start and finish. Once you've had enough of a track, select another.
Note that clicking Play the selected track with the adjust button, rather than select will leave the Notable Computations window open.
Turning the volume up or down or off altogether is via the Volume menu item on the projection menu. This control is duplicated in the Icon Bar menu so that if the projection is turned off, the sound can still be controlled.
If you have played some tracks from the Alice Green music project you will find that the items to save data files in the main menu are greyed out. This is because you have potentially changed the soundtrack allocated to the animation playing, and a Save flick now would save the animation with the replacement soundtrack. If this is what is required click on the padlock to close it. The options to save data files again become available, so save the animation with the replacement soundtrack if desired. Flicker has several such features to prevent users inadventantly doing actions that were not intended.
Flicker's native tracker music file format is termed a flune file. The official filetype allocation for this is &1D2. Double clicking a flune file will cause Flicker to be launched if it is not already active and the file loaded and played. Other tracker filetypes that Flicker can play if they are double-clicked or drag and dropped onto Flicker are shown below;
The music contained in all of the above filetypes can be extracted and converted into a flune file by Flicker and then added to a Flicker presentation or animation. Exactly how to do this will be explained further on in this guide. First, however, it is more sensible to discuss how Flicker can be used to show existing presentations and animations. This is the subject of the next page.
previous