User guide

You will be able to access every feature of the PC•MACs program except for the
real-time commands (Play, Record, Rehearse, Single Step, etc.).
Select the serial port........
If a serial port has already been selected, or you arenʼt going to be downloading any-
thing, you can skip this step.
If this is the first time that you have used PC•MACs, you will need to select the serial
port you are using. You can do this by opening the dialog under the Preferences
pulldown/Hardware/MiniBrick Interface.... Select the serial port you are going to be us-
ing. This serial port must not already be in use by any other function on your computer.
If it is, PC•MACs will give you a nasty message when you try to do an AutoDownload.
The selected serial port is stored as part of the Gilder.ini file. If it is an actual serial
port built in to your computer you will probably never need to select it again. If it is a
USB-to-Serial adapter, you may need to repeat this selection process every time Win-
dows looses the USB serial port connection. Windows does this fairly regularly.
Starting a new show........
If you want to use a show that has already been created, just select the ʻFile
pulldown/Open...ʼ command to select and open an existing show. You can skip down to
the ʻEditing your show.....…ʼ paragraph below.
To start a new Show and Site File, select File pulldown/ʻNew...'. This opens the Show
Information dialog. For now, all we will do is create a new Site File, but this is where you
will normally set the length, frame rate and time code used with your show. All of these
can be changed at any time, so donʼt worry about them too much
When using Hardwareless RealTime mode, the only valid choices for Timecode are
ʻInternalʼ and ʻAudioʼ. In this case, we will choose ʻAudioʼ, so we can see a waveform
displayed graphically on the editing screen a little later. Select the radio button next to
the ʻAudioʼ selection. To actually select the audio or video file that you will be locking to,
press the ʻLoad Media Fileʼ button. You can select the ʻFiles of Typeʼ popup and select
either ʻAudio Filesʼ (any .wav, .mpa, mp2, mp3, .au or .aif file) or ʻVideo Filesʼ (any .avi,
.qt, .mov, .mpg or .mpeg file) to use. In this case, select ʻAudio Filesʼ and pick any
audio file to use.
If the length of the audio file you selected is different from what you have set for the
show length, PC•MACs will give you the opportunity of modifying the length. You can
leave the length unchanged, or automatically match the length of the audio or video file.
New shows default to using the ʻPC•MACsʼ Site File. To create a new Site File, se-
lect ʻNew...' from the Site File popup. Give it a simple name like ʻTestʼ when it asks for
one. If you had already created your own Site File and wanted to use it again for your
next show, you would just select it from the Site File popup.
Click the 'OK' button to close the Show Information dialog. At this point you have
created a blank show and a ʻnewʼ blank Site File. You will now need to create some out-
puts so that you can program them.
Creating some figures........
Open the Channels pulldown/Channels List dialog. At this point this list should be
pretty darned empty. After all, this is a brand new show!
FigureNames are used like a ʻfolderʼ on your computerʼs disk. You can put move-
ment names into them to organize them and make them easier to manage. You can
create a FigureName by using the Channels pulldown/ʻCreate figure' command.
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax [phone]
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