projectM -- Milkdrop-esque visualisation SDK Copyright (C)2003-2007 projectM Team This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA See 'LICENSE.txt' included within this release --------------------------------------------------- projectM v.0.94.20 FAQ ------------------ written by Peter Sperl and Carmelo Piccione --------------------------------------------------- Q1: What is projectM? Q2: What? This preset doesn't look like it does on Milkdrop. Q3: Where can I get more presets? Q4: What are the system requirements? Q5: Why is projectM so slow!!! Q6: How can I increase the rendering quality to make projectM look better? Q7: How can I configure projectM? (where's the config file?) Q8: Where are the presets? Q1: What is projectM? -------------------- A: projectM makes pretty pictures from music in realtime. Specifically it uses iterative image-based rendering techniques which are hardware accelerated via OpenGL. projectM was developed with cross-platform support in mind, using SDL and OpenGL. The only port right now is Linux/XMMS, but it should be easy to plug-in to other music players on other platforms (even windows and Mac OS X). projectM aims for compatability with MilkDrop's latest release (1.04b at this time), but we have always intended to surpass it. This program was inspired by Ryan Geiss' wonderful program MilkDrop. www.geisswerks.com Q2: What? This preset doesn't look like it does on Milkdrop. ----------------------------------------------------------- A: We know. Some of the simple waveforms (1,2,3,4,5) are not even close to correct. They are similiar, but not exactly the same. Also, the solarize, brighten, and darken filters aren't done yet either. Sometimes things just don't look right because we might, for example, draw shapes a tiny bit too big or small. Small errors propagate and become HUGE after a few manipulations. But who knows because it takes forever to tweak things like this. Q3: Where can I get more presets? -------------------------------- A: www.milkdrop.co.uk is a great place to start. However, all their presets are packaged in self-unzipping .exe's for win32. I extracted them with wine and it worked wonderfully. Check out the milkdrop forums at www.winamp.com to find new presets daily. The URL is below http://forums.winamp.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=81 Q4: What are the system requirements? ------------------------------------ A: To run projectM you need a Linux system w/a sound card and a video card with OpenGL hardware acceleration. We find that projectM runs MUCH better with the 2.6 series kernel and ALSA sound. What does that mean? Well... projectM has only been tested prior to me writing this on 4 computers. All those computers used some form of Redhat (8,9, & Fedora 1), although this should make no differance if you run a differant distro. Also, all of them used Nvidia (Geforce 3 Ti200, Geforce 4 MX440 & Ti4200) WE STRONGLY RECCOMEND THE USE OF ALSA AND THE 2.6 SERIES KERNEL Q5: Why is projectM so slow!!! ----------------------------- A: If projectM is slow for you all the time, and not just on a select few presets, you can try lowering the rendering quality, and this will speed things up A LOT. To do this, lower the texsize and gridsize (gx,gy) in /etc/projectM/config Texsize controls the size of the rendered image. If you think your video card is too slow or doesn't have enough memory, then change this. A middle value for texsize is 512. 1024 is nice looking, and 256 is for VERY slow computers. If your processor is the bottleneck, then lower gx and gy. gx and gy control the size of the interpolated per-pixel mesh. 24/18 is a low-middle value. I run at 48/32 some times on my Athlon 64 3200, and I could probably go higher, although some presets slow down for me at this VERY high setting. Certain presets can be processor hogs and slow the framerate down to almost 0. In this situation my best advice is not to use those presets. All the presets that come with projectM should be slim enough to run on nearly all machines capable of running projectM in the first place. Q6:How can I increase the rendering quality to make projectM look better? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- A: Read Q5 and do the opposite! Q7: How can I configure projectM? (where's the config file?) ------------------------------------------------------------ A: /etc/projectM/config Q8: Where are the presets? -------------------------- A: /etc/projectM/presets