Robin Williams Cool Mac Apps, Second Edition [Electronic resources] : A guide to iLife 05, .Mac, and more! نسخه متنی

iTunes Visualizer

The iTunes music visualizer is mesmerizing. Just double-click a song, click the "Visual Effects" button in the bottom-right corner of the iTunes window, and watch the show. Colors and patterns undulate and morph to the beat of the music. You can also turn visuals on by pressing Command T or by choosing "Turn Visualizer On" in the Visualizer menu.

The Visual Effects button.

Show Visualizer within the iTunes window in one of three sizes: From the Visualizer menu, choose "Small," "Medium," or "Large."

You can also show the Visualizer effects in three different sizes while in Full Screen mode: From the Visualizer menu, choose "Full Screen." Now your choice of "Small," "Medium," or "Large" determines how the visuals appear while in full-screen mode. The "Small" or "Medium" option adds black around the visual effects to fill out the extra screen space. Choose "Large" and "Full Screen" to fill your entire screen with beautiful visual effects.

Toggle between full-screen view and window view with the keyboard shortcut Command F. Or click the mouse anywhere on the screen to return to the song list without interrupting the music.

"Small" Visualizer effects as seen in window view.

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"Medium" Visualizer effects as seen in window view.

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"Large" Visualizer effect as seen in window view.

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Visualizer configurations

The iTunes Visualizer can be even more fun if you know how to control it. The Visual Effects Generator uses three different configurations to create visuals. You can see these listed in the top-right of the window if you press the C key while visual effects are playing (shown below). The three configurations listed change randomly and morph into one another as music plays. You can change any, or all, of these configurations while music is playing.

The first configuration in the list affects the foreground of the Visualizer, the primary lines and shapes that modulate and interact with the beat of the music more obviously than the other graphics on the screen. Cycle through all the built-in effects for this configuration by alternately pressing the Q and W keys (Q for the previous selection and W for next selection).

The second configuration in the list affects the background graphics, the shapes and patterns that stream from the primary shapes in the top configuration. Cycle through all the built-in effects for this configuration by alternately pressing the A and S keys (A for the previous selection and S for the next selection).

The third configuration in the list affects the color scheme applied to the visuals. Cycle through all the built-in effects for this configuration by using the Z and X keys (Z for the previous selection and X for the next selection).

To manually and randomly change configurations at any time, press the R key. Press the R key in beat with the music to become the conductor of an amazing musical light show.

Warning: If you have work that needs to be done, do not turn off all the lights, put headphones on, play great music, and click the Visualizer button. Most importantly, do not start pressing the R key in beat with the music. That kind of irresponsible behavior put this entire chapter in jeopardy.

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Visualizer modes

To cycle through three Visualizer modes, press the M key repeatedly:

• To play the random visual effects generated by iTunes, press the M key several times until "Random slideshow mode" appears in the top-left corner of the window.

• To force iTunes to play the current configuration until instructed otherwise, press the M key several times until "Freezing current config" appears in the top-left corner of the window.

• To play only the configurations that have been saved as presets under the numeric keys, as described below, press the M key repeatedly until "User config slideshow mode" appears in the top-left corner of the window.

Save a favorite configuration

When you change an individual configuration (by using the keys mentioned on the previous page), the new effect fades slowly in as the configuration description in the upper-right corner fades out. If you fall in love with an effect, you can save that particular configuration as a preset that you can activate at any time.

To save a favorite configuration as a preset

Note:
To get rid of an old preset, just save a new one over it. Use the steps above and assign the same numeric key.

To play your preset, tap the numeric key that you assigned to your preset configuration. Try tapping different numeric preset keys to the beat of the music for fantastic visual effects.

Visualizer Help

A separate Help file of keyboard shortcuts is available in the Visualizer. While Visuals are turned on, press the ? key (or the H key) to show a list of keyboard shortcuts. The "Basic Visualizer Help" list appears on the left side of the window.

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Press the ? key again (or the H key) to toggle to another list of keyboard shortcuts, "Visualizer Config Help."

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