Using ScreenCam

Contents:

  • Introduction - what is ScreenCam?
  • What kinds of files are there?
  • How do I play a movie?
  • How do I use scplayer.exe?
  • How do I install scplayer.exe?
  • How do I Set Up my Browsers to autoplay .scm files?

    • Introduction

    ScreenCam Movies, is a Windows technology developed by Lotus.  Information about this product can be found at http://www.lotus.com/home.nsf/welcome/streamcam

    It allows us to create a complete multi-media movie to aid in product demonstration and training when an instructor cannot physically be with you.  ScreenCam is the next best thing.  It captures all screen outputs, keystrokes and voice narration.  It's almost like you are sitting next to an expert and watching him work to demonstrate the programs.

    Our movies are best played on a monitor with resolution of 1024x768 or higher.  It must also have either speakers or a headset, because there is an audio narration soundtrack.
     

    What kinds of files are there:

  • .scm - This is the native file format.  You have two ways to play this file:
  • scplayer.exe - a standalone, free viewer, much like Acrobat Reader.  You can find a copy of it in the roaccess/bin directory.
  • Install scplayer.exe and configure your browser to handle files of extension .scm.
  • Browser PlugIn - plays the movies in your browser window.  We do not recommend this.
  • .exe - Standalone ScreenCam player files.  These contain a copy of the SCPLAYER.EXE player plus the movie file.  It will play on any Windows machine, because it does not require scplayer.exe to be previously installed.

    •  

    How Do I Play a Movie?

    If you download a .exe file (which will probably be in .zip format), mere unzip it and run it.  The ScreenCam control panel will immediately display.

    If you are downloading a .scm file, then you can tell your browser to automatically send that file to the scplayer.exe program.  Merely store the scplayer.exe file in your Windows or WinNT directory and tell your Browser to associate SCPLAYER.EXE with the mime type of video/x-screenCam.  Then when you click a ScreenCam movie Icon in RoAccess, it will automatically start playing on  your PC.
     

    How do I use scplayer.exe?

    It's like other multimedia players.  Here are the steps:

    Start up scplayer.exe either by hand or the browser will automatically start it (assuming you have already mapped .scm to scplayer.exe in your browser).

    Note: If it starts up with a big yellow "Lotus ScreenCam" logo, you can immediately dismiss this logo by entering the "ESC" key. Otherwise it will stay up for maybe 5 seconds, then display the "ScreenCam console" below.

    This is how ScreenCam starts up.  Click the upper lift icon to open a file.

    Open the .scm file here.

    Then the display looks like:

    Click the green arrow to start the playback.


    Here is what the buttons do:

    Click this to pause the movie.
    Click this to re-start at the beginning.
    Click to show the index to all the contained Chapters in the movie.  It would then look like:

    Merely click on the Chapter you want to jump to, skipping the preceding ones.
    Click this to fast forward.
    Click this to stop the movie.
    This is the audio volume control.
    That's it! Have fun!

    How do I Install SCPLAYER.EXE?

    Use scplayer.exe to play the .scm movie files.
  • Click here to Download scplayer.exe from your RoAccess WEB server, or
  • Click here to Download scplayer.zip (if you can't download an .exe file), unzip it and extract scplayer.exe
  • Store it in C:\WINNT (for Windows NT) or C:\WINDOWS (for Win95 and Win98)
  • To run a .scm movie, just type in "scplayer xxx.scm".
  • To run a .scm movie by clicking on it in Windows Explorer, you must first tell Windows Explorer what program to run for files with a .scm extension.  (Note: this setting is also used by MSIE)  Bring up Windows Explorer.  Select VIEW/Folder Options.  Then select the "File Types" tab.  Find Lotus Screen Cam Movie. Select Edit. Change the "content type (MIME) to be "application/vnd.lotus-screencam".  Then double click on "open" change the application to
    • "C:\winnt\scplayer.exe"  /sc  "%1"
    Now when you double click a .scm file in Windows Explorer, it will automatically run scplayer.exe.

    How do I Set Up my Browsers to autoplay .scm files?

    How to configure a browser to automatically play .scm movies when they are downloaded?  It's like any other file type, like MSWord, or Excel.  When a file is sent down, it is given a name (like movie.scm) where the extension (.scm) is important.  Also the WEB server sends down the associated "mime type".   Your browser has a table that associates the mime type and  file extension to what program to run for that file.

    Different browsers and different WEB server have so many different ways of setting file extensions, mime types that on one explanation is not sufficient.  Also different versions of browsers are configured differently.

    If you download a .scm file via RoAccess (like clicking a movie icon), a .scm file will be downloaded and the mime type will be "application/vnd.lotus-screencam".

    Netscape: usually select the mime type screen by: Edit/Preferences/Navigator/Applications.  Then find Lotus ScreenCam if it exists, and associate your scplayer.exe with it.

    If a popup says "an unknown file type" is being downloaded, then  select the application to handle it, select the c:\winnt\scplayer or c:\windows\scplayer.exe as the application.

    Once you make the change, exit the browser (all windows), start it up from scratch, and try downloading the .scm file to see if it automatically runs the scplayer.exe program.

    MSIE: Set the content type and program in Windows Explorer (View/Folder Options).  Click here for more from above.