Use the fullColorPermit for 16-bit projectors

Date: Fri Jan 22 10:34:42 MST 1999
From: Bernard Meisler <bmeisler@bway.net>
Subject: Use the fullColorPermit for 16-bit projectors

As documented in the excellent tip by David Cain (and nowhere else that I could find), 32-bit Windows projectors (aka Windows 95/NT projectors) composited at 8-bits will slow down markedly when played back under 16-bit and 24-bit color. This is especially noticeable with animations. Setting the fullColorPermit property to FALSE in the LINGO.INI file solves the problem.

However, I (strangely enough) found that the same problem exists with 16-bit projectors (aka Windows 3.1 projectors) composited with 256 colors, created with Director 6.5 updated with the Service pack, when running under Win 95/NT. (We needed to run on Win 3.1/95/NT and decided the easiest route was to create one 16-bit projector for all 3 platforms). I added the following lines to the LINGO.INI file, which enabled the animations under my 16-bit projector to run at the same (quick) speed whether the color depth was set at 8, 16, 24 or 32 bits:

 on startup
   if the colorDepth=8 then
       set the fullColorPermit to TRUE
   else
       set the fullColorPermit to FALSE
   end if
 end startup

I found that it was important to set the fullColorPermit to TRUE when running at 8-bits or else (you guessed it) the 16-bit projector slowed down. By the way, this phenomenon also existed in a 32-bit version of this projector I tested - it too slowed down when running at 8 bits if the fullColorPermit was set to FALSE. Perhaps it's not a bad idea to add the above code to all LINGO.INI files for all projectors composited with an 8-bit palette...

Bernard Meisler Multimedia Developer