This screen is when FlipIT has been executed on a directory which already contains a lecture. All of the yellow is indicating areas of concern.
At the top there is a status area. It is currently concerned that there is already an events file in this directory.
The next area is the Events File - this is a small text file which contains timing information indicating what time each slide is to be displayed while the media is played. The Delete button removes this file. This is yellow because if we are recording a new lecture, this file should not exist. So for this example, we delete the file and the field becomes white and the status is updated.
The following area is the Media File - it is also yellow because the file exists and the current settings at the bottom of the screen indicate that we will be recording new media.
The Starting Slide allows you to start somewhere other than the first slide in the sequence. Typically this is left at one.
The Start-Up Delay is a value (in seconds). This is used to add a delay from the time the + is pressed until the timer is actually started. This is typically used when the RealProducer takes 3-4 seconds from the time it is started until it actually starts recording. The default is zero seconds indicating that the timer is started immediately when the + key is pressed. If the delay is wrong, a few seconds can be trimmed from or added to each time using TimeIT!.
You can display slides in a full-screen, small, window or not at all based on the radio buttons in the Slide Display Style area.
You can record new media, play existing media (must be the file name in Media File), or do no media. The No Media option is provided to allow you to synchronize to any source such as the Quicktime player, a video tape, or a live performance where the encoding is done on another computer. For this example, we already have the media so we select Play Media. At that point, all the fields will be white.
Multi-Part Lectures
You can record multi-part lectures using Sync-O-Matic. In a multipart lecture, you have one sequence of slides, but several different media files. For example a 30 slide presentation might be in three files with slides 1-5 in the first media, slides 6-20 in the second media file, and slides 21-30 in a third file.
This can be made to work quite well. The naming conventions for the media files and event files changes, and you must choose a style which supports multi-part lectures. The standard style shipped with Sync-O-Matic (sm2k) does support multi-part lectures.
Most users find it easier to create three separate lectures rather than multipart lectures.