Nautilus BackPac III
5 messages in this thread
Margo,
I ordered the Nautilus BackPac III from the U.S. a few weeks ago, and got
it last week. I was really looking forward to the discs, since I didn't
have much to put in my CD-ROM reader.
I'm enjoying the exploration process, but I've got a couple of gripes.
Some of the files on the discs are demos, of course, done as standalone
MacroMind Director players. Since this is a read-only medium, why on earth
isn't the memory allocation on these demos set high enough so they'll run
from the disc? Several are set for the minimum; double-click on them and
you get a message saying there isn't enough memory to run them. I can't run
them unless I copy them to my hard drive and increase the memory
allocation. Not everyone will always have enough room on the hard drive to
put some/all/any of these demos. I certainly didn't my optical cartridge
drive came in last week.
It also seems that something isn't there, even tho it says there should be.
There is a folder on Vol 3-6 that claims to hold alternate QuickTime icons
pasted onto empty folders. Unfortunately, there are no icons on the
folders. I even tried copying them onto a disk and rebuilding its desktop,
but still no icons. Is it just me?
I also located some files that seem to be movies, but when I double-click
on
them I get a message saying their creator application can't be found. I
tried
playing them with Simple Player and Movie Play, but no luck. Could be me
and/or
something I'm doing, I guess… Any ideas?
I suppose these problems don't matter much to the running of the world, but
these things make me leery of subscribing, especially since I'm overseas
and the cost is higher.
In any case, thanks for a *mostly* enjoyable product; hope these little
annoyances can be straightened out.
Regards,
Guy Ivie
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
Guy —
Thanks for your comments. I'll pass them on to the editorial team. Regarding
the Director files… I'd have to go check the specifics of that disk, but, in
general I'd say that often content that it is submitted to Nautilus is published
"as is" – the Nautilus team doesn't create these files and so we are not always
at liberty to edit them. However, as I say, your comments are good ones and
I'll pass them on.
Also, I'm surprised that you can't open the movies from within Simple Player.
Did you try opening Simple Player and choosing the Open command from the File
menu and locating the movie of interest?
I'm going from memory here, but I believe there was indeed a problem with the
QuickTime icons on Vol 3-6. As I recall, they disappeared during the data
preparation stage of making the disc. They were republished on the next disc.
You're right there annoyances creep in from time to time. Hopefully, we learn
and improve with each disc. Sometimes it's 3 steps forward, 2 steps back, but
we're getting there.
Feel free to point more of them out!
Margo Riedel
Nautilus
Margo,
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
I sort of figured you (the Nautilus team) weren't responsible for the demos
not having the memalloc set too low. Just thought maybe you could add that
to the checklist or whatever you give to those who submit the content to
you. On one of the discs in the BackPac, I copied the playback engine to my
hard drive and increased the allocation. The engine ran fine then, but it
couldn't play the demo: it kept saying it couldn't find the necessary
files. Apparently, the engine needed to be in the same folder as all the
files it was linking together. I suppose I could have copied the files to
my hard drive, but in addition to the annoyance of having to do so, I would
have had the extreme difficulty of removing existing info to make room for
the 15 megs of files involved! Surely the people who made the demo intended
for me (or someone, anyway) to watch it? Yet they defeated their purpose by
not checking one simple thing before sending off the data for mastering.
RE: QuickTime icons: Glad to hear it wasn't just my imagination! Maybe I
can find someone over here who got the next disc and get the icons from
him.
Thanks for letting me blow a little (really, just a little!) steam.
Regards,
Guy Ivie
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
Guy —
Please feel free to vent all the steam you want! It's actually quite
informative in many ways for the Team here. As much as it pains to say, we do
make mistakes and misjudgements – but only once in awhile <g> !!
Hearing from "real" subscribers is a great benefit and one of the best ways for
us to appropriately improve Nautilus as a service and a product.
Margo Riedel
Nautilus
Margo,
I just wanted to let you, and the other listeners know, that "this"
Nautilus subscriber thinks that Nautilus is great! I just renewed my
subscription, and I'd recommend that ANY CD user do the same.
Cheers, Al