Smacker playback is simple - highlight the file and click Play. For everything else there is the advanced player: highlight a Smacker file and click "Advanced play", and this window opens. It is also where you set up a self-running EXE of an animation. Click on a section of the screenshot for help on it, or use the links below.

Jump to: Playback | Sound | File buffering | Screen position and scaling | Window style | Disable keys | Buttons

Playback options:

Loop the playback (blank for infinite): Plays the animation over and over. Enter a count, or check the box and leave the count blank to loop until you press Escape.

Use this frame rate (blank for fast): Plays at this frame rate instead of the file's own. Check it and leave the rate blank to play flat out, as fast as the machine can decode.

Show a playback summary: Shows a summary window when playback finishes: frames skipped, the read speed of the device, the percentage of time spent in each part of Smacker, and more. If playback is skipping, this is where to look first.

Show frame numbers in caption: Puts the current frame number in the window's title bar as it plays.

Don't skip frames: Never drops a frame to keep up. If the machine falls behind, the sound stutters instead.

Pause when focus is lost: Pauses the animation when you switch to another window, and resumes when you come back.

Hide Windows mouse cursor in the Smacker window: Hides the mouse pointer while it is over the window.

Sound options:

Play tracks (0,1,2...): Which of the file's sound tracks to play, separated by commas. Smacker files hold up to seven tracks and can play several at once. Tracks are numbered from 0 here, so the mixer's track 1 is track 0 in this field.

Use DirectSound: Plays the sound through DirectSound rather than Windows Audio (WASAPI), the default.

Sound only: Plays the sound tracks without drawing the video.

File buffering:

Preload the entire file into memory: Reads the whole file before playing, so there is no read time at all during playback.

Fill read ahead on file open: Fills the read-ahead buffer before the first frame is shown, so playback starts with a full buffer at the cost of a short delay.

Total memory to use for the read ahead buffer (in bytes): How far ahead of playback Smacker reads. A bigger buffer rides out longer stalls in the storage device.

Simulate this read speed: Throttles reading to this many bytes per second, so you can see how the animation will behave from a slow device without leaving your desk.

Screen position and scaling:

Left, Top, Width, Height: Where the window goes on the screen and how big it is. Width and height stretch the animation; a negative number scales instead (-2 plays at twice the size), and -1 is the full width or height of the screen.

Window style:

Choose a window with a title bar and border, a thick border with no title bar, a thin border with no title bar, or no title bar or border at all. "Always on top?" keeps the window above every other window.

Disable:

Turns off keys during playback: pause (the space bar), skip to the next file (the period) and cancel (Escape). Use these when the animation is going in front of people who shouldn't be able to stop it.

Buttons:

Play: Plays the file with these settings.

Defaults: Puts every setting on the window back to its default.

Set as Quick: Makes the current settings the quick playback settings - the ones used when you double-click a Smacker file in Explorer, preview during a compression, or click Play on the main RAD Video Tools window.

Make EXE: Opens the RAD Video to EXE compiler, which wraps the animation and the player, with these playback settings, into one self-running EXE or screen saver.

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