Bernie ][ The Rescue 3.0

Audio/Video

Registering | Getting Started | Audio/Video | Storage
Communications | Printing | Preferences | Total Integration

Bernie Home | F.E.Systems Home

1. Video Support

> 1.1 Power Mode

> 1.2 The Preferences

> > 1.2.1 Screen Refresh

> > 1.2.2 Switch Screen Depth at Startup

> > 1.2.3 Bypassing QuickDraw

> > 1.2.4 Smooth Mouse Tracking

> > 1.2.5 Extended Border Area

> > 1.2.6 AppleColor™ Mode (Smoothed)

> > 1.2.7 Power Mode: Switch at Startup

> > 1.2.8 Power Mode: Preserve Border Color

> > 1.2.9 Power Mode: Fade Screen at Switch

> > 1.2.10 Power Mode: Change Screen Resolution at Switch

> 1.3 Copying Content of Video Window

> 1.4 Video Performance Tips

2. Ensoniq Sound Emulation

> 2.1 Sound At A Glance

> > 2.1.1 Turning Sound On/Off

> > 2.1.2 SonicSense: Saving CPU resources

> > 2.1.3 The Sound Window

> 2.2 The Sound Preferences

> > 2.2.1 Playback Mode

> > 2.2.2 Volume Amplifier

> > 2.2.3 Extra Features

> > 2.2.4 Optimizations

> 2.3 Sound Capture

> > 2.3.1 Using Sound Capture

> > 2.3.2 Performance Considerations

> > 2.3.3 Sound Capture Errors

> 2.4 Recommendations

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1. Video Support

Bernie supports the entire range of video modes the Apple IIgs offers, and that's a lot. Video modes range from low resolution graphics and text modes to Apple IIgs' super-hires mode.

Different Video Modes

Bernie is offering three video modes: window mode, zoomed and Power Mode. In window mode, the Apple IIgs video display is contained in a single window and you can work with other windows and applications at the same time. In zoomed mode, the video window is shrinked. Lastly, in Power Mode the Apple IIgs video will occupy the entire screen and your Mac looks like a Apple IIgs.

Different Colors

Your Mac can run at different color "depths": 256 colors, thousands of colors, millions of colors, etc. Bernie has been optimized to run in 256 colors and 16-bit color depth (thousands of colors), and you might want to take advantage of this capability. (It's even a good idea to tell Bernie to switch to 256 or thousands of colors automatically at launch time.) You can still run Bernie at any other color depth, but it will run slower.

Different Refreshes

Bernie is refreshing the video window at 15Hz, 30Hz or 60Hz. There's also an "auto" setting where Bernie will find the best refresh rate for you. An Apple IIgs has a refresh frequency of 50 or 60 Hz, but this is often too often for most work. By reducing refresh frequency, you can free a lot of resources for improved performance.

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1.1 Power Mode

Bernie features a special video mode called Power Mode. Power Mode makes your Apple IIgs emulator look like an actual Apple IIgs. The Power Mode has the following characteristics:

- if possible your monitor will be set to 640x480 or 800x600 (with extended border option)
- the video window will be centered and the space around the Video will be covered by a border
- Power Mode switches to 256 or thousands of colors and enables a fast video blitter for best performance
- low-level mouse support is activated automatically

To activate Power Mode, push Command-Shift-F or the function key F8.

With the introduction of Bernie 3, you may make the regular mouse and menu bar temporarily available by holding down the Shift and Command keys.

In Power Mode, all available colors are reserved for IIgs video. Unfortunately, this prevents Bernie from displaying the border in the proper color. Bernie allows you to put aside one color for the border (see video panel in Preferences). Of course, this one color will not be available in the video window and may result (in extremely rare situations) to cosmetic quirks.

To quit Power Mode push Command-Shift-F or F8 again. You have to remember this keystroke because the menu is not visible. Alternately, you can use the function key F8 to enter or leave Power Mode.

#### Displaying Aux Windows in Power Mode

Starting with version 3, it is now possible to have the Disks, Joystick and Sound windows displayed in full-screen mode. The windows will be shown at the bottom of the screen. You can swap the aux windows in and out by selecting the corresponding menu items from the Windows menu.

Tip: holding down shift and command reenables the Mac mouse. You can then click into the aux windows to configure various sound and joystick settings and eject mounted disks.

#### Switching to the Finder

If you just want to quickly dive into the Mac Finder and return to Power Mode later, use the shortcut Shift-F8. This command puts Bernie into the background and makes the Finder the active application. When you return to Bernie (for example, by choosing it in the applications menu), you'll find yourself back in Power Mode.

Important: remember that Bernie can be taught to emulate in background. If you're hiding Bernie with Shift-F8, it might still be running and other application may perform sluggish. To turn it off, check the flag "pause emulation when in background" in the Preferences.

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1.2 The Preferences

Many settings can be controlled through the Preferences window. To open it, choose "Preferences" from the Setup menu:

Each option will be discussed hereafter.

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1.2.1 Screen Refresh

The screen refresh rate controls how often Bernie is redrawing the video window. A Apple IIgs is updating the video sixty or fifty times a second (60Hz/50Hz), but usually it is not necessary to redraw the video window that often. By choosing a slower refresh frequency, you can free considerable resources and make Bernie run faster.

The exact overhead of screen refreshes is not fixed but depends on the software you are using. That's why Bernie is offering a "Auto" setting: it then chooses a refresh frequency that your Mac can handle without being slowed too much which is usually 30 Hz.

The recommended setting is "Auto" or "30Hz".

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1.2.2 Change Screen Depth at Startup

Switches your main monitor to a color depth for which Bernie has a direct video blitter. Drivers exist for 256 colors and thousands of colors.

When launching Bernie and your video is currently set to anything below 256 colors, Bernie will switch to 256 colors. If video is set to millions of colors, Bernie will switch to thousands of colors.

Please note that the 16-bit blitter is not as fast as its 256 colors counterpart. Running Bernie in thousands of colors is very, very approximately 5 to 15% slower.

The recommended setting is to have Bernie switch to an accelerated video mode.

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1.2.3 Bypassing QuickDraw

Bypassing QuickDraw means that Bernie is directly writing into the video window on screen.

The conventional approach is to write changes to a separate memory area and then copy the new content to the video window, but this is slow. That's why Bernie is offering you to directly update the video window.

Note: Bernie can only bypass QuickDraw when the video is entirely visible and not overlapped by other windows, partially off-screen or crossing two or more monitors.

The recommended setting is to bypass QuickDraw.

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1.2.4 Smooth Mouse Tracking

By default, Bernie is updating internal mouse parameters 30 times per second. This is sufficient for most software and reduces mouse emulation overhead. If your software requires a finer resolution, you can tell Bernie to check the mouse position more often (60 times a second) by checking this box.

The recommended setting is to disable smooth mouse tracking.

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1.2.5 Extended Border Area

The Apple IIgs monitor had a pretty large border surrounding the actual content. If you'd like to really feel at home, enable Extended Border to increase border size to about the size of an original Apple IIgs system.

Note: Extended Border should not be enabled on monitors with a resolution of less than 800x600 pixels because it exceeds the size of the monitor and is slowing down emulation. Power Mode will automatically disable Extended Border if your monitor does not support the minimum resolution of 800x600 pixels.

The recommended setting is to turn off extended border.

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1.2.6 AppleColor™ Mode (Smoothed)

In AppleColor™ mode, Bernie smoothes 640x200 superhires video display. This eliminates stripes but some elements (notably text) might look fuzzy. Enabling AppleColor™ mode does not affect any other video mode besides 640x200 superhires.

The recommended setting is to turn off AppleColor™ mode.

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1.2.7 Power Mode: Switch at Startup

Automatically switches to (full-screen) Power Mode when Bernie is launched.

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1.2.8 Power Mode: Preserve Border Color

Puts aside one color for the border color. This one color will not be available for superhires and theoretically can lead to cosmetic quirks. In practice, though, this should never happen.

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1.2.9 Power Mode: Fade Screen at Switch

Yet another check box in the same video panel, "Fade Screen at Switch", introduces a supercool fade out/in while switching between normal (windowed) view and Power Mode.

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1.2.10 Power Mode: Change Screen Resolution at Switch

When switching to Power Mode, you can tell Bernie to set your monitor to 14" resolution. If your monitor does not support 14" resolution, this option does nothing.

Bernie requires QuickTime to be installed, otherwise switching resolution is not supported. If QuickTime is not installed or deactivated, Power Mode will simply stay at whatever resolution it is.

Another limitations are tabbed windows in MacOS® 8. For a yet to be found reason, MacOS 8 messes up the positions of popup windows when switching to 14" resolution. This problem does also occur when letting Bernie do the switch. There's nothing we can do about tabbed windows - we feel that's Apple's job to fix.

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1.3 Copying Content of Video Window

Bernie lets you copy the content of the Video window in two ways, either as a bitmap or as a stream of ASCII characters.

The Copy command in the Edit menu automatically chooses the proper action: if the IIgs is in graphics mode, it copies the window as a bitmap, otherwise as text. If you are not happy with how the Copy command works, you can force Bernie to copy the text screen as a bitmap by choosing "Copy Graphics" from the Edit menu.

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1.4 Video Performance Tips

With so many options it's easy to make Bernie dog-slow. Here's a short summary of what you should consider if you're looking for top performance:

- switch your computer to 256 colors. This is the most important and simple tweak.
- be sure the content of the Video window is entirely visible and not overlapped by other windows. (The window border may be hidden.)
- turn off Smooth Mouse Tracking
- go into Power Mode. Enabling Power Mode ensures all of the above performance tips are followed.

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2. Ensoniq Sound Emulation

Bernie features the most advanced sound synthesizer of all Apple II emulators. It's 16-bit , 22/44kHz sound engine produces mono, stereo, stereo enhanced and Dolby Surround Pro Logic® output with a minimum of CPU resources. Internally, a non-linear, autobalancing synthesizer takes care of down-mixing up to 32 voices at highest fidelity across all Ensoniq loads. Several optimizations including SonicSense and real-time smart voice cancelation ensure available CPU time is spent where it's needed, and additional goodies such as recording to file and a high-tech sound window complete Bernie's sound support.

### Getting Help

If you have questions regarding Video support, feel free to go to the Feedback page and submit us your question or comment.

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2.1 Sound At A Glance

Bernie ][ The Rescue supports the full range of "sound reproduction". It supports so-called classic "1-bit" sound found in older Apple II programs as well as the Apple IIgs' Ensoniq® sound chip.

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2.1.1 Turning Sound On/Off

Sound emulation is enabled by checking the menu item "Sound Support" from the Setup menu. When sound emulation is started, you hear a chime.

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2.1.2 SonicSense: Saving CPU resources

Sound emulation requires a tremendous amount of CPU resources because the Macintosh does not have a dedicated sound chip but does all sound synthesis in software. 680x0 Macintosh systems had a sound ASIC or a DSP coprocessor, but all PowerPC-based Macs lack such a coprocessor.

Thus, Bernie gives you a helping hand. It features SonicSense, a technique for enabling sound automatically when software starts playing sounds and turning it off when the virtual sound chip is idle. To enable SonicSense...

- open the Preferences window (see Setup menu)
- click the Sound panel
- check the SonicSense option

SonicSense is only active when both sound emulation is turned on and SonicSense is enabled. If you have disabled sound emulation, Bernie will not play anything.

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2.1.3 The Sound Window

Just for your very own enjoyment, we have given Bernie a multifunctional sound window where you can watch sound emulation at work. The window includes an oscilloscope and a bar of LEDs that represent oscillator activity, among others. It also allows for basic configuration of the sound engine.

Let's go through the window from the left to the right.

The first element is the master level meter - one for the left (L) and one for the right (R) channel.

The LED matrix in the middle of the window displays the activity of each of the 15 voices. (There are 32 voices, you may ask. That is correct, but they are almost always bundled in pairs as independent 16 voices. One voice is typically put aside for timing, hence the 15 voices display in Bernie.) Each column shows the activity of a single voice. The position of the indicator represents the volume of that particular voice.

Next to the LED matrix is a numeric indicator which is typically set to 16. The Ensoniq sound chip can be configured to serve less than its maximum of 16 voices (=32 oscillators). For example, you can choose the number of active voices in Diversi Tune.

To the right you see five loudspeakers centered around a point. Please take no offense, but the blotch is you. Depending on the currently active sound mode (mono, stereo, stereo enhanced, surround), the speaker symbols are on or off.

There are three remaining indicators at the top of the window. Their meaning is:

- ON: sound emulation is enabled.
- MUTE: sound emulation is disabled. No audio will be produced. Instead you will see an amazing Nite Rider™ light bouncing around.

- STNDBY: SonicSense kicked in and turned off sound emulation temporarily because the sound chip was idle. Sound support will be reenabled automatically as soon as the software is playing through the Ensoniq again.

While this window is sometimes cool to look at, close it if you're done with it. The Sound window consumes an horrible amount of CPU resources. If you have a faster Mac (250Mhz or more, ballpark), this shouldn't be of much concern. On slower Macs, however, it will make a difference.

Clicking Your Way Through The Sound Window

The sound window allows you to configure essential sound settings. These include:

- volume
- sound mode
- sound on/off
- matrix display

To set the volume, click into the master level display. Your click must go into one of the four lower bars. (This is a feature and not a bug: the idea is to avoid accidential clicks into the higher volumes that may nuke your expensive loudspeakers.) Once you picked up the LED indicator, hold down the mouse button and set the volume to your needs. Emulation will continue in the background so you can adjust the volume with "live" feedback.

Please note that any volume level beyond the lowest possible setting may lead to distorted sound due to clipping. When you hear scratches, you should consider reducing the volume and increase your Mac's global sound volume instead.

Also note that the Sound Window volume "slider" does not offer the same resolution as its counterpart from the Preferences window. You can fine-tune the volume much better from within the Preferences window.

To change sound mode, click into the group of speaker icons to the right. Depending on the icon onto which you click, a different sound mode will be chosen.

Lastly, clicking either the "ON" or "MUTE" indicator toggles sound support.

The LED matrix is a multi-purpose display. You can rotate through 3 different pages by clicking the two digits ("16" in the illustrations above):

- The first page, recognized by a decimal number (typically a 16), shows the oscillator activity. Each column represents a single Ensoniq voice. The vertical range is the oscillators' output volume.
- The second page, labeled "SP", consists of a spectrum analyzer. The leftmost bar displays the lowest bands (around 80 Hz) and so forth. Note that the spectrum display is backed by very, very time-intense math routines. We do not recommend running the spectrum analyzer on slower Macs.
- The third page (marked with a "Fr") shows in what frequency band each oscillator is playing. (Note: the frequency at which an oscillator is running is independent of the actual output frequency of an audio wave. If you're interested in actual output frequency, you need to go with the spectrum analyzer.) The frequencies displayed here are internal Ensoniq parameters.

Configuring the sound engine by clicking into the sound window is also supported in full-screen mode. Holddown command-shift (to make the mouse pointer appear) and change the settings to your needs.

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2.2 The Sound Preferences

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2.2.1 Playback Mode

The playback mode lets you choose among various settings.

- Mono outputs a mono signal and is the fastest mode requiring only a fair amount of CPU resources.
- Stereo provides you with a stereo output if your Mac can reproduce two channel sound.
- If you are connecting headphones, we recommend you to choose Stereo Enhanced - this mode reduces the stereo effect for more relaxed listening with headphones.
- Dolby® Surround is Bernie's state-of-the-art surround sound engine. If you have your Mac connected to a Dolby® Pro Logic/THX® decoder/preamplifier, this mode outputs 4 channel surround sound (left, right, center, rear). Unfortunately, in order to hear sounds on the center and rear channels, Apple IIgs software must be capable of addressing more than just the standard two stereo channels. See below for information on "Rear Channel Automapping".
- VectorSound modes are high-precision stereo playback modes. They come with enhanced accuracy and real-time audio filters.

The recommended setting is mono for best performance or stereo for games and music applications. Use VectorSound for high-fidelity music applications.

VectorSound™ Sound Modes

Besides the usual suspects mono, stereo, stereo enhancement and surround playback mode, the new VECTORSOUND engine comes in various flavours.

- VS™ Direct: this mode selects the new, high-precision sound engine. This mode comes close to regular stereo mode but is even more accurate than the already improved mono or stereo modes. This is the fastest VECTORSOUND mode and the recommended choice for gaming and listening to lower-quality sounds (such as MODs) or voices. VS Direct produces really crisp audio.
- VS™ Interpolated: the linear sound mode adds very limited bit enhancement that actually may lead to a noticeably dampened sound. It's almost as fast as VS Direct, though, which may be the only reason why it's there. Ahem. :-)
- VS™ Harmonic: Bernie's Harmonic mode smoothes a wave very accurately. Unfortunately, there's an awful lot of math required for this, thus VS Harmonic is dog-slow. The resulting wave is supersmooth. The inherent drawback of VS Harmonic is that high-pitched sounds and noises can't be reproduced precisely. Thus, VS™ Harmonic works best with high-quality FM sounds such as those found in SynthLab. It's an experimental sound mode that may or may not cut it for you.
- VS™ Harmonic Compressed: based on the Harmonic sound filter, the compressed flavour greatly reduces the effects on high-pitched sounds. It's a compromise between Direct and Harmonic modes.

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2.2.2 Volume Amplifier

The Volume slider lets you amplify sound.

If you increase volume beyond the "Normal" setting, you may experience audible scratches in some situations. Amplifying the volume basically says that you are increasing volume beyond what's mathematically correct, so scratches are necessarily part of the process.

The recommended setting is to set volume to normal. Some software is playing at a very low level (for example SynthLab) and may need to increase volume.

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2.2.3 Extra Features

The Extra Features are a collection of unique functions that improve sound quality:

- Crisp 44kHz Hi-Fi sound lets you choose between 22kHz (off) and 44Khz (on). 44kHz produces crystal-clear output but also doubles the amount of audio data. If your computer is short of CPU cycles or you are recording to disk, downsizing sound to 22kHz is an option you should consider.
- Rear Channel Automapping screens the sounds played through the Ensoniq and dynamically maps certain voices to the rear and center channels. This option is only active when used with Dolby Pro Logic sound mode. It allows you to listen to surround sound even if the Apple IIgs software is designed to play stereo only. This is an experimental feature and may not always produce 'good' sound. Check it out!
- High-Precision Timing is a new feature for audiophiles. With this option Bernie will dedicate more resources to sound emulation which allows the emulator to make the timing more accurate. Of course there's a trade-off between accuracy and emulation speed, especially on slower Macs. We do recommend High-Precision Timing for use with music applications and games. You should disable this feature when recording to disk.

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2.2.4 Optimizations

The Extra Features are a collection of unique functions that improve sound

- Smart Voice Cancellation is a technique for cutting down the number of redundant voices. Enabling it reduces overhead without sacrificing quality.
- SonicSense is a special feature that cuts down sound emulation overhead to an absolute minimum. You should always enable SonicSense. Basically, it means that sound is turned off automatically after 2 seconds of silence and restarted when sound resources are being used again. When sound is turned off by SonicSense, the red light in the "Sound" window is blinking.

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2.3 Sound Capture

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2.3.1 Using Sound Capture

Sound Capture is a feature that lets you save audio to a Macintosh sound file. The resulting file is a QuickTime AIFF document that you can open in QuickTime Player or virtually any sound editor for further processing.

To start sound capture, open the Edit menu and select "Capture Sound...". Bernie asks you for a file name and where to save the file.

To stop sound capture, select the same menu item again.

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2.3.2 Performance Considerations

Recording sound to a file involves quite some action, and slower Macintosh systems may not keep up with the data stream. To give you better control over sound recording, here are some technical details that will allow you to better configure Bernie's sound capture feature.

Sound recording is always done in the current sound mode. The sound mode is a combination of mono/stereo and 22/44kHz HiFi sound. (Stereo includes stereo enhanced and surround sound. Bernie does never record in VectorSound mode but switches back to regular stereo for performance reasons.) Depending on the combination of the two factors, the data volume can quadruple in worst case. To give you a better understanding of the amount of data, here're some figures for a 1-minute recording:

22kHz, mono: 2.5 Mb (43 kB/second)

22kHz, stereo: 5 Mb (86 kB/second)

44 kHz, mono: 5 Mb (86 kB/second)

44 kHz, stereo: 10 Mb (172 kB/second)

The higher throughput is the more likely is the chance of dropped frames. A dropped frame is a chunk of audio data that was generated but couldn't be written to disk because the previous frame was still waiting in the queue. If you are experiencing a lot of dropped frames, you should consider switching from 44kHz to 22kHz or from a stereo mode to mono.

Another, very important influence on your system's ability to keep up with the data stream is the High-Precision Timing option. As mentioned earlier, this feature sacrifices valuable CPU resources for increased accuracy. Even on faster Macs the data flow generated by high-bandwidth sound modes (44kHz stereo) and the immense overhead of High-Precision Timing can lead to dropped frames. Therefore, we recommend to turn off High-Precision Timing while a sound capture is in progress. Your Mac is given more time to process the sound data without giving up sound quality.

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2.3.3 Sound Capture Errors

Because Sound Capture really dislikes shortages in CPU cycles, you are given a detailed summary upon stopping a recording. When all went smoothly, Bernie displays the following message in the status bar:

> All data has been recorded successfully.

That's the message we're all looking for. In some situations, however, dropped frames occured and Bernie posts a message to the Error window:

> Some data was lost (99% written).

This message means that a very small fraction of the sound data could not be recorded to disk. Actually, you shouldn't worry about a result of 99% as a dropped frame or two can easily occur during the very beginning of the sound recording process. (The MacOS gets a hiccup when creating the file and updating the Finder window or desktop. Chances are almost 50-50 it drops a frame at that time.)

A more worrying error message would be:

> Some data was lost (50% written).

This typically happens when your Mac is technically not able to record at the pace you chose. In this situation you need to...

- if applicable, record to a faster storage device or RAM disk.
- quit background applications and close Finder windows
- disable High-Precision Timing
- switch from 44 kHz to 22 kHz
- switch from stereo to mono

We recommend that you proceed in this order.

Things are different when dropped frames were caused by a disk-related error. There are a number of potential problems that can happen when a software is writing to disk, and Sound Capture is no exception. Typical errors are disks with not enough free space or when Bernie was not given write access. If a disk error occured, Bernie will post an additional error message to the Error window indicating why the file could not be written properly

.

Due to the way how Sound Capture is wired internally, Bernie can't stop Sound Capture by itself. So when a disk error or dropped frame occurs, Sound Capture will continue even when no sound data can be written because of a filled hard disk or the like. It's therefore a good idea to double-check storage space and make sure everything's settled for Sound Capture.

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2.4 Sound Performance Tips

Sound emulation may slow down Bernie on low-end Power Macs significantly. For best performance, be sure to:

- enable SonicSense and Smart Voice Cancelation
- use Mono playback
- disable High-Precision Timing
- we have found that Macs are somewhat faster when the Mac (not Bernie!) is set to 44kHz: open the Sound control panel and set "Sound Out" to 44Khz.
- the Sound window (see Window menu) displays some fancy controls. However, opening this window eats valuable CPU resources, so better close it when speed is critical.
- some music applications provide options for reducing the number of active voices

Registering | Getting Started | Audio/Video | Storage
Communications | Printing | Preferences | Total Integration

Bernie Home | F.E.Systems Home

Mac, Apple IIgs, SmartPort, GS/OS, Finder, MacOS, ProDOS, AppleWorks are trademarks of Apple Computer Inc. Dolby Pro Logic is a trademark of Dolby Laboratories Inc. THX is a trademark of Lucasfilm Inc. All other brand names are trademarks of their respective holders. Bernie is a virtual dog.