How to make ProjectM play nice

[Roken]

If you are like me, sometimes you want an audio and visual cornucopia to enjoy so that you can completely lose yourself in the music and the gorgeous Milkdrop visuals that accompany it, and you may be a little disappointed (though still marveling to a degree) that ProjectM will bring the visuals. I'm sorry, but the music is your choice.

Anyway, ProjectM isn't well documented, so here's a quick run down of what I've found with a lot of playing.

First: Make sure you install the correct ProjectM for your system (I'm using projectm-pulseaudio here, but versions are available in the repository for other systems, such as jack etc).

Once it's installed, play a tune or two and fire up ProjectM. If you have more than one soundcard or audio input you may notice the first disappointment. Whilst it's pretty, it isn't in sync with the music. The reason is because ProjectM is listening to the wrong source, so let's fix that. Whilst ProjectM is active, press the "m" key on your keyboard to get the menu, and choose "Settings/settings for your system", deselect "Choose first device" and select the correct output. Click the save button and you should see a difference right away.

Next is the presets. If you have only installed ProjectM then you are missing out. Get on Google and find your favourite Milkdrop package(s), and download them. The Linux archive manager should be able to extract them. Copy the presets to /usr/share/projectm/presets (you'll need to do this with administrator permissions). Restart projectM and it should use the new presets. Depending on your system, I recommend no more than 200 - 500 presets be installed, otherwise you may notice some pausing when projectM switches them.

Now optimise projectM for your system. This is a little trial and error, but reduce or increase the texture size and mesh size until you have a smooth display of acceptable quality. You can find these settings by pressing "m" and choosing Settings/configure ProjectM.

You may also notice that the sensitivity to the playing music is a little off. The default beat sensitivity of 10 is a little low (certainly on my system). Up it to 20 and the visuals should be much more in tune with your music.

Finally, you may notice that some presets will leave you with a block of colour and not much else - not very pretty or exciting. In the same settings, change the preset duration and smooth preset duration to very similar values (the amounts you input are in seconds) I find 20 for each works well, but vary to suit your taste. The advantage of using similar values if that one preset is almost constantly overlapping another. This means that if you have 200 presets, you effectively get 200 x 200 (40,000) visuals.

Now save the settings again and quit projectM, then fire up some good music (or Abba, if you prefer) and follow it with ProjectM. If it opens in a window, press "f" on your keyboard for full screen, grab a can of beer or whatever your poison is and enjoy the feast that awaits you.