FISCHE(1)							   User Commands							 FISCHE(1)

NAME

       fische - standalone sound visualisation

SYNOPSIS

       fische [options]

OPTIONS

       -D --driver driver

	      Use the specified audio input driver. Presently alsa, pulse, portaudio and dummy are supported.

       -d --device device

	      device  names  the  pcm  capture	device	to get the sound data from. On most systems, the default will do just fine. This Option is
	      ignored with the PulseAudio driver. The PortAudio driver knows the special device help, which will spit out  a  list  of	all  known
	      devices.

       -g --geometry XxY

	      X and Y specify the width and height of the animation. Defaults to 800x400.

       -v --virtual XxY

	      X and Y specify the width and height of the application window. Use this to prevent your computer from trying to switch to non-exis-
	      tent fullscreen resolutions. CAUTION: when specifying a virtual geometry, set the actual geometry FIRST!

       -f --fullscreen

	      Start fische in fullscreen mode.

       -e --extra-nervous

	      Start fische in nervous mode.

       -s --fps fps

	      fps specifies the target frames per second. The default, 30, is what fische is designed for

       -1 --single

	      Use only one CPU, even if there are more available

       --exit-on-mouseevent

	      Exit when a mouse button is clicked (useful mainly on touchscreens)

       -n --nowrite

	      Do not update the configuration file with the last known working configuration.

       -h --help

	      Display a basic help message.

RUNTIME CONTROLS

       At runtime, press P to pause, F to toggle fullscreen mode, N to toggle nervosity and ESC to quit. With the --exit-on-mouseevent flag,  fis-
       che does exactly that.

KNOWN ISSUES

       PortAudio is currently slow on Linux. If able, use a different driver.

       On  Windows, the actual frame rate is often quite different from the specified one. The actual rate is shown after exit. Use the -s flag to
       increase it to about 30.

TROUBLESHOOTING (Linux only)
       If you get an error like "X Error of failed request: BadValue..."

	      Try to start fische with the -v or --virtual flags and set X/Y to values that correspond to a fullscreen resolution  that  you  know
	      exists. For example: fische -g 1400x700 -v 1400x1050

       If fische starts, but won't react to sound

	      First of all, try a different input driver. If you are lucky, this already solves your problem.

	      If not, you now have to choose which driver you would like to get working:

	      pulse: Fische opens the default source as set with pavucontrol or similar tools. For example, if you would like to visualize "what's
	      playing", set the corresponding "monitor of output XYZ" device as default.

	      alsa: You might be using the wrong ALSA device. By default, fische tries to open the "default" device. It should be  correctly  con-
	      figured  on most systems, but with some soundcards you need complex ALSA configuration to achieve recording capabilities - look into
	      the ALSA documentation. For example, soundcards with ICE1712 chips record internally produced sound on channels 10 and 11 instead of
	      0 and 1.

	      alsa:  Recording	might  not be enabled. Check with "alsamixer" or an other mixer application. If you are trying to visualize sounds
	      produced by an audio player, you must enable recording of what's called "PCM" on most cards. For external input, record  "Line  In",
	      and so on...

	      alsa:  Your  sound  card might not support recording of your chosen source. In this case, you are in bad luck. Most notably, many C-
	      Media based cards do not allow recording while SPDIF out is in use. You can try a setup using an	"aloop"  dummy	card  -  but  that
	      process  is  far beyond the scope of this man page, and with most distributions, it requires kernel or ALSA re-compilation. However,
	      in this case the PulseAudio input driver might still give you the desired results.

FILES

       $HOME/.fischerc - automatically updated on clean exit.

SEE ALSO

       Runtime control documentation, troubleshooting information and FAQs in the README

AUTHOR

       This manual page was written by Marcel Ebmer fische@26elf.at. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this  document  under
       the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2, or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation

fische								    April 2010								 FISCHE(1)