Use the DreamScene Feature on Your Windows XP Computer With XPscene - PC Software Help

Almost every Windows user has a custom desktop wallpaper background on their computer or at least changes the color to something other than the default. Wouldn't it be nice to have a movie or animated background wallpaper rather than just a still image?

Windows Vista has a built in feature called DreamScene which allows you to have looping movie scenes as your desktop background or wallpaper. XPscene is a free utility that allows you to do the same thing by taking movie files and converting them to animated html files which can then be uses and desktop backgrounds in Windows XP.

Using XPscene is relatively simple. All you need to do is find or create a movie file in wmv, mpg or avi format. Then select the file in step 1 and choose the Resize Mode. Use stretch to avoid black bars, or keep aspect ratio for best quality. Next you will select output folder to store the video and html file that will be created for your background. Finally click on the Create button to have the background movie created for you.

Now you can select your DreamScene html file by going to your display properties and then the Desktop tab and clicking on Browse. Change the Files of type section to HTML documents and browse to the location you created the file in step 2.

One thing you may have to do to get the movies to work properly as backgrounds is to open the html file with Internet Explorer before setting it as your background. Otherwise it may just show up as a black background when you try it. Another thing to keep in mind is that once you set your background as a movie file you won't be able to right click the desktop to go back to display properties since doing that will bring up options for the movie. You will have to go to Display under Control Panel instead.

To smoothly run DreamScene videos on Windows XP a 3.0 GHz single core processor or better and 1 GB of RAM or more is recommended. XPscene can be downloaded here.

Related Tips:
Display Your Users PC and Network Configuration on Their Desktops
Using the Windows XP Control Panel
Changing Folder Appearance and Other Icons
Windows Vista Sidebar and Gadgets
Microsoft Color Contol Panel Applet for Windows

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