DivXG400 2.8

http://www.tac.ee/~prr/videoutils/

Background
Installation
Usage
    Picture adjustment
    Subtitles
    OSD
License

Background

DivXG400 was first brought to live to work around incompatibility with DivX ;-), MS MPEG4, WM7, WM8 codecs and Matrox G400/G450 drivers/hardware. If image width of the clips is not exact multiple of 32 (like 720x???), clip may be played back without using video overlay. Without video overlay, clips are looking choppy and DVDMax can not be used.

In a time DivXG400 has evolved to something much more, providing several features, all designed for better movie-experience, like:

• Image adjustment (Pan & Scan, aspect ratio correction, overscan compensation)
• High quality subtitle display in windowed and full-screen mode. DivXG400 supports almost every known subtitle format: SubViewer 1.0, 2.0, SubRip, MicroDVD, SAMI, Sub Station Alpha 3.0, 4.0, JACOsub, DVDSubtitle, VobSub 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, TMPlayer, SMIL-RealText, AqTitle. Additionally, MicroDVD INI-files are accepted as a wrappers to real subtitle files.
• Subtitle output to TV in DVDMax mode (of course, all "classical" modes are supported, too)
• Near to 24fps clip playback at 25fps
• etc, etc.

DivXG400 is codec-independent and should work within all players that use automatic DirectShow Filter Graph generation (Windows Media Player, MicroDVD Player, Zoom Player etc.). Also, video codec must support YUY2 output format.

NB! DivXG400 is not limited to Matrox cards, it can be used with any graphics card. Couple of options have meaning for Matrox users only, though.

Installation

Run setup.exe and follow instructions on the screen.

Uninstallation

Choose Start/Settings/Control Panel/Add-Remove Programs/DivXG400/Remove.

Usage

Just play the clip :-)

To configure DivXG400,
choose DivXG400 options from Your player (in case of Media Player 6.4: File/Properties/Advanced/DivXG400) OR
dblclick on DivXG400 system tray icon OR
run Start/Programs/PRR Video Utilities/Configure DivXG400.
First two choices are directly connected to active instance of DivXG400, last one is disconnected.

After adjusting DivXG400 You may have to restart player.

Picture
Use image adjustment options only with Preserve Aspect Ratio setting of DVDMax!

• Compensate overscan adds black borders to clip sides, so You will see whole image on Your TV-screen. Typical setting for 4:3 TV should be ca 8%.
• If You are watching wide-screen movie on 4:3 TV or 4:3 clip on 16:9 TV, You may want to zoom image to fill more of Your TV-screen. Cut sides to ... setting makes sure, that at least specified amount of screen is filled with image.
• If Use leftover space for subtitles/OSD is checked, DivXG400 uses "leftover" space below or above movie to display subtitles and/or OSD information.
• If clip is small in size, subtitles/OSD may not look good on it. Enable Double image if its width is less than .. to get better quality. Doubling large clips is not meaningful, because it takes time and image may get larger than maximum supported by graphics card. 
• If You are watching interlaced clip that has unsuitable field-order for TV, You may fix it by choosing Shift image by one row.
• In Economic mode DivXG400 tries to minimize data flow, saving some CPU time. Strongly recommended. If it should produce flickering or otherwise invalid image, disable it.
• If DivXG400 or some codec causes flipped image, You may force DivXG400 to reflip it by choosing Force vertical flip. Flip input mirrors image only, Flip output mirrors image with subtitles, Filp input and output mirrors subtitles leaving image intact.

If Extended overlay support is on, number of additional features can be used:

• Image on TV does not freeze if player is covered or minimized.
• MPEG2 and other clips with aspect ratio correction can be correctly viewed in both full screen and windowed mode.
• Aspect ratio of the clip can be manually adjusted (see below).

Extended overlay support must be enabled to use DivXG400 with codecs that require support for aspect ration correction. Most of DVD video decoders do, possibly more.

In Extended overlay mode, DivXG400 can be used only for one clip at a time. Every time second clip is started, WMP tries to download additional codec/filter that would allow double-use of DivXG400, but fails of course :-)

• Aspect ratio compensation fixes clips with invalid aspect ratio. PAL/NTSC clip informs DivXG400, that the clip has been encoded without compensating out-of-aspect source (typically MPEG). Abstract square is meant to be used for custom image stretching.
• Use aspect ratio contains information, how image should look.

For example:

• Assume You have MPEG4 copy of non-anamorphic NTSC DVD. Its resolution is 720x480. If played back in DVD player, it covers full TV screen, but MPEG4 version of the clip leaves black borders in bottom and top of the screen. To get correct result, choose NTSC clip and 4:3 aspect ratio in DivXG400 settings.
• If clip contains anamorphic image, choose corresponding aspect ratio (typically 16:9).
• If You want image to be stretched to double height, choose Abstract square and 1:2 aspect ratio.

Miscellaneous section contains some global settings of DivXG400.

• You may specify in which occasions DivXG400 is loaded from Load filter dropdown.
  Only if necessary mode could be useful for slower PC users who use DivXG400 only for 32pix problem fix. In that mode DivXG400 is not loaded if clip is 32-divisible, image adjustment isn't used and no subtitles are found.
  in Force mode, DivXG400 is forced to filter graph, in which case DivXG400 can be used (not guaranteed) within programs, that do not use automatic filter graph generation, like Sasami2k, DivXPlus, DVD player (Ravisent Cineplayer 1.0 (without codecs) + PowerDVD 3 codecs is one kind'a working configuration), etc.
  Forcing use of filter in such way is far from normal, therefore it may cause a lot of unexpected problems, from wrong aspect ratio of clip to program crash. Also not all DivXG400 functionality may be practicable. Use this mode only if You know what You are doing.
• If near to 24fps clips are played back on PAL TV, image looks bit choppy, freezing every second for a short moment. You may use FPS conversion to work around the problem. In Autoplay near to 24fps clips at 25fps mode all clips with indicated fps between 23.500 and 24.500 are played back at 25fps, all other clips are not affected.
  Unfortunately not all clips/codecs indicate their fps. If clip fps is unavailable for DivXG400, it is detected and showed on properties page as detected fps. But DivXG400 will not autorun fps conversion according to detected information, You have to activate it manually by choosing appropriate mode form FPS conversion dropdown.
  FPS conversion feature requires cooperation of whole DirectShow graph and therefore may not work on every system/with every player/with every clip. For example if player uses Default WaveOut Device for audio playback instead of Default DirectSound Device, there will be no audio at all.
• If Show icon in system tray is on, DivXG400 places an icon to Windows system tray for fast access to DivXG400 and also other filters options.

Subtitles
To use subtitles, name subtitle file Subtitles or by name of the clip. As an advanced option, file names, like ClipName.*.Ext and ClipName-*.Ext are accepted. Copy the subtitle file to one of the directories specified in Search Path (see below). By default DivXG400 is configured to search subtitles from the same directory as a clip and from C:\DivXG400 directory. Then (re)start player. Subtitles are loaded automatically.
Note. You can also load subtitles from DivXG400 options, but it is not recommended, because it can not exploit Use leftover space for subtitles/OSD feature.
Subtitle file extension should be:

• SRT for SubRip files.
• SUB for SubViewer 1.0, 2.0 and DVDSubtitle files.
• SUB + IFO + IDX (three files) for VobSub 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 files.
• SUB + IDX (two files) for VobSub 6.0, 7.0 files.
• TXT for MicroDVD and TMPlayer files.
• SMI for SAMI files.
• SSA for Sub Station Alpha 3.0 and 4.0 files.
• JS for JACOsub files.
• RT for RealText files.
• AQT for AqTitle files.
• INI or MDV for MicroDVD-INI files.

If file extension and its format do not match, format of most common files is autodetected. To avoid problems caused by incorrectly detected format, it is  recommended to use extensions listed above.

For example, You have clip C:\Clips\Matrix.avi an English version of MicroDVD subtitles for it. Name subtitle file Matrix.txt or Matrix.English.txt or Subtitles.txt and copy it to C:\Clips or to C:\DivXG400 directory. Start player and enjoy.

DivXG400 uses not all the information present in subtitle files.
Following is a detailed listing of supported features.

• Font face, color, size and style specified in file are ignored.
• Subtitle position specified in file is ignored.
• Images and text are outputted only in monochrome.
• Compressed file formats are not accepted.

If You use MicroDVD or AqTitle file with DivXG400, You may want to slightly modify file by adding frame rate information.
In case of MicroDVD file, add line {1}{1}??? to the beginning of the file, replacing ??? with the frame rate of subtitle file. For example: {1}{1}23.976.
Note. Because of backward compatibility, line {0}{0}??? is also accepted..
In case of AqTitle file, add six rows between Cut-lines to the beginning of the file:
----- Cut Here -----
-->> 00000000
???

-->> 00000001


----- End Cut -----
Like in case of MicroDVD file, replace ??? with the frame rate of the file.
If frame rate information is missing, frame rate is autodetected.

Search path is a ';'-separated list of directories/files DivXG400 tries to find subtitles from. Directories/files may be relative or absolute. For example, the default setting C:\DivXG400;. tells DivXG400 to search subtitles first from the C:\DivXG400 directory and then from the directory of playing clip. C:\DivXG400;.;\mdvd.ini setting tells DivXG400 to check for a MicroDVD ini file from the root directory as well.

In use tells You which file is currently is use and allows yo choose between all subtitle files DivXG400 found. If the file You want to use is not present in the list, You may browse for it.

Subtitle position, lookout etc. can be modified from DivXG400 options.

Note. Default subtitle settings are optimized for DVDMax TV-out and may be not the best choice for watching subtitles on monitor. Feel free to readjust them :-)

OSD
To overlay additional information on clip, mark corresponding check-boxes at On Screen Display (OSD) page.
Currently You can show elapsed/remaining Video time and World time.
OSD font and position can be adjusted similarly to subtitles.

Note. To exploit Use leftover space for subtitles/OSD feature, You may have to restart player after adjustments.

OSD information is updated on screen only if clip is in running state.

License

This program is provided in a basis of "as is". Use it at Your own risk. Author does not take any responsibility of possible direct or indirect damage caused by the program.

DivXG400 is shareware. It's free for non-commercial use, but if You find the program useful, please donate author with small amount of money. You may redistribute DivXG400 freely as long You do not change integrity of the package.

Copyright ⌐ PRR 2003