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README.TXT
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1993-06-15
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Video Spigot for Windows
Product Version 1.0
Release Version 1.3.0.1
----- Changes for release 1.3 -----------------------------------------------
VideoSpigot for Windows
1. When installing VideoSpigot for Windows, the target system's bus
performance is tested. If capture performance is too low,
full-field (640x480) capture is disabled and a flag is set in the
[SPIGOT.DRV] section of SYSTEM.INI. The flag can be changed to
override the disable, enabling full-field capture even if the
automatic bus performance measurement implies that full-field
capture quality would be compromised. The flag values:
FullFieldCapture=0 disable full-field capture
FullFieldCapture=1 enable full-field capture
FullFieldCapture=2 re-measure bus performance at next startup
2. Addresses in the range F00000 through F1FFFF are not valid for
placing VideoSpigot for Windows.
Cinepak Codec
1. The compressor will now insert a key frame when it detects a scene
change in the source material.
2. Bright fields would occasionally have dark patches in them when
the compressed clip was played back. The problem has been fixed.
----- Instructions for Installation of the VideoSpigot Capture Driver -------
1. Make sure that you have installed your distribution of the released
version of Microsoft's Video for Windows.
2. When running Windows, do the following:
a. Open up the Control Panel application and invoke the Drivers
applet.
b. From the Drivers applet's main window select the Add... pushbutton.
c. In the Add dialog box which then appears choose the selection
"Unlisted or Updated Driver" from the List of Drivers listbox.
d. In the Install Driver dialog box which then appears enter either
A:\ or B:\ in the edit field, depending on which drive you have
inserted the VideoSpigot diskette. Press OK.
e. In the Add Unlisted or Updated Driver dialog box which should then
appear, you should see the following entries:
SuperMatch Cinepak Codec
SuperMatch VideoSpigot Capture Driver
SuperMatch VideoSpigot Codec
SuperMatch YUV 4:2:2 Video Codec
Select 'SuperMatch VideoSpigot Capture Driver' and press OK.
f. The capture driver will be copied into your Window's system subdirectory
and another dialog box entitled, VideoSpigot Device Setup, will
appear.
g. VideoSpigot uses I/O addresses 0AD6h through 0AD9h. These
addresses are active all the time and are not reassignable.
While capture is in process, VideoSpigot needs to have access to
an interrupt and an 8KB memory buffer in your system.
The Scan... pushbutton to the right of the Interrupt Address
combo box will start an automatic IRQ scan that will attempt to
locate an available IRQ address from among the VideoSpigot
choices of 10, 11, or 15. The scan is not foolproof; you must
select one of these that has no conflict with other hardware.
The Scan... pushbutton to the right of the Base Memory Address
combo box will start an automatic memory scan that will attempt
to locate available 8KB memory blocks at which VideoSpigot may
be installed. VideoSpigot requires an unused 8KB block in the
bottom megabyte (addresses 000A0000 through 000FFFFF) or top
megabyte (addresses 00F00000 through 00FFFFFF) of your machine's
ISA bus physical address space.
NOTE: VideoSpigot is a 16 bit device. You must ensure that no
8 bit memory devices reside in the 128KB block in which
you have assigned VideoSpigot.
The mechanism used by the VideoSpigot capture driver to access
the physical address space allocated to the buffer does not
require that you exclude the address of the buffer in any EMM386
(or other memory manager) lines in your CONFIG.SYS.
Once you have made all your selections, press OK and installation
of the capture driver for the VideoSpigot card is complete.
-------- Instructions for Installation of VideoSpigot Codecs----------
To fully take advantage of VideoSpigot's capability to capture video
data to raw YUV, Spigot compressed, and/or do post-capture compression
with the Cinepak codec, you must also install the supplied compressor
drivers. To do this:
1. When running Windows, do the following:
a. Open up the Control Panel application and invoke the Drivers
applet.
b. From the Drivers applet's main window select the Add...
pushbutton.
c. In the Add dialog box which then appears choose the selection
"Unlisted or Updated Driver" from the List of Drivers listbox.
d. In the Install Driver dialog box which then appears enter
either A:\ or B:\ in the edit field, depending on which drive
you have inserted the VideoSpigot diskette. Press OK.
e. In the Add Unlisted or Updated Driver dialog box which should
then appear, you should see the following entries:
SuperMatch Cinepak Codec
SuperMatch VideoSpigot Capture Driver
SuperMatch VideoSpigot Codec
SuperMatch YUV 4:2:2 Video Codec
Select 'SuperMatch VideoSpigot Codec' and press OK.
f. The VideoSpigot Video Codec driver will be copied into your
Window's system subdirectory and its installation should then
be complete.
g. Next, install the SuperMatch YUV 4:2:2 Video Codec by repeating
steps b through e.
g. Next, install the Cinepak Codec by repeating steps b through e.
NOTES
=====
There are several factors that you should take into consideration so that
you may achieve the most optimal capture rates possible for your system:
1. Disk fragmentation - if your hard disk is highly fragmented then
it will take more time to access data within files and therefore
reading and writing AVI files will take up more of your system's
bandwidth. Because less time is available to the capture process
when a disk is fragmented, captures rates will suffer. Make sure
that you periodically defragment your disk (several utilities for
doing this are available commercially -- PC Tools, WinMaster,
etc...). Make especially sure that your disk is defragmented before
you create the main capture file that VIDCAP will use during
capture.
2. Disk Transfer Performance -- A hard disk which is slow at
transferring data will impair capture rates since data will not
be able to be transferred to disk fast enough to keep up with
the rate at which data is being captured. On these slower hard
disks you may find that capture rates actually go up when the
data being captured is written to a capture file located on a
compressed disk volume (logical disk drives created by utilities
such as Stacker that maintain the data on the disk as a compressed
data). This is due to the reduced amount of data needing to be
written to the disk during the capture process as a result of
data compression.
3. System Processor - More powerful CPU chips will allow a greater
amount of processing in a given amount of time. Much of the
capture process depends on software execution on the system
processor, so it follows that more powerful CPU's will yield
higher capture rates. This is in fact the case, as you can expect
to get higher capture rates on '486 CPU's versus '386 CPU's.
4. System Clock Speed - For the same reasons stated in 3. above
higher capture rates will be achieved on systems that have a
higher system clock speed. Thus, 50 MHz systems will yield
higher capture rates than 33MHz systems which will yield higher
capture rates than 25MHz systems.
5. System Bus Speed - Most AT compatibles have adapter card buses
which are set at 8MHz. Some compatibles allow the bus speed
to be set higher with the tradeoff that some adapter cards may
not correctly work at the higher bus speed. If all the adapter
cards in your system function correctly at a higher bus speed then
you can realize higher capture rates at the higher bus speed.
6. Video Capture Format - During video capture, the VideoSpigot
capture driver allows a user to select from among 5 different
capture formats:
8 bit palettized (256 colors)
8 bit dithered (256 colors)
16 bit RGB555 (32K colors)
24 bit RGB (16M colors)
Spigot Compression (64K colors)
YUV 4:2:2 (16M colors)
Selection of the YUV 4:2:2 format will normally result in the
highest capture rates since the least amount of data manipulation
is necessary in this capture format (the native format retrieved
from VideoSpigot). However, YUV 4:2:2 format requires twice the
amount of file space as 8 bit palettized or Spigot Compression,
and on slower hard disks this could result in slower capture
rates. You will need to experiment to determine the optimum
formats for capture.
7. Video Capture Method - VIDCAP allows a user to select parameters
associated with capture in its Capture Video Sequence dialog
box. Make sure that you select Capture to Memory. This selection
will reduce considerably the degradation that a hard disk will
effect on the capture rate.
Explanation of SYSTEM.INI Options for VideoSpigot
=================================================
The VideoSpigot capture driver retains information about current capture
parameters and hardware setups in the Window's SYSTEM.INI file. All
options will be recorded in the [spigot.drv] section of the SYSTEM.INI.
Current keywords and their possible values are:
Keyword Legal Values Description
------- ------------ -----------
CaptureField 0 VideoSpigot will capture only the
even fields of an interlaced input
signal. For non-interlaced video
signals this flag has no effect.
16 (default) VideoSpigot will capture only the
odd fields of an interlaced input
signal. For non-interlaced video
signals this flag has no effect.
FullFieldCapture 0 Disable full-field capture
1 Enable full-field capture
2 Force bus performance
measurement cycle on next
startup of VideoSpigot for
Windows. Full-field capture
will be enabled or disabled
depending on results of bus
performance.
Hue 0 - 255 Shifts the colors towards green on
the low end and towards blue on the
high end of the range. The default
value is 128.
InputChannel 0 Always assume video data is being
input on the composite connector of
the card.
1 Always assume video data is being
input on the SVHS connector of the
card.
2 (default) Connector on which active video data
is input will be determined via an
autodetect algorithm in which the
SVHS connector is given priority.
Interrupt 10,11,15 Possible IRQ values for the vertical
sync interrupt of the VideoSpigot
card.
LineBreak.1.8 0 - 100 For 1/8 field capture (Width = 80 for
NTSC, = 96 for PAL,SECAM): % of
scanlines remaining to be read
from current frame being captured
before capture of next frame is
initiated. Default is 20%.
LineBreak.1.4 0 - 100 For 1/4 field capture (Width = 160 for
NTSC, = 192 for PAL,SECAM): % of
scanlines remaining to be read
from current frame being captured
before capture of next frame is
initiated. Default is 20%.
LineBreak.3.8 0 - 100 For 3/8 field capture (Width = 240 for
NTSC, = 288 for PAL,SECAM): % of
scanlines remaining to be read
from current frame being captured
before capture of next frame is
initiated. Default is 20%.
LineBreak.1.2 0 - 100 For 1/2 field capture (Width = 320 for
NTSC, = 388 for PAL,SECAM): % of
scanlines remaining to be read
from current frame being captured
before capture of next frame is
initiated. Default is 20%.
LineBreak.Full 0 - 100 For full field capture (Width = 640 for
NTSC): % of scanlines remaining to be
read from current frame being captured
before capture of next frame is
initiated. Default is 20%.
MemoryBase 0A0000-0FE000 On 8KB boundaries the valid address
F02000-FFE000 bases to locate VideoSpigot at.
ntscTOF 4-15 The # of lines skipped at the top
of the current field being captured
when running in NTSC mode. This allows
the user to prevent lines of inactive
video data from being captured (an
example of such non-video data would
be closed captioned text prepended to
the video data in many recordings).
The default # of lines to skip is 11.
palTOF 4-15 The # of lines skipped at the top
of the current field being captured
when running in PAL or SECAM mode.
This allows the user to prevent lines
of inactive video data from being
captured (an example of such non-video
data would be closed captioned text
prepended to the video data in many
recordings). The default # of lines
to skip is 15.
SpigotTime any Result of bus performance
measurement. See
FullFieldCapture. The automatic
measurement allows full-field
capture if SpigotTime is <= 1250.
VCR 0 Turn off hardware feature that enables
extra gain control for video signals
sourced from a VCR.
1 (default) Turn on hardware feature that enables
extra gain control for video signals
sourced from a VCR. If this feature is
turned off, VCR signals may appear
to roll.
VideoFormat 0 Video data will be captured in the
8 bit Palettized format.
1 Video data will be captured in the
16 bit RGB555 format.
2 (reserved, not used)
3 Video data will be captured in the
24 bit RGB format.
4 Video data will be captured in the
Spigot Compressed format.
5 Video data will be captured in the
YUV 4:2:2 format.
6 (default) Video data will be captured in the
8 bit Dithered format.
VideoStandard 1 Video data is encoded using the PAL
video transmission standard.
2 (default) Video data is encoded using the NTSC
video transmission standard.
3 Video data is encoded using the SECAM
video transmission standard.
Width 80 Widths that VideoSpigot can capture
160 (default) when running in NTSC mode.
240
320
640
96 Widths that VideoSpigot can capture
192 (default) when running in PAL,SECAM mode.
288
384