DOS/V Power Report 1997 August/VPR9708B.ISO/DRIVER/MIRO/DC20/WIN31_95/README.ENG

Text File | 1996-07-15 | 10KB | 199 lines

miroVIDEO DC20
README for Version 1.05                            15.07.96

This text contains important information for the user of the miroVIDEO DC20
system. If you encounter any problems when working with the DC20, please read
the manual and this text.


Overlaysupport for miroMAGIC 40PV and miroVIDEO 20TD
The overlay functionality for the above boards is implemented since version
1.01 of the miroVIDEO DC20-driver. Since version 1.03 the miroMEDIA View /
TV will be supported for video overlay.

Controlling DC20CTRL.EXE from the keyboard
Now it is possible to switch with the TAB-key from one button to the next in
DC20CTRL.EXE. Instead of this the keyboard you can also use a mouse.

Play a PAL-AVI in NTSC-format
An AVI which was captured in PAL-format can not be played back on the video-
output in NTSC-format. The video-output delivers just a disturbed black/white
picture, but there is no errormessage.

Interrupt-Sharing
This miroVIDEO DC20 version supports PCI interrupt sharing. This function is
necessary if the motherboard allocates a single interrupt to all PCI slots.
In this case, all PCI devices have to share one interrupt which means that
every driver has to check if the current interrupt comes from its device.
If this is not the case, the driver must not handle this interrupt and has to
pass it to the next PCI device. If only one of the devices involved (or its
driver) fails to do so, the system will not function properly. Because the
devices which are mostly used for recording and playing back video are SCSI
hard disks and SCSI controllers, we examine the behaviour of SCSI controllers.
Under Windows95, we tested miroVIDEO DC20 together with Adaptec SCSI
controllers and the Adaptec driver software EZ-SCSI 4.0. This combination works
without any problems.

For Windows 3.x you have to distinguish two cases:
1. If you use Realmode drivers, for example ASPI8DOS.SYS, for your SCSI
   controller, it tells the DC20 driver that the interrupt is sharable. If the
   interrupt is used, the system crashes without sending an error message.
2. If e.g. EZ-SCSI is used, the interrupt is declared by EZ-SCSI as "non-
   sharable". This can be tested in the configuration dialog. Then the message
   "non sharable" appears when you press the "Test" button in the
   "VSYNC interrupt" field.

Unfortunately, there is no SCSI driver for Windows 3.x we know of which is
capable of interrupt sharing. It is, however, possible that such a driver can
be obtained from the manufacturer of the SCSI controller in the meantime.


HARD DISKS

Windows95:
Windows95 supports the 32-bit access to hard disks. Please check under Control-
Panel | System | Device Manager, if your hard disk drive or your SCSI controller
has been detected by Windows95 correctly. If not, the data transfer rate of your
hard disk will not suffice for a satisfying quality when recording and playing
back video.

Install a second hard disk to which you save the complete video clips for
recording and playing back. You can save temporary files to your system hard-
disk. During recording and playing back Windows95 accesses system files. If
these are located on the same hard disk as the video clips, the head has to be
repositioned which leads to one or more dropped frames (unsmooth playback).
Even the DC20 cache (which is part of the driver) cannot avoid this if the
hard disk is used at the peak performance.

Enhanced-IDE hard disks
With some E-IDE hard disks, high data rates result in an unsmooth playback when
playing back AVI files because the hard disk is recalibrated while a file is
read. This is no problem of miroVIDEO DC20 but is due to the functionality of
your hard disk and the other system components. This DC20 driver version will
 eliminate these unsmooth "jerks".

Jerks during playback:
To make sure that you get a synchronous video and audio during playback, we
created a new organisation of our miroVIDEO DC20 driver for video playback.
There for every frame will be marked with an internal time code.
Because the capturing will be buffered, there are no problems to digitize more
frames than your harddisk can write but during playback there might happen
problems. Up to now frames will be dropped if the harddisk cannot keep the
selected datarate.
Result: runtime difference between video and audio after long playback.

With the internal timecode every frame has to be played back to a defined point
of time now. In case the harddisk can't keep the selected datarate sometime you
get jerks cause some frames will be dropped for keeping the selected datarate.
Playback without loss of frames there is no runtime difference between audio-
and video-data.

Solution:
 - if you have plenty of RAM memory in your system, you can disable the virtual
   memory of your Windows 95.
 - otherwise you should reduce your selected datarate during capturing.


VidCap32 for Windows 95
Using the DC20 under Windows 95 we recommend for capturing AVI files the
VidCap32 of Microsoft, which is also available on the installation disk
of the miroVIDEO DC20. VidCap32 fully supports the 32Bit capture-class,
so that you can reach higher data rates during capturing.

Known bugs:
VidCap32 sets default the capture file to C:\CAPFILE.AVI. If you like to
set another drive for capturing, it could happen that VidCap32 stops with
a General Protection Fault (GPF). Start once again the VidCap32, ignore
the error message that the device is already active and set now the desired
drive for capturing. Close now VidCap32 and start Windows 95 again.

VidCap32 supports under Windows 95 the overlay functionality of a miroVIDEO
20TD, this means you can switch between the preview- and the overlay modes
and you don't have  to connect a TV to the output of the miroVIDEO DC20.
Avoid to reduce VidCap32 into an icon if you are in the overlay mode because
this could cause a GPF. If you would like to reduce VidCap32 that this
application will be shown in the status line, please switch into the preview
mode before.
This bugs could be fixed by using a newer miroVIDEO 20TD live driver.

A Helpfile for the VidCap32.EXE doesn't exist. If you try to open the "help"
option in the VidCap32, an errormessage appears that the helpfile could not
be opened.


DC20 & Adobe Premiere

Starting Adobe Premiere:
If your system hangs during the startup of Adobe Premiere or another video
editing software or you get General Protection Faults. We recommend to start
the DC20CTRL.EXE before you start your video capture or  video editing software
(Premiere, Media Studio). You can realise this by putting this program in the
Windows startup folder.

Capturing:
Using Adobe Premiere 4.0 LE avoid to change the preview rate in the "MOVIE
Capture" menue to "off". This setting causes a "division by zero" and is not
a default setting.

Acceleration:
The full-versions of Adobe Premiere 4.0a and the new 32bit Premiere 4.2 supports
the accelerator functions of the DC20. The display of thumbnails in the
construction view is up to 10 times faster, the preview during scrubbing as well
as in the transition-preview is heavily faster (in DC20CTRL the option "print to
video" has to be disabled). Older versions of Premiere do not support these
accelerations.

In the new installation program of the DC20 you can select DC20 presets either
for the Premiere 4.0 or the Premiere 4.2 version. We recommend to install these
presets depending on the Premiere version you have installed on your system.

Known bugs
If you like to resample an AVI movie, please check that the horizontal picture-
size has an even number of pixels, otherwise you get a color mismatch on the TV
out, or in the video overlay. This bug is not visible in the preview.

If you have installed "Direct Video" on your computer and you like to playback an
AVI movie with the media player to TV, you have to start the DC20CTRL before you
start the media player, otherwise you get only a preview and no output to video
or TV.


DC20 & 3D F/X

Settings
To get the best results when usig 3D f/X animations in a Premiere project it we
recommend the following settings:

Select the menuitem "Scene->Generate Animation".

Under "Compression" click on "Change" and select the miroVIDEO DC20-Codec. Set
"Quality" to 100%. The animation will now be rendered using the fast DC20-
hardware , it has a smaller size since it is compressed and Premiere does not
need to recompress it.

Click on "Animation Settings" and "Colors". Set "Palette" to "16 million (24bit).
Set "Quality" and "Size" to the samevalue as the rest of your videos in the
project.

Hints
In genaral: The animations which are created using 3D F/X should have the same
size (frame size) as the videos in your Premiere project, so that Premiere does
not need to resize and recompress.

If your Project works with smooth motions and you have captured the videos with
"both fields" (which is 50fps PAL or 60fps NTSC) then you should set the value
of "frames per second" to 50 for PAL or 60 for NTSC.

DC20 and VIDEO Mouse
Since driver version 1.04 the VIDEO Mouse supports the miroVIDEO DC20.


For new miroVIDEO DC20 drivers or driver updates please look at the following
services:

miroMAILBOX:            [phone]
Internet:        ftp.miro.com
            http://www.miro.com
CompuServe:        GO MIRO