# | README file for ELSAmotion Windows, ver 1.20 | | ELSAmotion | | Copyright (c) 1994-96 ELSA GmbH, Aachen (Germany) | | Subsidary: | ELSA GmbH ELSA Inc. | Sonnenweg 11 2150 Trade Zone Blvd. | D-52070 Aachen Suite 101 | Germany San Jose, CA 95131 | USA | | Phone : +49-241-9177-0 Phone: +1-408-935-0350 | Support Fax: +49-241-9177-213 Phone: 1-800-272-ELSA | BBS (modem): +49-241-9177-981 Fax : +1-408-935-0370 | BBS (ISDN) : +49-241-9177-7800 BBS : +1-408-935-0380 | CompuServe : GO ELSA CIS : GO ELSA | WWW : http://www.elsa.de WWW : http://www.elsa.com | | 04/16/96, fb Table of Contents: 1. Overview 2. Disk contents 3. Installation 4. Release Notes 5. Caveats ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Overview This disk (or CD-ROM subdirectory) contains the ELSAmotion Windows driver and the setup utility for installation. The Windows driver enables the ELSAmotion to be used as an MCI-device by Windows Media-Player and alikes. It can be used to view MPEG films under all graphics modes your graphics card supports. MPEG films may be taken from CD-ROM, VideoCD or CD-i (CD-interactive) devices. Playback may be done with up to 30 frames per second from iconic size to full screen (depending on your graphics board). For this, a DCI-/DirectDraw- supporting graphics board is required (e.g. ELSA WINNER 1000AVI, WINNER 2000AVI, WINNER 2000PRO/X..). SETUP is an installation program for the installation and configuration of the ELSAmotion Windows driver. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2. Disk contents It is not sufficient to copy the files from the disk (or directory) to your harddisk, because there are some changes required in your SYSTEM.INI and WIN.INI, too. The disk's directory contains the following files: DATE.DOC file identifying the disk, prod. date, etc. README.TXT the file you currently look at LIESMICH.TXT german version of README WSETUP.INF control file for Setup MOTI_MCI.HL_ ELSAmotion MCI-command help ELSA.HLP ELSA addresses ELSAMOT.REG Registry-Information for ELSAmotion ELSAMOT.INF Instructions to Device-Manager for Win95-Setup ELSAMPEG.DRV ELSAmotion device driver for MCI ELSAMPEG.W95 ELSAmotion device driver for MCI (Win95) DCIMAN.DLL DCI-Manager CR3.386 Windows driver for memory allocation UDH.DLL driver for use of offscreen-DCI EM_VXD.VXD low-level Interface to Win95 ELSAM16.DRV MCI interface to Win95 SET.CFG runtime configuration for ELSAmotion MPEGV.SUN interface driver running on ELSAmotion VPCODE.2 decoder running on ELSAmotion 2181MPEG.A21 for running on ELSAvision SETUP.EXE Setup Programm: loads WSETUP.EXE WSETUP.EX_ Wsetup program WSETUDEU.DL_ german resource DLL for WSETUP WSETUDEU.HL_ german help file for WSETUP WSETUENG.DL_ english resource DLL for WSETUP WSETUENG.HL_ english help file for WSETUP W95 subdirectory containing drivers for Win95 MPEGTEST subdirectory in direktory ELSAWARE containing files for MPEGtest, or separately disk (DISK 3) on disc versions DDRAW subdirectory in direktory ELSAware containing files for Microsoft DirectX, or separately disk (DISK 2) on disc versions In case of trouble during or after installation, please make sure you have all the files mentioned above! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3.1 Installation Windows 3.1x Prior to installation of ELSAmotion, an DCI-capable graphics board (and its drivers) as well as Video for Windows 1.1d (or newer) from the ELSA CD have to be installed. ELSAmotion has to be inserted into a PCI-slot that is capable of running as a "PCI-BUSMASTER" (see documentation of your PC). You can install the ELSAmotion Windows driver with the program SETUP.EXE on this disk "ELSAmotion Driver for Windows 3.1x" or on CD ROM in the subdirectory labeled "MOTION". Start Windows, call in the "Program Manager" "File"/"Run ...", enter the commandline "a:setup" (or the appropiate directory if you install from the ELSA-CD) and confirm with "OK". SETUP asks for your language, installs the ELSAmotion Windows driver and modifies your SYSTEM.INI and WIN.INI files accordingly. If asked, please insert the disc labeled "MPEGtest" into your disc-drive. 3.2 Installation Windows 95 You may install ELSAmotion for Windows 95 as you do with Windows 3.1x. If you insert ELSAmotion for the first time into your computer, you are asked to use the Windows 95 standard installation path, which is also possible. Fullscreen replay is only possible with DirectDraw and offscreen memory. Also, there may be a need to install DirectX (Direct Draw, Direct Sound, Direct Play) to your system. If you use Setup, you will be prompted to install DirectX if it hasn't been before. If you used Windows 95 procedures for ELSAmotion installation, you won't see ELSAmotion drivers in the "Devices" of Media Player. Direct Draw resides on an extra disc (labelled "DirectX") or in the directory "\ELSAWARE\DDRAW" on CD Versions. To install DirectX, change to the subdirectory "DirectX" and start the program "Dxsetup.exe". CAUTION: after installation of DirectX from CD, you will have to reactivate your WINNER driver if you own a ELSA Graphics Card. This is due to the fact, that Microsoft DirectX reinstalls original S3 drivers. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4. Release Notes This section describes changes to the last releases of this disc. VERSION 1.00: - first production release - disabling screen saver during run - integrated volume control - numerous minor bug fixes - vdma allocation bug after screen resolution change fixed VERSION 1.01: - restore of palette in 8 bpp screen mode after dos-box fixed - made dialog boxes system modal - close driver destroys window - new physical memory access VERSION 1.02: - volume now saved in configuration file - OLE integration and operation in user-supported windows - changed name to ELSAMPEG.DRV - some new error messages - custom command table for realmagic and OM api support VERSION 1.10: - supporting realmagic and OM1 windows api (restrictions see helpfile) - new information window in config dialog to show MPEG parameters - now supporting multi-track VideoCD's and CD-i's - complete configuration save/restore VERSION 1.11: - slider positioning reworked - closing window at load to avoid showing incorrect frame - ending fullscreen mode switches to application provided window VERSION 1.12: - file length corrected, repeat bug and last frame display - slider position taken from mpeg stream - some fixes on window handling - Protection fault error at close of externally provided window fixed - more general scheme to identify ELSAmotion card on PCI - fixed disk change detection on swapping CD's - included interface to ELSAvision VERSION 1.13: - fixing Triton Bug - separating right and left channel for mono audio VERSION 1.14: - reading CD-i with Toshiba drives now should work fine - version info in configuration dialog - prime driver for Win95 - fixed trouble getting in / out DOS-Boxes - recognition of CD-ROM change enhanced - calling configuration dialog with right mouse key if in fullscreen - being called by Visual Basic now should be stable VERSION 1.15: - redraw of background optimized if using DCI-primary-mode - correct MPEG-display with source resolution up to 384*288 dots - all MCI-commands described in OM-1 standard for windows are supported. For exceptions see "known bugs". - framerate and picturesize are read before start of replay - fixed some bug in multiple opening and closing windows - new installation procedure for Windows 95 VERSION 1.16 - added support for videodc, seek offset/frameref and step key - 1 frame displayed after seek and step, stabilized play after cue - displaying number of audio and video streams - improved support for users of MicroSoft Multimedia-Kit - still frame on mci-command: update - stabilizing restart after DOS-Boxes (Win95) - repeat selection with MediaPlayers -

- FileManager allows playback of single tracks on VideoCD - improved positioning before playback - crashing after replay from Win95 explorer fixed VERSION 1.17 - no more crashing after halting replay by mouse in Win95 - first 32bit driver with DirectDraw for Win95 - communication with ELSAvision software stabilized - problems with scarce DOS memory may be fixed by disabling VideoCD file support - no more crashing if properties dialog enabled at closing driver VERSION 1.18 - optimized behaviour and performance while reading from hard- disk - audio-mpeg opened faster and played to the end, no blank window - correct display format at mpeg widths apart from 352 - much better positioning in file - screensaver deactivated under Win95 also - no error messages from using control panel/drivers any more - synchronous operation of ELSAvision / ELSAmotion boards possible - now working 8-bit mode primary VERSION 1.19 - no more error by modified parameters in MCI-commands - MCI messages ON/OFF added - all preset parameters taken from registry - Win95 overlay, arbitrary size in offscreen mode - corrected behaviour at multiple runnings - fault tolerance to MPEG-streams enhanced - improved end-of-film recognition, no more flickering after stop/pause VERSION 1.20 - corrected 32-bit overlay background color mismatch - PLAY WAIT no longer crashes system - adopted to OM-1.10 - no more volume fallback on play command - improved repeat mode and positioning at end-of-file - less distortions at too large windows in primary mode - color distortions in YUY2 mode corrected on VPIC D boards ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5. Caveats This section documents known anomalies or problems and gives hints on work arounds. 5.1 Installation Installation problems may be checked out in detail by "MPEGTest". See documentation. If the Media Player encounters any problems with an MCI-device (e.g. board removed..) after changes in SYSTEM.INI it marks the device as bad and removes it from his device-table. To reenable it, you have to remove the lines "MPEGVideo=0," and "VideoCD=0," from the MPLAYER.INI file or modify SYTEM.INI again and restart the Media Player without a mpeg-film file name. In Windows 95, the driver is checked at every start of MediaPlayer. If there were other MPEG-devices installed, their dynalinks are removed, but they remain accessible as MCI-devices. 5.2 Using VideoCD / CD-i Depending on an alternate data format, CD-i's are unreadable by some CD-ROM drives. See section 5.11 for details on certain drives. If you get a message "MCI device not installed" using the VideoCD driver and having inserted a VideoCD in your drive, your CD-ROM driver isn't capable of reading "raw-mode" (2532 bytes per sector, no error correction). An updated version should solve the problem. If you try to replay pure CD-i's, tracks may not appear. Linear replay and positioning by time/frame are possible. 5.3 Distortion of sound / Framesize Depending on Framesize there might be short flaws in sound (mainly in "primary" mode on slower graphics boards). For this reason frame size in the above mode is limited to 800*600 dots. If film stops sometimes for a short while, you should disable your disk-cache (e.g. smartdrive) for the drive you play your mpeg files from. Replay speed is settable to 1 (speed 1000) or 2 (speed 2000), but, in double speed mode, frames are dropped. 5.4 Supported graphic boards / color modes Recently there are color failures in 24 bpp mode and in YUV. Using "offscreen" they aren't used. Using 8 bpp modes may lead to false colors on the desktop, which will be restored after closing media player. Try setting up Windows Desktop to use "Windows standard color scheme" if color is mismatched. Current hardware / software doesn't support 64k-banked VGA as well as scattered "offscreen"-surfaces. In this case your graphics cards isn't able to deliver graphics memory "in one piece". These errors will be solved by future hardware releases. 5.5 Other caveats - Copy / Capture sometimes leads to system hangs. - Depending on MPEG coding, some films can show distorted, interrupted video. This won't happen with professional CD-i's or VideoCD's. - "Cue to" without the "noshow" flag sometimes crashes the driver 5.6 Triton Board failure / 486-er PC's On some of the newer Pentium boards with the Triton Chipset (mainly Intel Alladin and Zappa) the system crashes after a few seconds running offscreen. The reason is a bug in the chipset which may be circumvented by reprogramming it. This is enabled automatically, but can be disabled by inserting "TritonFix=0" into the [DCISurface] section of "win.ini" (Win31) or in Registry's section "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/ Class/MEDIA/DDrawSurface" (Win95). If you encounter other crashes, especially corrupting harddisk, you will need to disable IDE prefetch buffer in the BIOS. This is due to a bug in your IDE controller chip in conjunction with the Triton Chipset. 5.7 not supported MCI-commands / parameters - seek parameter exactly - only audio and video stream 1 is supported - no frame-exact positioning - step parameter key not supported 5.8 OLE-embedding there is no still frame displayed 5.9 Windows 95 Some of the Win95 CD-ROM-drivers aren't capable of reading CD-i inspite of their Win 3.1x counterparts causing no problems. Also, on some drives swapping VideoCD's will not be recognised. Close Mediaplayer and start it again. ELSAmotion is only capable of running offscreen if used in conjunction with DirectDraw. On ELSA WINNER graphics boards, Windows 95 driver Version 1.04 and newer is required. If you use it with other graphics boards or older driver versions, you will only have DD-primary support. The same will appear, if you upgrade from Windows 3.1x to Windows 95 without reinstalling ELSAmotion driver. On 2MB cards DirectDraw will only run off- screen up to 800*600 pixels with 16 bpp. Future ELSA WINNER drivers will fix this. If you install ELSAmotion and ELSAvision boards in parallel, the software starting later will have access to primary surface only. Newer releases of ELSAvision software will stop this. 5.10 Low DOS memory If you encounter the message: "No memory for CD-ROM data buffer" (or "...control buffer") while starting MPEG or VideoCD driver, you are out of DOS-low-memory. This memory is required for reading of VideoCD and CD-i. If you don't plan to play "*.DAT"- files directly (single tracks of VideoCD), you may suppress this message by inserting the line: "VideoCDFiles=0" into [ELSAmotion] section of "elsamot.ini". On Win95 systems, these effects are unlikely to happen. 5.11 Compatibility of CD-ROM's The following combinations of CDRom-drive / Controller / driver are known to work: - Win 3.11 Sony CD33 Sony CD55 / ATAPI / IDE Toshiba 3601 & 3701/ Adaptec 2940 & NCR / EZSCSI 4.0c NEC 6xi / NCR / adaptec drivers Toshiba 5302B / IDE Plextor 4PlexPlus / Adaptec AVA-1505 / Aspi2Dos 3.59, Aspicd 3.2 - Win 95 Toshiba 3501 / NCR / with DOSCAM, ASPI, ASPICD (from adaptec) Toshiba 3501 / Adaptec / ASPI8DOS V1.12, ASPICD Toshiba 3401 / NCR Toshiba 3701 / Adaptec 2940 / EZSCSI 4.0c no CD-i replay 5.12 Coding of Audio Files Because ELSAmotion does a lot of buffering, the correct end-of- file is hard to recognize on short Audio-only MPEG's. If you are a producer of this type of file, include about half a second of silence after your audio.