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╔═════════════════════════════════════╗ ║ QuickView Ver. 2.12 ║ ║ ║ ║ DOS based Multimedia viewer ║ ║ No Windows is required! ║ ╚═════════════════════════════════════╝ For the German documentation please read QV.DOK. QuickView is Shareware. This means that you can test it for at most three weeks. After that period you must register, i.e. pay a small registration fee or discontinue using it. See REGISTER.DOC for details. Features of QuickView: ---------------------- QuickView views the following file formats at present: Video formats: - .AVI: Codecs: DIB (4, 8, 16 and 24 bit), RLE (8 bit), MS Video 1 [msvc] (8 and 16 bit), Cinepak [cvid] (24 bit), Ultimotion (OS/2 AVIs) [ULTI] (16 bit), YVU9 (24 bit), Indeo(tm) 3.1 and 3.2 [IV31 and IV32] (24 bit), Creative Video Blaster [cyuv] (16 bit), For converted MOVs: Apple None [raw] (4 and 24 bit), Apple Animation [rle] (1, 4, 8, 16 and 24 bit), Apple Graphics [smc] (8 bit), Apple Video [rpza] (16 bit, only HiColor Playback) With sound through a Sound Blaster or compatible. Sound can be either uncompressed or Microsoft ADPCM compressed. You have the option to adapt the quality to your system's speed. - .DL: Versions 1,2 and partly 3 - .CEL (Original Animator CEL Files), .FLC, .FLI - .GIF animations Picture formats: - .BMP: uncompressed: 1, 4, 8, 16 and 24 color bits RLE compressed: 4 and 8 color bits including OS/2 bitmaps furthermore all kindred formats: .RLE, .DIB, .BGA, .VGA, .RLE, .RL4, .RL8 - .GIF: 1-8 color bits Gif 87a and Gif 89a extensions - .TGA: uncompressed: 8, 15, 16 and 24 color bits, black & white RLE compressed: 8, 15, 16 and 24 color bits, black & white Sound formats: - .VOC - .WAV: Supported audio codecs are: PCM, Microsoft ADPCM and Creative Labs ADPCM System Requirements: -------------------- QuickView is a 32 bit protected mode program and therefore needs at least a 80386 processor. It will run under DOS 3.0 or better, or in a DOS shell under Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and OS/2. You must have a VGA card in your system. For sound support you must have a Sound Blaster compatible sound card. Installation: ------------- Simply place all files of the package in the same directory. That's it! QuickView will automatically detect your machine, memory and graphics card. For sound support you must have the Environment variable BLASTER set containing port address, interrupt and DMA channel. Command Line Format: -------------------- The command line format to run QuickView is: QV [/M] [/V] [/B] [/Rx] [/I] [/A] [/P] [/D] [/2] [/4] [/Qx] [/E] [/Fx] [/Lx] [/Sx] [/Tx] [filename] Options: /M Select 50 line menu mode. QuickView uses 25 line menu mode by default. For 50 lines you can use the /M option. /V Don't use VESA. QuickView autodetects many graphics cards and uses VESA by default. The /V option tells QuickView to not use the VESA interface if installed, but if you want to use HiColor or TrueColor modes the VESA interface must be used. If your graphics card does not support VESA you can use a VESA TSR like UNIVBE (see below). /B Don't autodetect SVGA chipset. This also disables AVI playbacj in full screen mode. /Rx Select screen resolution: x=1: 320x200 x=2: 640x480 x=3: 800x600 x=4: 1024x768 If a mode is not possible auto select will be used. default: auto select /I Don't use SB Auto Init /A No sound with AVIs /P Preload AVI sound /D Don't drop frames if behind /2 Video Zoom 2x /4 Don't use 320x240, 256 colors mode. QuickView will use 320x240x256 mode by default if it allows it to play the video full screen. /Qx AVI quality: x=0: TrueColor x=1: HiColor x=2: 256 colors x=3: Grayscale Please note that these options are not available for all codecs. For details see the AVI options below. The default is HiColor if it is not changed in the config file. /E Use every-Second-Line zoom for HiColor zoom /C Don't change video mode after playing /Fx Start AVI at frame x, e.g. /F137 /Lx Loop video (AVI or FLI/FLC) x times, 0 => until key pressed, default for FLI/FLC is 0, default for AVI is 1 /Sx Set playback speed of AVI, CEL, DL, FLC and FLI files. x is the time between two frames in microseconds. example: /s100000 gives 10 frames per second. /Tx Wait x/100 seconds after playing, 0 => wait for keypress /C, /F, /L, /S and /T are only available in the registered version. All parameters are case-insensitive. filename can be a file that QuickView views or a name that contains the wildcards * and ?. Example: QV /A /Q2 VIDEO.AVI The Menu: --------- QuickView always shows you all the files in the current directory, along with all the visible subdirectory names. The arrow keys will move the file selector bar around. CTRL-right or left move the file selector to the next or previous supported file respectively. By pressing a character the file selector bar jumps to the first file starting with that character. Use lower case for files, upper case for directories. A mouse is not supported. To view a file or change a directory just hit Enter. If you try to view a file QuickView does not handle nothing will happen. If you have tagged some files (256 at most) QuickView will view these files without going to the menu in between. Hit Enter or Tab if you want to view the next file and Backspace for the previous one. Esc breaks and returns to the menu. More keys during file selection: ALT+D: Change drive. A drive selection box will appear, prompting you for the drive letter you want to log onto. QuickView will attempt to change to the desired drive. If an error occurs, QuickView will remain logged onto the current drive. F1 : Help. F2 : Display information about the system. F3 or ALT+I: Get information on the currently selected file. ALT+O: Change options of QuickView. For details see below. + - : Increase or decrease resolution respectively. The currently selected resolution is highlighted. "Automatic" automatically selects the lowest resolution which will display the whole picture if possible. Space: Tag/untag the current file. ALT+T: Tag all files in the current directory. ALT+U: Untag all files. Del : Delete file. ALT+X: Exit QuickView and return to DOS. Options: -------- Press the red characters to toggle the state of the option. You can also use the up/down arrow keys and the Space bar. If you press "C" a configu- ration file is created or updated. Command line options override the config file. Note that changing the use of VESA is only effective if you leave QuickView and start it again. Include 1280x1024 mode: Some monitors (mainly older ones) don't support the 1280x1024 screen mode. If you tell QuickView to support this mode your monitor might be damaged. Please consult your monitor handbook. 320x240 mode: Many videos and some pictures have the size 320x240. QuickView will display these files full screen if you switch on this option. 160x120 videos will also be displayed full screen if you also switch on 2x Zoom. Note that 320x240 mode is only available with 256 color modes. 320x240 is a non-standard VGA mode and may cause problems with some graphics cards or if you use QuickView with other operating systems. AVI options: Sound support: If you have problems during AVI playback try turning off the sound. Sound Preload: will load the sound of an AVI in advance. This will give better performance with slower systems, especially if the sound is compressed. However you have to wait some time until the video begins to play. Please also try this option if you hear sound pops although you checked "Drop frames". Drop frames: If your system is not fast enough, some frames of the video are left out (dropped) so that the sound plays continuous. Please note that this is not possible with all types of AVIs. AVI loop: Use this if you want an AVI to start again after viewing. 2x Zoom: QuickView will display videos twice as big and so allow full screen playback for appropriate video resolutions. Note that 2x Zoom might require a higher screen resolution and therefore the video will not appear bigger if this is the case. 2x Zoom is very CPU intensive and might slow down your system, so QuickView will therefore use at most HiColor output if 2x Zoom is selected. 2x Zoom is supported for the video formats AVI, CEL, DL, FLI and FLC. Every-Second-Line zoom: On slower systems, this option helps to speed up the display of zoomed videos in HiColor mode by only drawing every second line. The lines in between remain black. Full Screen: QuickView will use full screen AVI playback using the graphics chip's hardware scaling and color space conversion facilities. This is currently only supported for S3 Vision 868 and 968 graphics chips, more to follow. AVI quality: These options depend on the codec used in the AVIs: Grayscale: Usually the fastest playback mode. 8 color bits: this means 256 colors. HiColor: QuickView will use HiColor output if the codec has at least 16 bits. Otherwise, 256 color output will be used. TrueColor: Will give the best quality for all codecs. Commands While Viewing: ----------------------- For all file types: Esc: Stop viewing. Enter or Tab: View next file. Backspace: View previous file. For pictures: Arrow keys: Scroll picture if it is larger than the screen. Ctrl+Arrow keys: Scroll fast. Home, End: Scroll to left or right border respectively. +, - : Increase or decrease resolution respectively. For all video files (AVI, CEL, DL, FLI, FLC, animated GIFs) Space: Pause Viewing, space again: next frame, any other key: continue. For AVI: Arrow-key left, right: forward, rewind respectively. Ctrl+Arrow-key left, right: fast forward, rewind respectively. Questions & Answers: -------------------- -Q: QuickView doesn't detect my sound card. A: Make sure that your BLASTER environment variable is set correctly. There must be a command in your AUTOEXEC.BAT like this: SET BLASTER=Axxx Ix Dx Hx Pxxx Tx with A: Sound Blaster base I/O-port, I: Interrupt, D: DMA low channel, H: DMA high channel (only required for SB16), P: MIDI port (not necessary for QuickView), T: Sound Blaster Type (not necessary for QuickView) Usual values are: A220, I5 or I7, D1, H5. If I5 does not work for you, try I7 and vice versa. For the original Sound Blaster there is a program called "DIAGNOSE.EXE" which programs the sound card configuration according to the values in the BLASTER variable. Use "DIAGNOSE /S" in your "AUTOEXEC.BAT". -Q: I don't hear sound with some AVIs. A: Some AVIs don't have the audio separated into pieces, so QuickView must load the audio beforehand. If there is not enough memory available then the audio is omitted. In some cases it helps to reduce the number of colors. Another possible reason is that the AVI is truncated. -Q: The AVI stops after first frame, WAV/VOC playback stops. A: This usually indicates you set the wrong interrupt in the BLASTER environment variable. If this is not the case, try the command line option /I to turn off Auto Init DMA. -Q: Sound is interrupted with some AVIs. A: You should select "Drop Frames". This guarantees continuous sound and if your system is too slow some frames of the video will be left out. If you still get sound pops your system is much too slow. Copy the AVI from CD to your hard disk, don't use full screen playback, select "Preload sound". Please note that frame dropping and preloading sound only works if the AVI has an index and if you have enough memory. -Q: I've selected "Drop frames" and the video is now played jerky. A: This is because not all frames of the video are played. At least one component of your system is too slow. Try copying the AVI to your hard disk if you play it back from CD. Switch off 2x Zoom. Choose a lower number of colors. -Q: Why is the video quality bad with some AVIs? A: This might be because you don't have a TrueColor or HiColor card or you don't have a VESA driver in your system. In the latter case you should use the VESA TSR for your graphics card or UNIVBE, available on many FTP-servers, BBSs, from Shareware distributors or on my WWW page. The VESA driver must conform at least to version 1.2 of the VESA standard. Versions prior to 1.2 of the VESA standard did not define TrueColor and HiColor modes. -Q: I get the message "Your system doesn't have enough main memory to show the file" with some AVIs. What can I do? A: Select a lower number of colors, e.g. HiColor instead of TrueColor. Turn off sound. -Q: I can't forward and rewind AVIs. A: Either the AVI has no index or a bad index, or it does not have keyframes, or there is not enough memory. -Q: Full screen AVI playback does not work. A: This is currently only supported for graphics cards with S3 Vision 868 and 968 graphics chips. If you have a graphics card with one of these chips and full screen doesn't work properly please send me a bug report. If you have problems using full screen mode then try an installable VESA driver. You can find a link on my homepage. -Q: I get some lines on the graphics screen with my ATI Mach graphics card under Windows 95. A: Try M64VBE with parameter S -Q: I get a black or garbled screen when I start QuickView. A: Try starting the program with the parameter /b. -Q: I don't have a sound card and I'd like to hear the sound through the PC speaker. A: The protected mode version of QuickView (qvproxxx.zip) only supports sound through a sound card. There is a real mode version of QuickView (qv103a.zip) that can also supports sound through the PC speaker. This does however not support all AVI Codecs. -Q: I like 50 line menus more. How can I select this mode permanently? A: Press ALT-O in the menu. Then you can select 50 lines with "5" and write a config file with "C". -Q: What do I have to do to make QuickView run under OS/2? A: You have to set the following definitions for the DOS session: INT_DURING_IO: ON IDLE_SENSIVITY: 100 HW_TIMER: ON VIDEO_RETRACE_EMULATION: OFF Make sure the BLASTER environment variable is set properly. OS/2 seems to have a DMA handling problem in a DOS session which sometimes causes a lockup with sound output. Try to get an updated sound card driver. If that doesn't help, please either turn off sound or run the program under plain DOS. -Q: What is a codec? A: Video and audio sequences are compressed and decompressed by routines called codecs (short for compressor/decompressor). A codec is responsible for compressing raw video or audio data into a format suitable for distribution. When you play the compressed video or audio sequence, the codecs integrated in QuickView perform a reverse role, converting the compressed data into images or sound that can be played on your system. A .MOV to .AVI converter ------------------------ The converter is available at ftp://download.intel.com/pc-supp/multimed/indeo/tools/smartv.exe How to get an up-to-date version of QuickView: ---------------------------------------------- The file name of the package is always qvxxx.zip. Note that some BBSs use a different archiver than ZIP. - Internet WWW: My Homepage: http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs272 You will get the latest version including minor revisions and beta test versions there. - Internet FTP: Official FTP distribution site (you will find the most recent version here including minor revisions): ftp://ftp.rhrz.uni-bonn.de/pub/institute/hesseler Major releases are also available from: SimTel: ftp://ftp.simtel.net/msdos/graphics Garbo: ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/graphics - Usenet News: It will be posted to the newsgroup alt.binaries.pictures.utilities. - BBS: Germany: "Airbase" (Bad Neuenahr, Germany), 24h online, Sysop: Michael Krischok Line 1: +49-2641-29108 [analog and ISDN] Fido: 2:2453/300 Line 2: +49-2641-21135 [analog and ISDN] Fido: 2:2453/301 login as user: Quickview and Password: Quickview. Fido users can frequest QuickView using the magic "QUICK". USA: "CyberCom BBS" (Lakewood, OH, USA), 24h online, Sysop: Edward Dean (216) 228-6065 Fido: 1:157/445 login as user: Quickview and Password: Quickview. Fido users can frequest QuickView using the magic "QUICK". - UUencoded email: Use an FTP mailer to get the latest version from the official distribution site. If you're not familiar with that, send me an email (hesseler@informatik.uni-bonn.de) with "Request QuickView" as subject. - Via snail mail. Send me a floppy disk with a self-addressed, stamped envelope only if you have German stamps. Otherwise please send a self-addressed envelope with enough cash or International Postal Coupons if you are outside Germany. Please fill out the registration form so that I get your address and check "QuickView current shareware version". - You'll get the latest version when registering. Further Developments of QuickView: ---------------------------------- Depending on the wishes and the number of registrations I plan to add more file formats: JPEG, PNG, QuickTime .MOV, .GL, MPEG, ... You see: You should support QuickView and register! How to contact the author: -------------------------- Please report all bugs and suggestions for improvements or enhancements. If you report any problems please give a detailed description of the problem, together with a list of the hardware you use and what QuickView version you use. I'm also very interested in files that QuickView claims to show but doesn't play or display correctly. Feel free to contact me. You may use one of the following ways: My Internet address (this is the preferred way): hesseler@informatik.uni-bonn.de If you don't get a reply within a week please send it again. Emails can get lost. If you don't have email access here is my snail mail address: Wolfgang Hesseler Neustadter Str. 6 D-53547 Rossbach Germany Please include return postage, using International Postal Coupons if you are outside Germany. Contact me if you are interested in video playback with your application. There are external AVI or FLI/FLC players and libraries for various programming languages. This program is Shareware. You may test this unregistered version for at most three weeks but after that you must register. You are encouraged to share it with others and to upload it to a BBS. If you do so, please pass along the complete unmodified archive. All files must be included. ATTENTION: A registration is required for any commercial use. This program is copyrighted 1994,95,96,97 by Wolfgang Hesseler, all rights reserved. This Software is provided "AS IS". The author makes no warranty of any kind either expressed or implied. In particular the author makes no warranty as to merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose or a particular hardware configuration. Furthermore the author is not responsible for any damages of any kind, including profit losses and data loss or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of your use or inability to use the program. The person using the software bears all risk as to the quality and performance of the software. All files belonging to QuickView contain proprietary information which are protected by copyright. This includes reverse engineering, decompiling and disassembling. No part may be altered or translated without the prior written consent of the author. Any violation of the copyright will be prosecuted by the author and by Intel. EXPORT LAWS: You agree that this Software is not intended to be shipped either directly or indirectly to country groups Q,S,W,Y,Z,Afghanistan or the People's Republic of China, unless a validated export license is obtained from the U.S. Department of Commerce. APPLICABLE LAW: This Agreement is governed by the laws of Germany, the State of California and the United States, including patent and copyright laws. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement will not affect the validity or enforceability of any other provision of this agreement. License agreement for Shareware distributors: Shareware distributors may distribute this program as long as the charge does not exceed $5US and the shareware distributor will not change or leave out any file. Please notify me if you distribute QuickView as you should always distribute the latest version. This applies especially if you include QuickView on a CD-ROM. Furthermore, I'd appreciate it if you'd send me a free copy of the CD. Many thanks to my beta testers: Kovács Balázs Martin van Es Stefan Hartmann Andreas Portele Sas Károly Thanks to Tom Record for support. Thanks to André Baresel, Ethan Brodsky and Craig Jackson for Sound Blaster programming info. The program uses the protected mode extender PMODE/W. The information about some codecs is from XAnim. Thanks to Mark Podlipec. Cinepak is a trademark of Radius. Indeo and the Indeo Logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the USA and other countries. This product uses Ultimotion(tm) IBM video technology. Copyright International Business Machines Corporation 1994, All rights reserved. The Graphics Interchange Format(c) is the Copyright property of CompuServe Incorporated. GIF(sm) is a Service Mark property of CompuServe Incorporated. PCX files are PC Paintbrush format images. PC Paintbrush is published by Z-Soft. TARGA is a registered trademark of Truevision, Inc. Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. All other product names mentioned in this software are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.