VMPEG V1.6 Lite Windows 3.1 MPEG player by Stefan Eckart April 1995 1. Features =========== - full MPEG-1 video standard (ISO 11172-2): I,P,B frames of arbitrary size - plays system layer (ISO 11172-1) and video compression layer files - decodes layer II MPEG-1 audio (restricted to 15 seconds monaural decoding) - high speed: e.g. up to 28 frames/s on a Pentium 90 for a 352x240 video only sequence - display options: 4x4 ordered dither normal size (8 bit) 4x4 ordered dither double size (8 bit) grayscale (8 bit) true color (24 bit) - MCI (Media Control Interface) provided - generates stream information and decode speed statistics - frame rate control: full speed (no rate control) synchronous (real-time) manual (rate set by user) 2. Requirements =============== - '386 (or better) processor - 4 MB RAM (8 MB recommended) - VGA or Super VGA - Windows 3.1 For video and audio playback of full resolution MPEG files a Pentium based PC and a PCI graphics card is required. The Win32s extensions are not required. This release of VMPEG is a demonstration version. For this reason audio is restricted to 15 seconds, and stereo decoding, DCI support and Video CD playback have been disabled. VMPEG is copyrighted software, (C) Stefan Eckart, 1995. You may use, copy and distribute this program solely for demonstration purposes, only in unmodified form and without charging money for it. Commercial use of this demonstration version is strictly prohibited. Disclaimer: This program comes without any warranty. You are using it at your own risk. 3. Installation =============== - create a temporary directory, e.g. MD VMPEG.INS - change to this directory CD VMPEG.INS - extract the content of VMPEG16.ZIP PKUNZIP ..\VMPEG16 (PKUNZIP is available at many ftp sites and BBSs) - run the setup program (from either DOS or Windows) SETUP The setup program will ask you if you want to install the WinG runtime libraries. Installing them usually improves performance considerably. On the other hand there are some graphics cards which are not entirely compatible with WinG. In this case you may have to de-install WinG as described below. Be aware that the installation of WinG may overwrite an existing dva.386 in the windows\system directory. It may be a good idea to make a backup of this file before installing WinG. Otherwise you might have to re-install the Windows drivers for your graphics card (in case you run into problems with WinG). If you start VMPEG (or any other program using WinG) for the first time, a performance test window appears which adapts and optimizes WinG for the VGA in your PC. This may take several minutes. The setup program performs the following steps: - if you choose to install WinG: - copies the files wing.dll, wing32.dll, wingde.dll, wingdib.drv, and wingpal.wnd to the windows\system directory. - copies dva.386 to the windows\system directory and adds a line 'device=D:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\dva.386' to the [386Enh] section of system.ini (only for Windows 3.1x) - copies vmpegwin.exe, vmpeg.dll, vmpeg.hlp and readme.txt to the directory you have been prompted for - creates a program group and program entries for VMPEG, the associated help file and for the readme file in the program manager - asks you to restart Windows (only if dva.386 is installed and has not been installed earlier) To de-install VMPEG and/or WinG simply reverse these steps manually. WinG is also available separately from: ftp.microsoft.com:/developr/drg/WinG/WinG10.ZIP and via CompuServe. The MCI driver can be installed from the control panel drivers applet: - from the Drivers dialog box, choose the Add button - select Unlisted or Updated Driver and click OK - enter the path name of your installation directory (containing the file oemsetup.inf) or click Browse... to locate this directory, then click OK - select the '[MCI] VMPEG MPEG Player' from the list of drivers (actually this is the only one), and choose the OK button - quit the Drivers dialog box You can now use the Media Player to play MPEG files. It is recommended to use the improved version included in the Video for Windows runtime rather than the original one included in Windows 3.1 and 3.11. The MCI driver can be uninstalled via the control panel. In this case you should also delete the line 'mpg=MpegVideo' from the [mci extensions] section of the WIN.INI file in the Windows directory. 4. Known bugs and limitations ============================= - only one instance of VMPEG can be run simultaneously - D pictures are not yet supported (you will have a hard time to find a D pictures MPEG stream anyway) - audio layer I streams do not work correctly - the MCI driver does not implement the complete MCI specification; it is sufficient to be controlled from the Media Player, but it does not yet work satisfactory with MCIWnd window class applications (like the mplay Movie Player from Video for Windows) - MCI notification callbacks are always called immediately instead of after completing the action - MCI wait is not implemented for the play command - MCI test is not implemented - the MCI driver does not use window handles provided by the client, it always uses the default window - VMPEG sometimes crashes when exiting the program after doing seeks in the stream - the seek command always seeks to the next key-frame after the given position instead of before the given position or the exact position - the video window is not redrawn when becoming uncovered - VMPEG sometimes crashes Windows under low memory conditions (unfortunately this seems to be a bug of the compiler runtime library, not VMPEG itself) - changing audio settings via the Media Player Configure... menu item only becomes effective after closing and re-opening the MPEG file Please refer to the Windows help file for additional information. --