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.
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