-= VooDooMovie V2.1 =- (c)1999-2000 Tjalling Hattink -------------------------------- http://vdmovie.operation3d.com 1) Introduction This program is an addon for microsofts direct show (formerly known as active movie). It replaces the original video renderer. The video renderer is a part of the direct show system and is responsible of showing the frames of a movie on the screen in a window. When VooDooMovie is enabled it will do the job instead. It shows the frames stretched fullscreen on your 3d card. The software doesn't have to stretch the frames anymore and the 3d card uses the bilinear filtering to make the movie look better. If you have a tv output you can even show the video on the tv. Because this program only replaces the video part the rest will be processed by the default parts. You can still use the standard microsoft media player or active movie player to play your movies. This program is SHAREWARE. You will see a text coming up slowly when you play a movie. If you register this text will be removed. You are required to register after 14 days. At the end of this readme you can read how to register. 2) Requirements To use this program you need at least windows98 and directx 6.0 or higher. You can also use glide 3.x instead of directx. The glide implementation also works under windows NT. You should have installed media player 6.0 or higher and able to play movies with it. This player can be found in the windows98 install. You also need a 2d or 3d card that supports glide 3.x or directx 6.0 or higher. To use the other utils you also need mfc 4.2 or later but I assume it's always installed. I higly discourage the use of media player 7.0 with VooDooMovie. Although it does work now there are still many bugs present. It is possible that shortcut keys don't work and it seems that for .asf or online multimedia streams VooDooMovie isn't even called (thus playing in a regular window). So please stick to media player 6.4. If you've installed media player 7.0 you can still use media player 6.4 also. It should be present as mplayer2.exe in the same dir where wmplayer.exe (media player 7.0) is present. 3) Installing Note: Before installing be sure to uninstall any previous version. Otherwise you could get a mix up of the renderers. To install this program just run setup.exe. It will prompt for a directory to install to and a menugroup for the links. Then it will install all the files and enables VooDooMovie. There should be 5 links in your start menu. You can uninstall the program using the uninstaller in the control panel or using the uninstall link in the start menu directly. To see as much colors as possible during playback set your gamma settings on 1. Otherwise you have less colors and the movie will look blocky. 4) How to use There are 5 links in the start menu: - Properties VooDooMovie : Here you can enter various settings for the renderer. See below for more info. - Readme : Link to this readme - Disable VooDooMovie : This option disables (not uninstall) the renderer and the default window renderer will be used. - Enable VooDooMovie : This option enables voodoomovie again. - Uninstall VooDooMovie : This uninstalls the renderer and the normal window renderer will always be used again. When you start a movie and the renderer is enabled the 3d mode will be turned on directly. If you play the movie on the monitor you can't see the player anymore. To disable the 3d mode use the exit option of the 3d menu (this menu is explained later). The default 2d display comes back and you can access the player buttons. To enable the 3d screen again search for the VooDooMovie window in your taskbar and make it active. The 3d screen should return showing the playing movie. You can also exit to the 2D display using the CTRl + SHIFT + A keycombination. For 3d only card a special setting is useful called Minimize Playwindow. This setting is explained later in this readme. When the player isn't visible you can't use the scrollbar or buttons on it to navigate through the movie. Luckily most players react on shortcut keys also. The player should be active when you use the keys. I'll give the shortcuts of the 3 most used players: [MEDIA PLAYER 7.0] CTRL + P Play or pause an open media file. CTRL + S Stop the player. CTRL + B Open the previous media file you played in this session. CTRL + F Open the next media file in the list of files played in this session. CTRL + H Shuffle the playlist. F10 Turn volume up. F9 Turn volume down. F8 Turn sound off or on. ALT-F4 Close program. [MEDIA PLAYER 6.x (installed by default in windows98)] SPACEBAR Play or pause an open media file. PERIOD Stop the player. PAGE UP Restart current clip or play previous clip (Skip Back). PAGE DOWN Play next clip in playlist (Skip Forward). LEFT ARROW Momentary rewind. Rewind stops when you release the key. (Doesn't always work) CTRL + LEFT ARROW Continual rewind. Rewind continues until you select another control. (Doesn't always work) RIGHT ARROW Momentary fast forward. Fast forwarding stops when you release the key. (Doesn't always work) CTRL + RIGHT ARROW Continual fast forward. Fast forwarding continues until you select another control. (Doesn't always work) ALT + LEFT ARROW Open the previous media file you played in this session. ALT + RIGHT ARROW Open the next media file in the list of files played in this session. M or CTRL+M Turn sound off or on. UP ARROW Turn volume up. DOWN ARROW Turn volume down. ALT-F4 Close program. [Active movie player] CTRL+LEFT ARROW Rewind. CTRL+P Pause. CTRL+R Run/Start. CTRL+RIGHT ARROW Forward. CTRL+S Stop. CTRL+SHIFT+LEFT ARROW Previous. CTRL+SHIFT+RIGHT ARROW Next. ALT-F4 Close program. Note: If you open a movie and nothing happens (only blank screen) press SPACE or CTRL+P (or CTRL+R for active movie player) to start playing. The 3D Menu: When VooDooMovie is showing the movie in 3d mode and you haven't selected The minimize playwindow option you can access the 3d menu. To open the menu press and hold the right mouse button. The following buttons appear: +---------------+---------------+---------------+ | Zoom in | Zoom out | Move | +---------------+---------------+---------------+ | Zoom selected | Reset zoom | Exit | +---------------+---------------+---------------+ To select one of the option move the mouse pointer to the button and release the right mouse button. When you move the mouse pointer outside the buttons and you release the right mouse button no new option will be selected. The 3D Menu options: [Zoom in] The mouse pointer changes to zoom in mode. When you press the left mouse button the video will zoom in with the mouse pointer as center. [Zoom out] The mouse pointer changes to zoom out mode. When you press the left mouse button the video will zoom out with the mouse pointer as center. [Move] The mouse pointer changes to move mode. When you press the left mouse button you can drag the video to another location by moving the mouse. [Zoom selected] (Initial mode) The mouse pointer changes to select mode. You can select an area when you keep your left mouse button pressed. After releasing the left mouse button again the selected area of the video will be shown fullscreen. [Reset zoom] The initial zoom and location settings of the video are used again. [Exit] The 3D screen is closed and the 2D display with its desktop is showed again. Now you can access the player controls. To switch back to 3D mode select the VooDooMovie window. You can also exit to the 2D display using the CTRl + SHIFT + A keycombination. The Properties: [3D Device Selection] In this section you can select the device you want to use for 3d rendering. All possible renderers should be listed here. If it says "No devices found. Is DirectX 6 or Glide 3 installed?" your operating system (Like Windows NT) doesn't support DirectX 6 and/or Glide 3.x or it isn't installed yet. Everytime you select a new device the Video Modes box and Texture color depth boxes are updated to reflect the available modes for that 3d device. NOTE: It is possible that devices are listed that don't support 3d acceleration. If you select one of these VooDooMovie will fail to start. Be sure that the selected device supports 3d acceleration. [Video Properties] In this section you can select with resolution and color depth you want to use for 3d rendering. The list of resolutions is updated each time you select a new 3d device. It is possible the some resolutions won't work. This usually means the the videocard doesn't have enough video memory to show the resolution (especially when tripple buffering is turned on. This mode needs mode video memory) or the 32 bit video mode isn't supported for 3d acceleration. The minimize playwindow option can be selected when the 3d card isn't a 2d card (voodoo, voodoo2). When deselected a window is created for directx to render in but 3d only cards don't use this window. When you have your monitor connected to your 2d card and for example a TV on your 3d card you'll see a window covering up your whole 2d display. When you select the minimize playwindow option this window will be removed and you can access the player while playing. If your 3d card is a 2d card also don't use this option. It will only cause graphic artifacts in your render window. You can also set the brightness of the movie. This is basically the alpha value of the 'movietextures'. The default mode is full (255). When you move the slider to the left the picture will be darker. At the most left the value is 0 and you have no picture at all. Experiment with this mode to get the best picture on your screen/tv. Especially full brightness is sometimes too white on tv's. Brightness has nothing to do with the gamma of your card. You can use gamma also to make the picture darker but gamma doesn't always work and isn't so nice in darkening as brightness is (try it out yourself). Keep your gamma on 1 and experiment with this mode instead. [Texture Color Depth Modes] In the Color Modes section you can enable of disable various bit modes: 8 Bit: the renderer uses a palette of 256 colors and the quality is not so good. But some videos can only play in this mode. However, try this mode when you play videos on the tv and you have a slow processor. It's quite fast and you don't see that much difference with the 16 Bit mode on the tv. Try it! If a checkbox is gray colored it means that the current direct3d device doesn't support this texture mode. 16 Bit 555: The renderer uses 5 bits for Red, Green and Blue. It's almost the same as 565 16 Bit 565: The renderer uses 5 bits for Red and Blue and 6 bits for Green. This mode gives the best quality for 16 bits and doesn't take too much cpu time. 24 Bit Palette: The renderer uses 8 bits for Red, Green and Blue and is the best quality possible for 16 bit 3d cards (3dfx). Only this mode takes much more cpu time because I have to upload very small textures. The uploaded textures are actually 8 bit with a 24 bit palette. The palette describes the colors of each pixel. 24 Bit: The renderer uses 8 bits for Red, Green and Blue and is the best quality possible for 32 bit 3d cards (G400, TNT2). Default are the 8 and 16 bit modes enabled and 24 bit mode disabled. Usually you don't have to change any settings, if you have a very fast computer you can try the 24 bits mode. The renderer always tries to use the best bit mode available. That depends on what you enabled and what bit modes the movie supports. [Movie Properties] In the Movie Settings section you can enable and disable keep aspect ratio. When disabled the movie will always be stretched to full screen without keeping aspect ratio (the length of new size / the height of new size isn't the same as the length of original size / the height of the original size). When enabled the aspect ratio will be held and the movie won't be completely stretched to full screen. Default setting is enabled. The bilinear setting is for enabling and disabling bilinear filtering during rendering. This setting is enabled by default. When turned on the stretched pixels (normally little blocks) will be shaded so the picture looks more blurry and less blocky. When turned off the 3d card will only stretch. When turned off the renderer will be slightly faster. When the 3d card supports anisotrophic filtering this mode will be used instead of bilinear filtering. The tripple buffer setting is for enabling and disabling tripple buffer mode. This setting is disabled by default. When enabled the renderer might be slightly faster and smoother and 'tearing' during the movie will be eliminated. But this mode takes more video memory so on cards with only a few megs 800x600 or lower resolutions won't work anymore. The size for 16x9 screen is used in conjunction with the keep aspect ratio option. The setting is disabled by default. When turned on the 3d output is scaled in such a way that it should be correctly sized for a 16x9 screen or tv (anamorphic resizing). The scale slider is for scaling the movie. Default setting is 1 (no scaling). When slide to left the movie will be smaller. When the slider is completely on the left you can't see anything at all. When sliding to the left you'll zoom in on the movie (to the centre). You can zoom in to max 4 times. You can't move around in the picture but that will be supported in the future (when I make my own player). [Control] In here you can disable and enable VooDooMovie. When you disable it the 3d renderer will be deactivated and the default window renderer will be used. When you enable it the 3d renderer is used to play back movies. The run on startup option can be selected to make the property page run the next time you start windows. It will be automatically hidden into the tray icon after windows has started. The default is off. To apply all those settings push the Apply button. The next time VooDooMovie runs these settings will be used. To hide the property page into the tray icon push the Hide button. To completely exit the program press the Exit button. The tray icon shows the state of VooDooMovie. When a red cross is shown VooDooMovie is disabled, otherwise its enabled. You can disable or enable VooDooMovie by left-clicking on the icon once. When you right-click on the icon a small popup menu is shown. You can choose to Enable or Disable VooDooMovie, to show the property page again, to turn on or off the keep aspect ratio option or to completely exit the program. 5) Bugs and future plans - The 24 Bit Palettized mode doesn't work properly on the G400. - The properties page becomes corrupt after closing a playing movie. This program is tested on Miro hischore3d2 (voodoo 2), Miro hischore3d (voodoo 1), Matrox G200 and Matrox G400. If you can confirm that this program works (or not) on a different video card mail me. Please let me know if it doesn't work on your card or if you find another bug. You can mail me at tjalling@3dnews.net. If you send in please tell which version of this program you use and what kind of hardware and software (windows2000/98/95/nt) you use. Currently I use the standard player but I'll develop my own player that is also visible on the 3d screen. I'm working on speeding up the playback of divx movies. This is quite tricky but I have some ideas how to get this faster. 6) Registering This software is shareware. You may evaluate it for 14 days. After that you are required to register. The registration fee is $15 or 25 DFL. To register use the homepage. There you can pay online with your credit card. For futher instructions go to the purchase section. The homepage url is http://vdmovie.operation3d.com If I receive enough support I'll keep developing on this program. If you have any suggestions or bugs please mail me on tjalling@3dnews.net. I need it to make this program better. It's allowed to spread this program only when there's no fee charged for it (except for media costs) and no files are changed in this package. For dutch people you can also register by transferring money via the bank or giro. Mail me for details. 7) Updates I hope to update this program with extra functionality and ofcourse bugfixes. To obtain the latest version check out http://vdmovie.operation3d.com where I'll always release the latest version. 8) Troubleshooting Sometimes you get a fatal error when starting a movie. Just try again, usually it works. I don't know where this error comes from so it's very hard to fix. Because a 2nd try almost always work I'm not going to fix it in the near future. For more information check out the homepage. 9) Disclaimer The usage of this program is at your own risk! I assume no liability, whatsoever. Although this program has been extensively tested, you are adviced that random problems might occur. I'm in no way responsible for any damage caused by this program to the system or in any other way. 10) History V2.1 - Fixed some aspect issues for mpg movies. Now avi and mpg files should be sized correctly. Fixed some issues with Media player 7.0. Option added to size for 16x9 screens. Property page places a trayicon, which can be used to quickly activate and deactivate VooDooMovie. V2.01 - Added glide support again. It isn't tested on voodoo3 and banshee cards so this release is for registered users only. Fixed a bug for G400 that causes the 3d screen staying blank when TV out was turned on. Fixed various bugs in the property page that causes invalid resolution and colordepth modes to be reported. Fixed verious anomalies in the renderer that could cause crashes. V2.0 - Rewrote the whole program. It now uses the DirectX 6.0 engine. Added the 3D Menu with zoom options. V1.4 - Replaced the player visible option by toggle 2D/3D with CTRL-SHIFT-A setting, which is much easier to use. VDM should also work on the banshee and voodoo3 by now. V1.3 - Add option to make player visible (by disabling the 3dfx card) when the player window is active. Some bugfixes. V1.2 - Changed name to VooDooMovie. No futher bugfixes needed. V1.2B - Fixed misaligning (diagonal picture) bug for some movies. Improved the 24 bit mode a little bit. V1.1 - Added 24 bits mode but is quite slow. Voodoo2 bug hopefully fixed. V1.0 - First version. Only supported 640x480 60 Hz fullscreen with 8 and 16 bit colormodes. It was only tested on pure3d and flash3d. It doesn't work good on voodoo2 cards. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks for using this program and have fun with it! Tjalling Hattink