miroVIDEO DC30 
README for Version 1.04		                                          11/08/1996

This text contains important information for the miroVIDEO DC30 user.
If you encounter any problems when working with the miroVIDEO DC30,
please read the manual and this text.

Very important: 
Contrary to the description of fast decompress for playback made in the
miroVIDEO DC30 manual, this fast decompress function is not implemented 
in this software release. This means that in the DC30CTRL
program, the "Window (accelerated)" option is not yet available. 
This function will be implemented in the next driver version.


Contents

1.0 	Installation miroVIDEO DC30
1.0.1 	Before you start the installation
1.0.2  	Configurationtest miroVIDEO DC30
1.1    	miroVIDEO DC30 and Windows 95 Service Release 2
1.2    	Direct Video and miroVIDEO DC30
1.3    	Installation of miroVIDEO DC30 and S3 graphics boards with 868, 968
1.4    	Video overlay
1.4.1  	Video overlay support for miroMEDIA View and miroMEDIA 3D
1.4.2 	Video Overlay support in general
1.5   	 Changing the resolution during capturing with active video overlay 
1.6    	Video overlay and playback
1.6.1  	Video overlay during playback with miro graphics boards
1.6.2  	Video overlay during playback in general
1.7    	Interrupt Sharing
1.8   	System.ini entries after the installation
1.9    	miroVIDEO DC30 audio properties 
1.10   	Capturing and playback AVI sequences
1.11   	Jerks during playback
1.12   	Hard disks
1.12.1 	Enhanced-IDE hard disks
1.13   	miroVIDEO Expert
1.14   	VidCap32
1.14.1 	VidCap32 for Windows 95
1.14.2 	VidCap32 and NTSC Standard
1.14.3 	VidCap32 and MediaPlayer
1.14.4 	Known bugs
1.15   	miroVIDEO DC30 and Pentium Pro

2.0    	miroVIDEO DC30 & Adobe Premiere
2.1    	Starting Adobe Premiere
2.2    	Capturing
2.3    	Acceleration
2.4    	Presets
2.5   	Known bugs

3.0    	miroVIDEO DC30 & 3D/FX
3.1   	Settings
3.2    	hints

4.0    	miroVIDEO DC30 and Video Mouse

5.0    	miroAVI Cache

6.0    	Changes to the last driver versions

7.0    	miro services





1.0   Installation miroVIDEO DC30

1.0.1 Before you start the installation 
Before you start the installation of the miroVIDEO DC30, make sure that
an already installed video device, for instance miroVIDEO DC1, miroVIDEO DC20
or competitor models should, be removed.

!!! Attention: Driver errors may occur !!!

Either more than one capture board has been installed in your computer,
or you remove a capture board from your computer but not from the Control
Panel. For more information, please read the "Hardware installation" section
in your User's Guide.

If you removed a miro capture board from your computer and have problems
with the capture driver, start the [CD drive]:\tools\miraser.exe program.
This is required to ensure that miroVIDEO DC30 can be installed correctly in 
your system.
This program searches the Registry for miroVIDEO DC1, miroVIDEO DC10,
miroVIDEO DC20, and miroVIDEO DC30 entries and removes some entries, if
necessary.

To ensure that your miroVIDEO DC30 board can be installed correctly in your
computer, restart the computer now!


1.0.2 Configuration test miroVIDEO DC30
After a successful installation of the miroVIDEO DC30 sofware the configu-
ration test will start automatically. If you get an error message during
this test, please shut down Windows 95 and restart your system. Then, start the
program "Configuration miroVIDEO DC30" located in the miroVIDEO DC30 folder and
click the "Test" button. The configuration test will run once again.


1.1 miroVIDEO DC30 and Windows 95 Service Release 2
Recommendation:
Before you install the miroVIDEO DC30 hardware in your system, please first
start the setup programm out of the setup directory of the delivered
miroVIDEO DC30 CD-ROM. 

Known bugs:
The playback of MJPG compressed AVI files out of the Explorer only appears in
a window. A video output to TV is not possible. Please use the MediaPlayer
for playback yout AVI files to TV.


1.2 Direct Video and miroVIDEO DC30
If you have installed "Direct Video" on your computer and you like to playback
an AVI movie with the Media Player to TV, you have to start DC30CTRL
before starting the Media Player, otherwise you only get a preview and no
output to video or TV.


1.3 Installation of miroVIDEO DC30 and S3 graphics boards with 868, 968
If you have installed a graphics board with S3 chip 868, or 968, please make 
sure that this graphics board really uses a 64MB memory area. You can check 
this in the Device Manager of Windows 95. Computers with older AWARD BIOS 
report only a 32MB memory area back to the Device Manager.
As soon as you like to install another device which memory area is located 
directly behind the memory area of the graphics board the system can hang up, 
because the memory areas overlap.

Solutions: 
	- Update of the AWARD BIOS
	- Change the memeory area of your graphics board in the Devive Manager



1.4   Video overlay

1.4.1 Video overlay support for miroMEDIA View and miroMEDIA 3D
The video overlay functionality for the graphics boards mentioned above 
will be implemented in the latest Windows 95 driver versions for this boards. 
These Windows 95 drivers support the Video Overlay Surface function. 
With this function a video overlay is possible during capturing.

1.4.2 Video Overlay support in general
In general, state-of-the-art PCI graphics adapters with S3 Trio 64V+ or 
S3 Virge graphic processors are able to support a PCI overlay. 
Some manufacturers don't support this function in their Windows 95 drivers. 
You can easily check if your graphics board supports this function 
by opening the "VIDEO DC30 Configuration" program and click the "Test" button.
If you notice any disturbances in the overlay windows during capturing,change
the overlay scaling in VidCap32 in the "Options" menu and and switch Video
Display into the next smaller level. In doubt, select the "Small resolution"
option for the overlay scaling. This should fix the disturbances in the video
overlay windows.


1.5 Changing the resolution during capturing with active video overlay 
Avoid changing the resolution during capturing AVI files with activated
video overlay. The video overlay can be enabled in VidCap32 or in the
Premiere capture program.


1.6   Video overlay and playback

1.6.1 Video overlay during playback with miro graphics boards
With the miroVIDEO 20TD live, the miroMEDIA TV and the miroMEDIA 3D boards, 
a video overlay during playback AVI files can be realized on the computer
monitor. Therefore you have to connect the composite input of miroVIDEO 20TD
live, or the composite input (S-VHS -> composite adapter) of the miroMEDIA TV
with the composite output of the miroVIDEO DC30. After this please start
the miroTV application. 
You can connect the miroMEDIA 3D board via an S-VHS cable to the S-VHS output
of the miroVIDEO DC30. Then start the miroTELEVISION application.

1.6.2 Video overlay during playback in general
If you installed a graphics board in your computer, which can also display 
a video overlay, connect the video input of the graphics board(Composite or
S-VHS) to the miroVIDEO DC30 composite output and start the Video Overlay
application of the manufacturer of your graphics board.


1.7 Interrupt Sharing
This miroVIDEO DC30 version supports PCI interrupt sharing. This function is 
necessary if the motherboard allocates a single interrupt to all PCI slots. 
In this case, all PCI devices have to share one interrupt which means that 
every driver has to check if the current interrupt comes from its device. 
If this is not the case, the driver must not handle this interrupt and has to 
pass it to the next PCI device. If only one of the devices involved (or its 
driver) fails to do so, the system will not function properly. Because the 
devices which are mostly used for recording and playing back video are SCSI 
hard disks and SCSI controllers, we test the behaviour of SCSI controllers.
Under Windows95, we tested miroVIDEO DC30 together with Adaptec SCSI 
controllers and the Adaptec driver software EZ-SCSI 4.0. This combination
works without any problems.


1.8 System.ini entries after the installation
After successful installation of the miroVIDEO DC30 you should find the follo-
wing entries in the system.ini in the section "drivers":

VIDC.MJPG=DC30CDC.DRV
wave_m=DC30AUD.DRV
mixer_m=DC30AUD.DRV


1.9 miroVIDEO DC30 audio properties 
In System control you can set the audio properties of the miroVIDEO DC30 by 
double-clicking the Multimedia icon. If you have already installed, or 
integrated a sound board in your system, you can choose between your sound-
board or the miroVIDEO DC30 in "properties for multimedia audio". 
By default, the miroVIDEO DC30 is set as sound device. In case you didn't
install a sound device before, you can use the miroVIDEO DC30 for capturing
and playing back files in *.wav format

Important hint:
If you get an errormessage during capturing an AVI like "Not enough Audio Buffers", 
or "Cannot open Audio Device", please open in the control panel the mulimedia icon
and select the "Advanced" folder. Then open in the list of "Media Control Devices"
the "Wave Audio Device" and click the "Settings" button. A further windows opens 
where you can select the reserved seconds for audio capturing. Increase this value
to the maximum of 9 seconds.


1.10 Capturing and playback of AVI sequences
For capturing and playback AVI movies with the miroVIDEO DC30 we recommend 
abolutely to set the miroVIDEO DC30 as well as an active video capture device
and as an active audio device too. Only this setting can ensure that audio and 
video can be captured and playback lipsync. If you have installed another sound
device in your system and you like to use this board any further, please make 
sure that the miroVIDEO DC30 is set as an active primary sound device before 
capturing and playback AVI files.


1.11 Jerks during playback
To make sure that you get synchronous video and audio during playback, we 
redesigned our miroVIDEO DC30 driver for video playback. Now every frame will
be marked with an internal time code. Because the captured frames will be
buffered, there are no problems to digitize more frames than your hard disk
can write but during playback problems may occur. As yet, frames will be
dropped if the hard disk cannot achieve the selected data rate. 

Result: No runtime difference between video and audio after long playback,
        using the miroVIDEO DC30 for video and audio capture and playback.

Now with the internal time code, every frame has to be played back up to 
a defined point in time. In case the hard disk cannot achieve the 
selected data rate, you get jerks because some frames will be dropped for 
keeping the selected datarate. Playback without loss of frames there is no
runtime difference between audio and video data.

Solution:
 - if you have plenty of RAM memory in your system, you can disable the
   virtual memory of your Windows 95.
 - insert the following lines in your system.ini below the section [vcache]:
   MinFileCache=4096
   MaxFileCache=4096
   Both values should be equal and about a quarter of the main memory.
   i.e  for a system with 16MB you should use a value of 4MB (4096Byte).
 - otherwise you should reduce your selected data rate during capturing.

Hints:
1. During playing back AVI movies using the Media Player or Adobe Premiere
at a high resolution, with two fields and a high data rate, few frames 
are jerky and jittering during the startup of the playback.
First, the frames will be loaded into an internal cache memory, before they
can be played back with the Media Player. For playing back an AVI movie to
a VCR we recommend to insert a short trailer of about a few seconds before
the movie starts, or to use the miroAVI cache with the "synchronous start" 
option enabled.

2.AVI files, captured with Vidcap32 or another capture program mostly have a
worse interleave factor between the video and audio blocks, ths means that 
first a number of video blocks and then the audio blocks are located in the 
file. This could cause jerks during playback.
This worse interleave factor you can change with Adobe Premiere by calculating
the AVI file once again with the "Make MOVIE" function. The resoluton and 
datarate should be kept, but in the output options make sure that the setting
for "Audio Blocks" is set to "1Frame". In the miroVIDEO DC30 presets for Adobe
Premiere 4.2 this is already the default setting.

1.12 Hard disks
Windows 95 supports the 32-bit access to hard disks. Please check in 
Control Panel/System/Device Manager, if your hard disk drive or your SCSI
controller has been detected by Windows95 correctly. If not, the data transfer
rate of your hard disk will not suffice for a satisfying quality when
recording and playing back video.

Install a second hard disk to save the complete video clips for recording and
playback. You can save temporary files to your system hard disk. During
recording and playing back, Windows 95 accesses system files. If these files
are located on the same hard disk as the video clips, the head has to be
repositioned which leads to one or more dropped frames (unsmooth playback). 
Even the internal miroVIDEO DC30 cache (which is part of the driver) cannot
avoid this if the hard disk is used at the peak performance.

1.12.1 Enhanced-IDE hard disks
With some E-IDE hard disks, high data rates result in an unsmooth playback
when playing back AVI files because the hard disk is recalibrated while a
file is read. This is no problem of miroVIDEO DC30 but is due to the
functionality of your hard disk and the other system components. This
miroVIDEO DC30 driver version will eliminate these unsmooth "jerks". 
If you got a disk with special busmaster drivers with your hard disk, please
install these drivers in your system, because the disk performance will
raise considerable.


1.13 miroVIDEO Expert
The miroVIDEO Expert is a program which calculates a recommended data transfer
rate out of the read and write speed for the selected hard drive.
During the standard test a 20 MB file will be written to the hard disk first 
and then read. The file size can be changed manually. The miroVIDEO Expert
only offers a "rough value" of the actual hard disk's performance!!!
The value depends on the used system and on whether the data will be written 
and read on the outer sectors of the hard disk or on the inner sectors. 
On the outer sectors the real transfer rate is higher than on the inner sectors.
The calculated value of the "reachable video data rate" can be used on 
most systems without any problems, but there might be systems where this 
value cannot be achieved for whatever reasons. This may occur with E-IDE 
disks which offer a very high data transfer rate on the outer sectors, 
but a considerable performance loss on the inner sectors. 


1.14   VidCap32

1.14.1 VidCap32 for Windows 95
For using the miroVIDEO DC30 under Windows 95 we recommend Microsoft VidCap32 
for capturing AVI files. VidCap32 will be copied during the installation of the
miroVIDEO DC30. VidCap32 fully supports the 32Bit capture-class, so that you
can reach higher data rates during capturing. Check in the VidCap32 menu
"Edit| Preferences| video and audio synchronisation" if the option "No master"
is enabled.

1.14.2 VidCap32 and NTSC Standard
Before capturing NTSC movies with VidCap32 you should set the "frame rate"
in the Capture/Video menu exactly to 29.97 frames/s and not 30 frames/s !!!
Only with this exact setting it is possible to capture NTSC movies lipsync for
a long periode of time.

1.14.3 VidCap32 and MediaPlayer
We don't recommend to start VidCap32 or any other video capture program during
the playback of AVI files with the miroVIDEO DC30 and the Media Player. 
miroVIDEO DC30 does not allow to capture and play bacK AVI files simultaneously.

1.14.4 Known bugs
By default, VidCap32 sets the capture file to C:\CAPTURE.AVI. If you like to 
select another drive for capturing, it could happen that VidCap32 stops with 
a General Protection Fault (GPF). Start VidCap32 once again, ignore 
the error message that the device is already active and set the desired
drive for capturing. Close VidCap32 now and restart Windows 95.

Starten Sie VidCap32 und oeffnen Sie den Menuepunkt "Capture" und anschliessend
"Video". Es oeffnet sich ein Fenster mit Namen "Capture Video Sequence". Klicken 
Sie nun auf die Schaltflaeche "Video" um das Videoformat, bzw. die gewaehlte 
Datenrate zu ueberpruefen. Vermeiden Sie unbedingt das Klicken der "OK" Schalt-
flaeche im "Video Capture Sequence" Fenster, solange das Videoformat Dialog-
fenster noch geffnet ist. Dies fuehrt zu einer allgemeinen Schutzverletzung im 
Modul User.exe

VidCap32 supports the overlay functionality of miroMEDIA View and miroMEDIA 3D 
under Windows 95, this means that you can switch between the preview and 
the overlay modes and you don't have to connect a TV set miroVIDEO DC30
output. Avoid minimizing VidCap32 to an icon if you are in the 
overlay mode because this could cause a GPF. If you want to minimize 
VidCap32 so that this application will appear in the status line, please 
switch into the preview mode first.

Always check the audio setting of VidCap32 before you start capturing, because
older versions of VidCap32 doesn't save this settings.

In case you start capturing with VidCap32 and you get an error message "not 
enough memory for audio buffer available", first close all applications working 
in the background and start capturing again. In case this does not solve the 
problem change the audio settings in VidCap32 to increase the audio data rate.
If these changes are not successful, please restart your system.

A German help file for the VidCap32.exe doesn't exist. If you try to open the
"help" option in the VidCap32 you only get the English help.

1.15 miroVIDEO DC30 and Pentium Pro
At the moment there is a playback problem on Pentium Pro computers with Natoma
chipset in combination with miroVIDEO DC30. miro is working on a workaround for 
this. In the next driver relase this bug will be fixed probably. 



2.0 miroVIDEO DC30 & Adobe Premiere


2.1 Starting Adobe Premiere
If your system crashes during the startup of Adobe Premiere LE or another video
editing software or you get General Protection Faults, we recommend you to start 
DC30CTRL.EXE before you start your video capture or video editing software
(Premiere, Media Studio). You can realise this by putting this program in the 
Windows startup folder.


2.2 Capturing
Using Adobe Premiere 4.0 LE avoid changing the preview rate in the "MOVIE
Capture" menue to "off". This setting causes a "division by zero" and is not 
a default setting.


2.3 Acceleration
The full versions of Adobe Premiere 4.0a and the new 32bit Premiere 4.2 and
Premiere 4.2 LE support the miroVIDEO DC30 accelerator functions. 
The display of thumbnails in the construction view is up to 10 times faster,
the preview during "scrubbing" as well as in the transition preview is much
faster. Older versions of Premiere do not support these acceleration types.


2.4 Presets
In the miroVIDEO DC30 installation program, you can select DC30 presets
for the Premiere 4.2  and 4.2 LE version. We recommend you to install these
presets depending on the Premiere 4.2 version you have installed on your
system.


2.5 Known bugs
If you like to resample an AVI movie, please check that the horizontal image 
size has an even number of pixels, otherwise you get a color mismatch on the TV
out, or in the video overlay. This bug is not visible in the preview.

If you change the mixer settings during capturing an AVI movie with active 
video overlay in Premiere, the video overlay switches off. To activate the 
video overlay again, open the "Movie Capture" menue in Premiere and switch 
to "Preview" first and immediately afterwards back to "Overlay". 
Then, the video overlay should be displayed in the capture window.

If you are working in the trimming window of Premiere, ther is no audio 
available.




3.0 miroVIDEO DC30 & 3D F/X


3.1 Settings
To get the best results when usig 3D f/X animations in a Premiere project 
we recommend the following settings:

Select the "Scene->Generate Animation" menu item.

Under "Compression" click "Change" and select the miroVIDEO DC30 Codec.
Set "Quality" to 100%. The animation will now be rendered using the fast
miroVIDEO DC30 hardware, it has a smaller size since it is compressed and
Premiere does not need to recompress it.

Click on "Animation Settings" and "Colors". Set "Palette" to "16 million
(24 bits). Set "Quality" and "Size" to the same value as the remaining
video clips in the project.


3.2 Hints
In genaral: The animations which are created using 3D F/X should have the
same size (frame size) as the videos in your Premiere project, so that
Premiere does not need to resize and recompress.

If your Project works with smooth motion and you have captured the videos
with "both fields" (which is 50fps PAL or 60fps NTSC) then you should set
the value of "frames per second" to 50 for PAL or 60 for NTSC. 



4.0 miroVIDEO DC30 and Video Mouse
The miroVIDEO DC30 won't be supported by the WinEdit software of the Video 
Mouse. It is not planned to implement this as yet.



5.0 miroAVI Cache

Common:
miroAVI Cache is a MCI based driver which can be used by the Media Player of 
Windows 95. miroAVI Cache makes it possible to playback AVI-movies in MJPG-
format. These files could be created i.e. with a miroVIDEO DC10, miroVIDEO DC20 
and the miroVIDEO DC30.

To ensure a non-jerky playback even at high data rates, the video and audio data
are buffered in the memory (cached). When the hard disk interrupts its operation 
(i.e. during swapping), the video clip will be temporarily taken from the memory.
If necessary, you can adjust the cache size using miroVIDEO DC30 Control.

Installation:
During the installation of the miroVIDEO DC30 the miroAVI Cache will be copied 
automatically into the Windows\System subdirectory. To use the miroAVI Cache, 
select "miroAVI Cache (MJPG)" in the device menu of the Media Player 
instead of "Video for Windows". Then a file selection window appears. 
Please make sure that you set the video output options either to 
composite video or to S-video in the miroVIDEO DC30 control.
At the time, miroAVI Cache does not support the video output in a window.

Settings:
With the miroVIDEO DC30 Control the size of the cache for video and audio 
data can be changed. Therefore please start miroVIDEO DC30 Control and 
click the "AVI Cache" button. Now you can set the desired cache size in the 
field "Video Buffer" in frames between 6 and 128. The changes of the buffer
number take effect the next time the AVI is loaded. If the driver has to
increase the buffer number, the number will be reset as soon as a new AVI
file will be loaded or the Media Player will be closed. This is only the
case, if the user has not changed the buffer number in the meantime.
By clicking the default button the value can be set to default, which will
be sufficient for most of the applications.
Please remember that a large cache size needs a high amount of memory and 
especially on systems with low memory the system performance will go down.
A hint at the bottom of miroVIDEO DC30 Control specifies the approximate 
required cache size for a data rate of 3MB per second.


6.0 Changes to the last driver versions

Version 1.01

-supporting French language (Dialogs and all online helps)
-supporting SECAM,PAL-N and PAL-M output
-supporting an alpha version of the miroAVI.drv 
-GPF fixed, if no miroVIDEO DC30 is installed and DC30CTRL will be started
-The application VIDEO CRAFT works with the miroVIDEO DC30 now
-During the calculation of video clips in Premiere a higher data rate than 3MB/s
 can be used now
-general changes to make sure the playback of AVI files 
-miroEXPERT: limitation of the max. compression to 3:1


Version 1.04

-miroAVI Cache implemented
-miroVIDEO DC10 adaptions
-Premiere: Playback backwards with Adobe Premiere possible now
-Premiere: Clip Player can be controlled via keyboard
-Premiere: Capturing of audiodata without videodata possible now
-Premiere: sporadic system hangup in preview fixed 
-fixed: 20ms difference between audio and video during capturing with only
 one single field
-Correction of the automatic pixelratio adaption to get an video output of most 
 of the formats which are not in an 4:3 or 16:9 format.
-fixed: flickering videooutput, using graphics boards which are not PCI conform
-fixed: jerks during playback of AVI files which contain audiodata of a lower 
 quality than 22kHz, 16bt stereo
-fixed: mixer settings will be saved now
-new VidCap32 which saves the audio settigs will be delivered now
-new PAL/SECAM presets for Adobe Premiere 


7.0 miro services
For new miroVIDEO DC30 drivers or driver updates please look at the following 
services:

miroMAILBOX:		+49 531 2113-112
Internet:			ftp.miro.com
			http://www.miro.com
CompuServe:		GO MIRO

