1. 390711.zip Driver
2. Readme.txt File Contents

Readme.txt Driver File Contents (390711.zip)

miroVIDEO DC30 
README for Version 1.0                                              28.08.1996

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.

In this miroVIDEO DC30 driver release the miroAVI driver, which will
be a part of the next miroVIDEO DC30 software version, is missing. 
This miroAVI driver is a separate device in the Media Player and it 
should be used for playing back AVI files. This miroAVI driver is 
capable to buffer video and audio data which avoids jerks during 
playback with higher data rates. (see also "Jerks during playback")

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.

Installation of the miroVIDEO DC30 with 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. 

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.

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


Video output in SECAM
The video output in SECAM is not calibrated in this driver version.

Video output to TV
If "flashing" images occur during video output to TV, this is not due
to the miroVIDEO DC30 but to the graphics board's drivers. 
Please consult the manufacturer of your graphics board and ask for a 
driver update.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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
start the Video Overlay application of the manufacturer of your graphics board.

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.

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

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 soundboard 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

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.

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". 

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. 

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.
 - otherwise you should reduce your selected data rate during capturing. 

Hint:
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.

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.

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.

MediaPlayer and VidCap32
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.

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.

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
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 Help file for the VidCap32.exe doesn't exist. If you try to open the "help"
option in the VidCap32, an error message appears notifying you that the 
help file could not be opened.


miroVIDEO DC30 & Adobe Premiere

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.


miroVIDEO DC30 & 3D F/X

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.

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. 

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.


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