B U S T E R R E A D M E F I L E
March 17, 1997
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This document reflects technical changes to the Buster product from
its previous release.
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Buster Drivers V: 1.019
Multimedia Navigator II V: 1.003
NOTE: This release is a matched pair. Different versions of
Multimdia Navigator II will not operate properly with
different versions of Buster Drivers.
To determine which version of the drivers you are running,
open the Windows Explorer, locate the BUSTER.DLL file in the
C:\Windows\System directory, click on it with the right mouse
button, select Properties, and select the Version tab.
If you are upgrading from a previous installation of Buster,
your Multimedia Navigator II .INI file must be removed to
upgrade properly. The install script will take care of this
automatically for you by deleting the following file:
C:\WINDOWS\MMNAV.INI
Removing this file will delete your TV Channel settings,
so be sure to rerun AutoScan to locate all of your available
channels again.
To begin the upgrade, follow the procedure listed below:
1. Select CONTROL PANEL from the SETTINGS list in the START
menu.
2. Double-click on the SYSTEM icon, then select the DEVICE
MANAGER tab.
3. Locate the SOUND, VIDEO, and GAME CONTROLLERS listing, and
single-click on the BUSTER II entry.
4. Click on the PROPERTIES button, and then the DRIVER tab.
5. Click on the CHANGE DRIVER button, and then the HAVE DISK
button to initiate the new installation.
6. Various requesters will pop up during the install procedure
that simply require you fill in the drive letter for your
CD-ROM and click on OK. At the end of this process, your
system will restart and the new Buster drivers will be installed.
7. Now proceed to install the new Multimedia Navigator II
by inserting the Multimedia Navigator II Install CD into
the CD-ROM drive, select RUN from the START menu, type
"D:\setup" in the command line box and click on OK.
(You need to substitute the appropriate driver letter if
your CD-ROM drive is not drive D:.)
Additional driver updates may be posted on the Quadrant International
web site (http://www.qi.com) from time to time.
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C H A N G E S I N T H I S R E L E A S E
1. Detects DirectX 1.0 and reports an error instead of crashing
2. Added specific channel lists for Australia, Italy, and Ireland
3. Installation of the Teletext font is more robust
4. Added support for 8-bit VGA modes using DirectDraw with Hardware
Overlay support
5. A Plug and Play VxD problem when sharing IRQs was fixed
6. Bugs in the MCI commands for setting/getting color saturation
and tint (hue) were fixed
7. Teletext decoding has been completely re-written; this eliminates
problems experienced with PAL-I teletext and improves overall
performance
8. Resources for localization added (first ports: German & Japanese)
9. MCI Interface has been expanded/stabilized; documentation will be
made available in the near future
10. A bug in loading/saving environment files was fixed
11. An option to MUTE audio when Multimedia Navigator II is
minimized has been added. Previously audio was not muted unless
manually muted.
12. A panic "Boss Key" has been added to minimize the Multimedia
Navigator window (in any mode) and mute the audio. This key
is F12. You can restore Multimedia Navigator II to its
previous state by single-clicking on its minimized button
in the Windows 95 Taskbar.
13. Default Capture/Scratch file set to Windows 95 $TEMP directory
as CAPTURE.AVI
14. To exit out of TopMost Window mode or Full Screen mode, you can
hit the ESCAPE key, or single-click the RIGHT mouse button.
15. Menu items reorganized to more logical locations
16. The Frequency Tables have been improved (AutoScan finds more
valid channels)
17. The unused ENVIRONMENT window no longer opens when an
environment is opened. By default, a VideoIN window is
opened, although this can be changed by opening a different
window and saving the environment.
18. If non-default wallpaper is selected and the file is corrupt,
the default will be used
19. A pop-up window size indicator has been added to all video
windows; it is visible just below the lower-right corner of
the window when it is being resized
20. NTSC-Japan and PAL-I standards implementation improved
21. The maximum frequency while auto-scanning NTSC-US was increased
to 885.25 MHz + 3.0 MHz
22. The maximum frequency while auto-scanning all PAL standards was
increased to 895.25 MHz + 3.0 MHz
23. In NTSC, the top 21 lines of video per frame contain timing
and other synchronization information which appears are random
pixels at the top of the image in a TV Window. These lines
are now cropped out of the display window.
24. The Options dialog box, General tab was revised to make it
less ambiguous about when a custom Background was being used
and when the default Background was being used.
25. The Stream Capture Toolbar and Snapshot menu were revised to
position the buttons and menu items in order of most common
use (i.e. sort of a step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4 order).
26. DirectDraw is now supported. Machines with complete DirectDraw
VGA drivers in their systems (and enough VGA display memory on
their VGA cards) will be able to view full-screen TV or video,
and it will be scaled to full-screen -- no black borders.
Note: DirectDraw hardware scaling requires a VGA chip capable of
scaling in hardware, and approximately 0.5MB of VGA RAM to
perform the scaling, which means 2MB VGA cards will need to
run at about 800x600 to leave enough RAM free for scaling. To
use higher resolutions with full-screen scaling, you will need
at least 4MB of VGA RAM.
If there is not enough memory for scaling, or your graphic chip
lacks hardware scaling capabilities, the display defaults to its
previous method of displaying the video at its maximum standard
size (NTSC or PAL) and centering it on a black screen.
27. Closed Captioning text is cleared whenever a channel is changed,
including multi-channel scan. Previously, if Closed Captioning
text was displayed and the channel was changed to a channel
that did not carry Closed Captioning, the previous text would
be left over. Other strange effects occured in multi-channel
scan mode.
28. Additional internal changes were made to improve the stability
and performance of this product.
29. Help Files updated and integrated into Multimedia Navigator II.
30. Special .INI file entry added for ET6000-based VGA cards. See
known issues below for more information.
31. Items that aren't available when video capture is enabled are
grayed out in the menus.
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KNOWN ISSUES AND NOTES:
8-bit Modes
This driver supports 8-bit (256-color) video modes, but when Multimedia
Navigator starts, a advisory message will appear. If you want to use 8-bit
mode, you can ignore the message and continue, and everything should work
properly. The message will not appear in hi-color or true-color modes.
Window Size Indicator
In Windows 95, the window size indicator that appears when resizing will
indicate the original size of the window, before the resizing, only when
the mouse is released at the completion of the resizing. This is because
Windows 95 does not signal mouse movement events to the Buster driver.
To work around this and produce an exact-sized window, you can resize the
window by one pixel after you get it to the proper size, using the pop-up
to confirm the size is correct. Windows 95 Plus, and later versions of
Windows which send more message to installed drivers do not have this
problem, so the pop-up will be updated continuously to reflect the current
size of the window.
Changing or Resizing the Selected Window when Video Capture is Enabled
In some cases, enabling video capture restricts the driver's ability
to control and reprogram certain hardware registers in the Buster card.
Users should select the intended sources, and properly size the selected
preview window before enabling video capture. If you experience minor
problems when selecting other windows or resizing them, or adding new
windows after video capture has been enabled, simply turn off video capture,
then adjust the windows, then enable video capture again.
Number of Reserved DMA Memory Pages
In the Custom tab of the Buster driver, a default value of 256 pages (1 Meg)
of DMA memory is allocated. This value was chosen to avoid consuming
memory resources (higher values could affect system performance when the
system doesn't have a lot of memory installed), but is not sufficient to
capture single frames at full size. If your system has 16M or more memory,
you should increase this value to 300 pages to allow capturing full-screen
(720 by 480 at 24-bit color depth). Additional benefits are not gained
by increasing the value beyond 300 pages.
Compression Method Not Preserved From One Capture Session To Another
Unlike the other capture parameters, the choice of compression method (either
a Codec or Full Frames [Uncompressed]) is not preserved if video capture is
disabled and then re-enabled. You need to set the compression method each
time video capture is enabled, unless you are using the first one in the list.
This reverting to the first item in the list is a Windows 95 issue and cannot
be corrected in the Buster driver.
Performance Problems or Sluggish Video Capture Start
Most problems with system performance, responsiveness, and delays between
the time you press "OK" to start capturing and when the capturing actually
begins to record frames can be attributed to insufficient system memory.
These issues are not related to the Buster driver; rather they are Windows
memory management or Video for Windows issues. It is highly recommended
to install at least 16M, and preferably 32M, of system memory and to use
a high performance motherboard (such as the Intel Triton HX) for video
capture whenever possible.
ET6000 and DirectX
DirectX (DirectDraw) drivers for various VGA cards (most notably those
based on the Tseng Labs ET6000 chip) sometimes overlay video on top of
all graphics, including dialog boxes and the mouse pointer. This can
make it difficult to access certain menu items or dialog boxes unless
you move the video window out from on top of the item you need to
access. The live video would overwrite the menu item, preventing it
from being the topmost item.
If you cannot move the window out of the way, or are having significant
problems using your computer when DirectX (scaled) video windows are
active, you can modify an entry in the C:\WINDOWS\BUSTER.INI file to
enable a workaround in the Buster driver to handle these VGA cards.
Load the C:\WINDOWS\BUSTER.INI file into a text editor and locate the
section header [PIPConfig]. If there is an entry in that section
labelled "NoDDClipper=0" change it to "NoDDClipper=1" to enable the
workaround. If this entry is not present, add it on a blank line
in the [PIPConfig] section. For example:
[PIPConfig]
...other entries...
NoDDClipper=1
...other entries...
To disable this workaround at anytime in the future, change this
line to "NoDDClipper=0".
NOTE: You must reboot after any changes to the Buster .INI file for
the changes to take effect.
Tseng Labs regularly updates its display drivers, which are available
for download on their web site at http://www.tseng.com
Users should always check for later display card drivers (regardless of
VGA card manufacturer) and test them if problems are observed.
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Download Driver Pack
After your driver has been downloaded, follow these simple steps to install it.
Expand the archive file (if the download file is in zip or rar format).
If the expanded file has an .exe extension, double click it and follow the installation instructions.
Otherwise, open Device Manager by right-clicking the Start menu and selecting Device Manager.
Find the device and model you want to update in the device list.
Double-click on it to open the Properties dialog box.
From the Properties dialog box, select the Driver tab.
Click the Update Driver button, then follow the instructions.
Very important: You must reboot your system to ensure that any driver updates have taken effect.
For more help, visit our Driver Support section for step-by-step videos on how to install drivers for every file type.