VCD PowerPlayer Video CD (VCD) and MPEG-1 Audio/Video Player Introduction: VCD PowerPlayer is a pure software VCD and MPEG-1 audio/video playing system. By using this software, Users can play VCD titles and MPEG-1 audio/video files without any additional hardware. VCD PowerPlayer can support CD-I, VCD 1.0, VCD 2.0, and normal MPEG-1 files. The frame size can be 320x240 (SIF), 384x240, 352x240, 352x252, 288x252, 160x120, etc. LinkMPEG supports MPEG-1 Audio Layer I&II audio formats. The sampling rate can be 48.0kHz, 44.1kHz, 32kHz, or 22kHz. The MPEG-1 sequence can be audio/video, audio only, video only, or intra-frame only (still picture). VCD PowerPlayer supports DCI v1.6, DirectDraw I, II, and III, WinG and GDI display interfaces. It follows Digital Video MCI and OpenMPEG 1.10 specifications. Now, it can run under Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 operating systems. System Requirements: 1. Pentium-90 PC compatible is required. Pentium-100 (or above) PC compatible is recommended. 2. 8- or 16-bit sound card is required. 3. 2 time speed CD player is required. 4 time speed CD player is recommended. 4. 256 (or above) color VGA card is required. VGA with DCI or DirectDraw support is recommended. 5. 8MB system memory is required. Installation: After starting up Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 operating system, insert VCD PowerPlayer diskette into the floppy drive. Then, execute a:\setup.exe (or b:\setup.exe) by double-clicking setup.exe file in drive 'a' (or 'b') under File-Manager program). Execution: After completely installing VCD PowerPlayer under Windows 3.1, the user can see PowerPlayer group icon under Program Manager. By double clicking PowerPlayer icon, the PowerPlayer group window is shown. By double clicking VCD PowerPlayer icon, this program is executed and the front panel is presented on the screen. Under Windows 95 operating system, press START button in the lower- left corner first. Then, choose Program, PowerPlayer, and VCD PowerPlayer to start the program. Configure VCD PowerPlayer: Video Display¡G DCI DCI (Display Control Interface) is a display control standard under Windows 3.1. If your VGA card supports DCI, please select this option. DDraw DirectDraw is a video control standard under Windows 95. If your VGA card supports DirectDraw, please select this option. WinG WinG is a fast displaying standard under Windows 3.1. By using WinG, the picture quality is worse and the performance is lower comparing to those of DCI or DirectDraw. GDI GDI is a display standard under Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 which achieves the worst performance among the four methods. Video Screen¡G x1 1x1 display size x2 2x2 display size Full Full-screen display size Audio Setting¡G Channel 1 Open/Close Audio channel 1 Channel 2 Open/Close Audio channel 2 Mute Play/Mute sound Audio Quality¡G 44K The highest quality (CD quality) 22K high quality (broadcast quality) 11K normal quality (telephone quality) Q&A: Q: While playing VCD under Windows 95, the speed is very slow and the audio is break into segments. Why? A: Most of these situations are caused by the conflict of IDE devices which connected to the same IDE bus. Your computer may be equipped with one IDE hard-disk and one IDE CD-ROM drive and these two devices are connected to the same IDE cable. There is a bug in Window 95 to handle such a situation. The CD-ROM driver provided by Windows 95 dumbly tries to issue seek command on every CD-ROM read request. It slows down the performance. There are two ways to solve this problem: one is to ask the technician to move one IDE device to another IDE cable; the other is to download 'iosupd.exe' from Microsoft ftp site and execute it. This is a patch program for the CD-ROM device driver. For Windows 95 OSR2, there is no need to run this patch. Besides, there is another possibility that causes this problem. You may set the wrong PIO mode for the IDE interface. Some CD-ROM drives report the wrong PIO mode or the PIO mode of your IDE interface is set too high. Please try to use manual setting and change it to lower level instead of PIO AUTO mode. PIO mode 0 is the lowest level. Caution! If you are not familiar with the BIOS settings, please ask the maintenance engineer of your computer or someone who knows BIOS settings to change settings for you. Another possibility that causes this problem is that you have installed an old version of bus master IDE driver: Trionex(TM) Bus Master IDE driver. Please select Start->Config->Control Pannel->System->Device Manager->Hard Disk Controller and check if there is Trionex(TM) Bus Master IDE driver. The old version of Trionex(TM) Bus Master IDE driver has a bug inside. All the data access can be done well except VCD access. Please replace it with newer version (version 3.22 or later) or remove this driver. Caution! If you are not familiar with adding/removing windows device drivers, please ask the maintenance engineer of your computer or someone who knows how to add/remove windows device drivers to update the driver for you. Q: VCD PowerPlayer cannot play CD-I under Windows 95, why? A: Windows 95 Compact Disc File System (CDFS) does not support CD-I format such that VCD POwerPlayer can not read the data on the CD-I disc. Q: The picture quality is not good, the color is not rich, why? The video quality and picture color is not good if DCI or DirectDraw is not activated. Please make sure DCI or DirectDraw driver is installed properly and check if it is used in VCD PowerPlayer by invoking the config dialog of VCD PowerPlayer. Q: Why can't I execute VCD PowerPlayer under 16 color display mode? A: Most of VGA cards do not support DCI (DirectDraw) under 16 color mode, and VCD PowerPlayer does not support GDI and WinG display under 16 color mode either. Please change display mode to 256 color or higher. Q: VCD PowerPlayer can not use DirectDraw or DCI under hi-color display mode or hi-resolution display mode, why? A: Under hi-color display mode or hi-resolution display mode, the display occupies most of the display memory on the VGA card. Such that there is not enough display memory to be used while using DirectDraw or DCI functions. Then, DirectDraw or DCI is turned off. Please set it to low color display mode (e.g. 256 color) or low resolution mode (e.g. 800x600). Another way to solve this problem is to expand the display memory on your VGA card. Q: After switching the video window to full screen, the controller disappears, why?