RealMagic Rave: MPEG plus Windows Accelerator<\/p>\n
By Zatni Arbi<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): Oops, I messed up again. In this column last
\nMonday I wrote that the MO disk cartridge was backed with a five
\nyear warranty from Sony. Obviously I had confused it with another
\nproduct, as Sony dealer in Jakarta reminded me that the cartridge
\nas well as the drive carried only a one year warranty. Sorry for
\nthe error.<\/p>\n
Now let's have a look at a different product category: MPEG
\nplayback and Windows accelerator cards. Last Jan. 23, I reviewed
\ntwo MPEG playback cards -- ReelMagic Lite and MPEG Master. Around
\nthat time, Sigma Designs, the Fremont-based company that made
\nthese ReelMagic boards, started to change the name of their
\nproducts to RealMagic. I was able to take home and test drive one
\nof its latest offerings, RealMagic Rave, last week. It falls into
\nthe category of MPEG plus accelerator cards.<\/p>\n
Accelerator<\/p>\n
I believe by now you've become pretty familiar with MPEG as I
\ndiscussed MPEG in some length in my Jan. 23 article. An
\naccelerator, in a nutshell, is a card with a processor that takes
\nover the burden of handling graphic images -- particularly
\nWindows GUI -- and writing them to the display monitor from the
\nCPU. This leaves the CPU free to do other things and the overall
\nperformance of the system increases. Of course, a Windows
\naccelerator card is one that has been optimized for Windows GUI,
\nand it usually comes with its own memory.<\/p>\n
More expensive accelerator boards come with Video RAM, or
\nVRAM. VRAM is fast but, as I've just said, is also very
\nexpensive. On the low end there are boards with Dynamic RAM, or
\nDRAM. DRAM is slow, but, as you can easily guess, is much less
\ncostly than VRAM.<\/p>\n
The amount of VRAM or DRAM available in an accelerator card
\ndetermines two aspects. First, the number of colors that you can
\nhave displayed simultaneously -- referred to as \"color depths\".
\nSecond, the level of display resolution. Normally, with 1 MB VRAM
\nor DRAM, you can display 256 simultaneous colors at the
\nresolution of 1024 by 768. This is the level of color depth and
\npixel resolution I usually use in preparing the accompanying
\nillustration for my articles.<\/p>\n
Rave<\/p>\n
With most MPEG cards, you still need a VGA card on your
\nsystem. With Rave, it's no longer necessary as it replaces the
\nVGA card. It's also a VL-Bus card. The manual states that the
\nminimum system requirements are a 486SX 25 MHz, 4 MB RAM, 2 MB
\nhard disk space, and a CD ROM with at least single-speed and XA,
\nMode 2, Form 2 capabilities. You see, the requirements have
\nalready moved up from the 386SX for ReelMagic Lite to 486SX. But,
\ntaking into account that you wouldn't be able to find a machine
\nwith VL-Bus slots at the CPU levels below 486SX, this requirement
\nis understandable.<\/p>\n
The version I tested came with 1 MB DRAM -- not VRAM. It was
\npriced at about Rp 1 million. The accelerator processor chip used
\nis Trident. At the regular VGA 640 by 480 resolution, the card is
\ncapable of displaying 16 million colors at the 60 Hz refresh
\nrate.<\/p>\n
The card had a VESA Advanced Feature Connector, or VAFC. Using
\nthis connector, you can add an NTSC or PAL digitizer\/TV tuner to
\nyour system and connect these two cards together. With this kind
\nof setup, you'd be able to watch a TV broadcast and play a
\nVideoCD at the same time in two separate, side-by-side windows.
\nIn case they have to overlap, the bundled software lets you
\ndecide to move either the TV broadcast or the MPEG playback
\nwindow to the foreground.<\/p>\n
Installation<\/p>\n
The first time I started the computer after swapping my ATI
\nGraphics Ultra Pro with Rave, everything seemed to be working
\nsmoothly. I installed the software, device drivers and the
\nutilities on the hard disk using the Standard option. The
\ninstallation software automatically set the IRQ to be 9 and DMA
\n12. However, when I tried to run the DOS-based RealMagic VideoCD
\nPlayer, the program loaded but refused to playback anything. Then
\nI ran Windows and tried to start the Border Adjust utility, which
\nis necessary to ensure optimal display. The utility also refused
\nto work, and I was told to run Setup once again. I had vainly
\ntinkered with most o the options in the utilities for more than
\nan hour before I decided to try altering the IRQ interrupt call.
\nI changed it to 12. Bingo! It worked, finally.<\/p>\n
CD Station<\/p>\n
New to RealMagic is the Windows-based CD Station program.
\nUnlike the old ReelMagic Lite software, you no longer have to
\nrely on Windows' native Media Player. You can see the screen-shot
\nof RealMagic CD Station in the accompanying illustration. This
\nprogram allows us to play different kinds of recordings including
\nVideoCD, Karaoke CD and audio CD.<\/p>\n
On the bottom left panel of this program, which closely
\nresembles the real VCR, there are buttons that let you maximize
\nthe window size, display playback counter, invoke a dialog box in
\nwhich you can create a list of tracks for the CD Station to play.
\nThere is also a sliding button that lets you adjust the volume.
\nTo modify the balance setting of the stereo audio channels,
\nhowever, you'd have to run RealMagic Mixer. On the bottom right
\npanel there are standard CD control buttons, such as Play, Pause,
\nForward, Reverse, Skip to the next or previous track, Stop and
\nEject. We can also play tracks in a random order or sequentially.<\/p>\n
The last button on the bottom right panel is something that
\nI've just found. It captures the displayed video frame in the
\nviewing window and saves it in a .BMP format. This was the button
\nthat allowed me to capture the frame displayed in the
\naccompanying illustration. An ordinary screen capture utility,
\nsuch as Hijaak Pro, wouldn't be able to capture the moving video
\nframe, it can only capture the window borders and leave the
\nviewing window blank.<\/p>\n
By the way, the displayed frame was captured as I was playing
\none of my favorite Nana Mouskouri's songs from a Karaoke CD.<\/p>\n
On the fly<\/p>\n
Now let's go back to the windows accelerator part. The Windows
\nScreen Control utility lets me adjust a lot of things, including
\nscreen resolution and the number of colors I want. You can see
\nthe dialog box in the illustration. Each time I changed the
\nsettings, I had to reboot before the changes took effect.
\nHowever, the utility allows me to change the screen vertical
\nrefresh rate on the fly -- I don't have to reboot. The screen
\nflickers for a couple of seconds and then becomes normal again.
\nThat's neat. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that Rave is
\ncapable of giving us a 75 Hz refresh rate at the 1024 by 768
\nresolution. My Graphics Ultra Pro is capable of only a 70 Hz
\nrefresh rate at that level of resolution. The higher the refresh
\nrate is, the kinder the display screen is to our eyes.<\/p>\n
Advanced features of the screen control software allows you to
\ncustomize your virtual screen, which allows a display area larger
\nthan the actual screen. Using the mouse or specified hot keys,
\nyou can pan around this area through the actual screen.<\/p>\n
Weaknesses<\/p>\n
For some unknown reason, there was unsightly reversed shadows
\non the display monitor. The problem lessened a little when I used
\nlarger Windows fonts. The screen looks like a piece of white
\npaper full of eraser marks. It could be slightly disturbing when
\nworking on image manipulation, but for most ordinary jobs it
\nwouldn't matter very much. I haven't figured out what causes it.<\/p>\n
In the Windows-based CD Station there is no slow-motion
\nfunction. That's a little bit surprising because the DOS-based
\nVideoCD Player has this function. On the other hand, the DOS-
\nbased player doesn't have the function for capturing a frame.<\/p>\n
There are no audio enhancements such as bass and treble
\nadjustments. Perhaps the people at Sigma Designs think it's
\nbetter to leave these features to the makers of sound boards.<\/p>\n
Finally, although it has device drivers for non-Windows
\napplications, such as AutoCAD, old versions of Lotus 1-2-3, GEM
\nDesktop and Windows NT, it doesn't have a device driver for OS\/2
\nWarp. It's rather surprising, given the fact that this operating
\nsystem is rapidly gaining popularity.<\/p>\n
Standard<\/p>\n
Sigma Designs' RealMagic has become the de facto standard in
\nthe MPEG world, therefore I need not comment further. For the
\naccelerator part, as it uses DRAM instead of VRAM, Rave by no
\nmeans deserves to be called Speed Demon. Although it is fast
\nenough for most purposes, this card is no competition for high
\nend cards from ATI, Diamond or Hercules.<\/p>\n
However, it does offer a set of features that are on par with
\nthose belonging to the more expensive products, such as virtual
\nscreens, high refresh rates, and Display Power Management
\nSignaling (or DPMS -- which I couldn't test as my Sony monitor
\ndidn't support this feature). Combining the MPEG playback card
\nwith an accelerator also gives one more benefit, you are able to
\nsave one VL-Bus slot. With all its capabilities, this board
\ndefinitely beats having both the regular VGA card and a separate
\nMPEG decompression board in your PC.<\/p>",
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