Taking a look at alternatives in the MPEG world<\/p>\n
By Zatni Arbi<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): You might still remember my articles on the MPEG
\ncompression standard some time ago. MPEG stands for Motion
\nPicture Expert Group. This compression standard enables us to
\nreduce the visual and audio data to fit one hour of movie onto a
\nsingle CD-ROM. The playback facility is both full-screen and
\nfull-motion, and the sound is of CD quality. In order to play it
\nback on our PCs, however, we need to de-compress the data with
\nMPEG hardware and software.<\/p>\n
Incredibly, within just two years, MPEG has swept the PC
\nworld. I bought a RealMagic MPEG playback card in December 1994.
\nAt that time it was such a hot and exciting new product that I
\nwas willing to part with Rp 450,000 for one. I played karaoke CDs
\nwith it. I borrowed video CDs from friends and wasted a lot of
\nproductive time watching movies on my Sony monitor.<\/p>\n
Today, MPEG playback has become almost a standard feature in
\nnew PCs. The rule is, if you have a CD-ROM drive, you should have
\nMPEG playback capability. Many leading graphics card makers, such
\nas Matrox and Diamond, even incorporate some MPEG capability into
\ntheir cards, making it easier for you to watch movies while
\npreparing a business presentation (although I wouldn't think a
\npresentation prepared like this would be a knockout).<\/p>\n
I had no problem with the RealMagic Lite card. Until I moved
\nto Win 95, that is. When I made the move, I had to leave
\nRealMagic Lite behind because the driver wouldn't work in the Win
\n95 32-bit environment. My friend Asali, who is a RealMagic whiz,
\ntold me that even the latest driver he had downloaded from Sigma
\nDesigns' web page would work only in Win 95's 16-bit environment.
\nThis means if I insisted on using RealMagic Lite with Win 95, I
\nwould have to run everything in the 16-bit mode. Of course,
\nrather than putting my PC on a strict low-cal diet, I've chosen
\nto put the card back into its box.<\/p>\n
But because I enjoy singing so much, I had to get a
\nreplacement. So I bought top-of-the-line RealMagic Pro, which is
\nalready designed for Windows 95. At about Rp 650,000. RealMagic
\nPro remains the most expensive MPEG playback card on the market.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, with the popularity of MPEG, there have been
\nalternatives to RealMagic cards. They may be inferior in quality
\nand features, but their prices are much lower. AcerMate, one of
\nthe more popular MPEG playback cards for Win 95, costs about Rp
\n180,000 in Glodok. Others, such as the ones from GVC, Vertos, and
\nBoser, carry price tags between Rp 150,000 and Rp 200,000.<\/p>\n
Still, if you don't want to buy any of these cards, you can
\nuse the software-based MPEG playback programs to watch your
\nvideos. Unlike the hardware-based MPEG playback, however, your
\nvideo screen is generally limited to a stamp-sized window. With
\nsuch a small display area, your eyes have to be very close to the
\nscreen in order to be able to see what Sharon Stone looks like in
\n'Last dance'. We'll have a brief look at RealMagic Pro and then
\nwe'll discuss two software-only MPEG playback programs.<\/p>\n
RealMagic Pro<\/p>\n
The RealMagic Pro card is truly plug-and-play. You install the
\ncard and start the PC. Win 95 will automatically detect it and
\nask you to insert the driver diskettes. I didn't encounter any
\nproblem installing it on my PC, which has a Matrox Millennium
\ngraphics card.<\/p>\n
This Range Rover of MPEG playback card offers image
\nenhancement, including horizontal and vertical filtering, support
\nfor 24-bit (16.8 million colors), as well as controls for
\nbrightness, contrast and saturation. These really improve the
\ndisplay quality, compared to RealMagic Lite or other brands.<\/p>\n
Unlike its predecessor, RealMagic Pro doesn't use an internal
\nfeature-connector cable to pass the video signals from the
\ngraphic cards through it. Instead, the card comes with an
\nExternal VGA Pass-Thru Cable. The sound quality is also good.<\/p>\n
XingMPEG<\/p>\n
As I said, you can also play an MPEG video file without the
\nhelp of a hardware device, provided you have one of those
\nsoftware MPEG playback programs. The most popular one is XingMPEG
\nPlayer from the California-based Xing Technology Corporation.<\/p>\n
The software controls the playback of MPEG files by sending
\nMCI commands to the XingMPEG Driver. Because most of these MCI
\ncommands are defined in the Microsoft's MPEG Command Set for the
\nMedia Control Interface (generally known as the \"MCI MPEG
\nSpecification\"), the XingMPEG Player can control any MCI driver
\nthat conforms to the MCI MPEG Specification (for example, an MCI
\ndriver provided with a hardware-based MPEG decoder). A few of the
\nMCI commands used to control the XingMPEG Driver are custom
\ncommands (i.e., they are not defined in the MCI MPEG
\nSpecification), and any features of the XingMPEG Player that rely
\non these custom commands are disabled when another MPEGVideo
\ndriver is used.<\/p>\n
I played around with Version 2.01, which ran smoothly in Win
\n95. The software has a diagnostics tool that will tell us
\napproximately how many frames per second (fps) our PC is capable
\nof showing. The ideal is 30 fps. It also has a what-if facility
\nthat will inform us what level of performance we could expect if
\nwe replace any of our PC's subsystems. For example, it will tell
\nus whether we'll get the ideal frame rates if we replace our
\nexisting hard disk with a faster one.<\/p>\n
XingMPEG Player's panel is quite sophisticated. As you can
\nsee on the left side of the accompanying picture, the panel has
\nthe all the necessary playback control buttons, a sliding volume
\ncontrol button, a mute and even a frame capture button. Unlike in
\nRealMagic, you have to pause the playback before you can capture
\nthe frame. The captured frame can then be saved in a graphics
\nfile format. There's also a zoom button that will increase or
\ndecrease the size of the video display. On my Pentium 90 MHz PC,
\nwhich has 40 MB of RAM but an old 240 MB Quantum ProDrive hard
\ndisk and a Cirrus Logic card, the machine always crashed if I
\ntried to blow up the size. With 100% display size, which you can
\nsee in the picture, the movie ran pretty smoothly.<\/p>\n
The panel can be turned into a bar, running at the bottom of
\nthe screen. If you like, you can simplify the panel so that it
\nwill show only the necessary buttons. You can also change the
\nquality of the sound, too. Overall, the software is pretty neat.<\/p>\n
I also played around with CompCore Multimedia's SoftPEG 2.0
\nfrom Visible Light, another software-based MPEG-1 decoder. This
\nsoftware installs drivers that add MPEG capability to Windows'
\nMedia Player.<\/p>\n
As the result, you control the playback of the video file
\nfrom inside Media Player. When I installed it on my Pentium 90
\nMHz, it overrode the XingMPEG drivers, so that when I ran
\nXingMPEG Player afterwards the program used SoftPEG's drivers
\ninstead.<\/p>\n
During installation, SoftPEG will detect which Windows your
\nPC is running. In Win 95, it will automatically install the 32-
\nbit version. You can order the full version from Visible Light.<\/p>\n
Subjectively, there was not much difference between XingMPEG
\nPlayer and SoftPEG MPEG Decoder in terms of their display
\nquality. The problem with both of them is that they are good
\nenough if you have a large display monitor. With a standard 14\"
\nmonitor, your eyes will be tired before you finish watching one
\nCD. On the other hand, if you're really into MPEG, you should go
\nwith RealMagic Pro. It's pricey, but it's the most fun.<\/p>",
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