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By Espresso Contents
1. Legal Aspects
2. FEATURES
3. System Requirements
4. System Proposals and Advice Processor Pentium 200 MMX Celeron >= 400 For best Performance use Overlay and DirectX:
In Surface and in Overlay mode the menus are no longer overwritten. 5. Operation 1. Installation Just copy the self extracting program file into a folder and hit "return". At the first start the program will generate a multidec.ini, which you can also modify manually afterwards. The required key.txt file for Syster Channels is already included and does not need to be downloaded separately. 2. Operating To start MultiDec you just left mouse click the MultiDec program. A window is opened and you can start to configure your setup. Menu BT8x8: TV-Karte: Choose your type of TV-Card Videoeingang : Select Tuner if use an rf-antenna (cable-TV) and choose your Tuner type Philips or Temic normally with the PAL option. If you use a composite signal from your satellite receiver choose Extern1, 2 etc( try out which one ). If you just see black stripes you have to activate the PLL ( see PLL Einstellungen ) Audio: Choose Tuner or Extern. If you have a BT878 Card you can also try "Intern" if you use an rf -antenna signal. Videoformat:
Capture: "Video" should be activated. If you want to use Videotext, Intercast, the automatic decoding feature .. you should also checkmark "VBI-Daten" Einstellungen:
PLL-Einstellungen: You can switch on ( if needed ) the PLL of your card, most of the time 28MHz FORM-Parameter: Normally not needed BT-Reset: If your picture freezes you can start again. In the meantime automated. Hardware Info: Self explanatory Menu "Kanäle": Here you should first set " Länder Einstellungen" ( country settings ) according to your available signals. After that you start "Kanäle Scannen" ( Scan channels) "Gemäß Ländereinstellungen" ( according to country settings ) until the program finds an rf-signal ( e.g. the rf -output of your satellite receiver or your cable frequencies). Sometimes if your settings are wrong ( e.g. Tuner Type ) no channels are detected. -> see "MultiDec does not find channels" Ignore the rest of the menu for the time being. Menu "Ausgabe": DIB: MultiDec is used in a „normal" window. Poorest performance, but if you want to use Videotext it makes the text window stay in the foreground. Surface: Should be used if your graphic adaptor does not support overlay ( not quite as fast ) If you cannot checkmark it see -> here Overlay: Best performance especially for Videocrypt signals. If you use it in addition to DirectX:OverlayStretching the picture is stretched to fill the entire window. If you have problems with Overlay, check your graphic adaptor whether it supports this mode. Raw Surface / Raw Overlay: TV-Picture with almost no CPU usage ( no decoding!) The BT Risc-program writes directly to the buffer. Just check whether it works. DirectX:Overlay-Streching verwenden: (Use overlay stretching) can only be activated in conjunction with Overlay. Stretches the picture horizontally. Useful for Videocrypt-Decoding Art: Should be self explanatory ( Fenster= window ) Toggle TV-Screen: Full screen picture ( without frame, menu, status line ( you can reactivate the status line by hitting "s") Under "Toggle TV-Settings" you can choose between "TV-Fenster ( Toggle-Funktion ) mit Rand ( with border frame) and "…ohne Rand" (no frame; no sizing possible in this mode ) Colormixer: Works only for RGB ( DIB and Surface ) with input format YUV Toggle TV-Settings: Full screen picture with or without border frame Audio Mixer-Einstellungen: For configuring the sound device. At the very first program start it looks for the device for volume ,sound and mute control. You find here the allocated control and its settings If you have problems: see ->Audio Mixer Problems Menu " VideoDaten": Note: If you are not capturing VBI - data you cannot set anything in this menu! Turn on VBI capturing first ( Capture: -> VBI daten ) After that you can mark what you want to have captured. Note that with a slow CPU the decoding performance might be degraded. Videotext : Needs to be check marked if you want to receive it. Intercast: Needs to be check marked if you want to receive it. Intercast service provide by some stations (ZDF, DSF ) to transmit Internet pages. VPS-Daten: (Video-Programming-System ) Needs to be check marked if you want to receive it. Nagra-Videocrypt Daten: Needs to be check marked to capture Nagra / Videocrypt data. Automatische Dekodiererkennung: Needs to be check marked to activate recognition for automatic decryption ( good for zapping ) See also -> Settings Großes/Kleines VT-Fenster: Switch on Videotext display ( separate window ) If you don't get a window see ->Videotext problems Spezielle Untertitel: Displays subtitles in a separate window ( Known Bug ) Videotext Reset: Resets the Videotext cache ( needed if you use composite input) Decrypt-Infos : Displays Videocrypt-Messages Intercast-Setup: Lets you define the path for Intercast files Einstellungen für autom. Dekodiererkennung: Lets you choose which decoding is automatically detected ( Nagra / Videocrypt ) Menu " Decoding": Lets you switch on and off decryption. You have to choose the system: Nagra ( Premiere ) or Videocrypt ( Sky channels ). You can also use hotkeys ( see-> Hotkeys ) If you have chosen automatic mode MultiDec takes over. Nagravision: -> NagravisionF6 Turns on Nagra decoding. Nagravision-->Nagravision Setup: Sets the number of lines used for testing the decoding. First field is standard. The others ( more lines ) can be chosen by hitting "Page Up /Down" keys. The more lines you use for testing the better ( more stable ) the picture gets. Especially pictures with a lot dark content are improved. Note that the more lines you use the slower the process ( less frames / second ) so you have to optimize for yourself. Speed of decoding also depends on the transmitted data ( 16:9, PAL+, Soccer etc. ) so it is quite useful to adapt the number of test lines to the program. It needs not be more than 50 at the most. A very important option is the " Beide Halbbilder" ( Both half frames) In this setting both half frames are used to decode which again improves picture quality at the expense of speed. So you have to take this into account in your optimization loop. ( Use TAB to toggle "Both Frames ") You can actually see in the number of frames per second (FPS ) in the status line which setting you use ( one: max. 25 FPS; two: max. 50 FPS ) Nagravision-->Schwarz Schwellwert: ( Black Level Detect ) During dark passages in the picture ( or during soccer games with a lot of spectators ) lines are "called" black and ignored.With movies the frame rate goes down and at soccer decoding gets worse. The decision whether a line is black can now be influenced by the black level ( Schwarz Schwellwert ) The default is 45 which in most cases is o.k. You can reduce it to fine tune by watching a 16:9 movie with a letterbox format. Reduce the level until the picture becomes unstable and then add 3..5 to the value, to safeguard against false decoding. Nagravision-->Secam-Threshold einstellen: Influences the color setting for SECAM transmissions, not used for PAL. See-> channel list Nagravision-->Keyset auswählen: As there are more than one NAGRA encrypted channels there are several keys to choose from. See-> channel list Nagravision-->Secam Blaufilter STRG+B: For SECAM transmissions. See-> channel list. Videocrypt-->Videocrypt: Hard Videocrypt mode on. See-> channel list. Videocrypt-->Videocrypt Dekodermodus: Soft Videocrypt mode on. See-> channel list. Videocrypt-->Videocrypt Setup ALT+W: Activates Chroma keying ( Color ). Monochrome is somewhat faster, but Chroma keying is to be preferred Menu " Scaling": The function "MovieBoost " suppresses the black border for movies in a 16:9 or 20:9 Format. This improves speed / performance somewhat. For NAGRA it is detected automatically, for Videocrypt you should set it manually. The function "Y-Strech" resizes the for instance a 16:9 movie format to 4:3. The picture is stretched vertically and the black borders are suppressed. This may be useful when you watch TV using a TV set via TVout. As there is always – depending on the graphic adaptor – a small border on top and bottom of the TV set the picture will appear "squashed" ( "small and fat" ). If you adjust the y-value to approx. 15 the picture will look "normal" again. Menu "Prioritäten": Sets the priorities separately for decoding and the program itself ( handling, accessing menus etc. ) Higher priority yields higher performance but makes changing settings more difficult. Menu "Hilfe": Infos about MultiDec Menu " Ende F10": Terminates the MultiDec program. 6. Hotkeys F1 : Next Channel Display F3 : DIB - Mode Resolution Alt+F2 : Full Screen Mode 800*600 Volume + : higher Key Combinations Alt+A : Toggle on/off Automatic Decoding For Remote Control :-) Note small and capital letters 7.Detailed Explanation of several Functions Digital Viewer If you have a DVB-tvcard, it is possible to view the digital freetv-channels! Videocrypt In the decoding mode a section of the picture is analyzed to find the key out of 256 possible keys. ( the actual state of the analysis is displayed in the status line. ) In this mode using F8 you can synchronize the MultiDec – VC- Routines with the IRQ of your TV-Card. Thereby all further fields ( frames ) are decoded without additional computation. Thus also black or other "critical" pictures are displayed perfectly. This mode only works with soft videocrypt channels ->see channel list For Videocrypt the color decoding is implemented in MMX. It is hoped that this is a better starting point for improving the decoding of "hard "Videocrypt channels. This task shall be tackled in the future. Further Functions ( Enhancement implemented ) The mouse indicator can be toggled on / off by right mouse clicking. Channel selections can be done by entering the preset ( program ) number e.g.: Hit 1 and preset 1 will be chosen. A built in delay enable entering multi digit presets ( e.g. 23 ) New Function : always on top For slow systems you can reduce the number of test lines in Nagra ( For movies down to 12 ) Video Text is stored in cache-size Starting Nagra mode will automatically search for the best decoding scheme. The detection works best for bright pictures. ( This yields 50FPS on a P200MMX @ 640*480 ( The system is too slow for 800*600 ). New Frontend ( Tuner ) parameters are now possible: Menu BT8x8-> videoeingang -> Tuner beim nächsten Start nicht anfassen ( don't touch the tuner setup at the next start ): To do this you first have to start the MultiDec program to activate this option, then terminate MultiDec and start your original TV-card Software. Select the desired channel and then terminate this software. After that also MultiDec should display a picture. Many menu options are deactivated in this setting. A better way though is to directly find the proper frontend (tuner ) parameters. Some Help for setting up the frontend manually: VHF-Low The first value is a switching level. Is the entered frequency ( in MHZ* 1.000.000 ) value less than this value the tuner is initialized with the ID in the second number field. This ID is 1 byte between 0..256. This ID forces the frontend to use the entered frequency range. VHF-High The first value is a switching level. Is the entered frequency ( in MHZ* 1.000.000 ) value less than this value the tuner is initialized with the ID in the second number field. This ID is 1 byte between 0..256. This ID forces the frontend to use the entered frequency range. UHF If neither of the first two conditions is met , the frontend is initialized with this ID. This ID is 1 byte between 0..256. Konfigurationsbyte This byte tells the I2C-Bus that the frontend settings should be changed. ( It looks right when during a frequency scan the structure of the visual "noise" ( snow ) of the picture is changing. This ID is 1 byte between 0…255. I2C-Bus Adresse This byte is the address on the I2C-Bus. Possible range between 0xc0 to 0xce(192…206).MultiDec finds this address automatically. Frequency Offset The entered value ( in MHZ*1.000.000 ) is first checked against VHF-Low, VHF-High or UHF and the appropriate ID value determined. At last this offset will be added to the frequency. Values between 0 and 65535 are allowed. 8. Troubleshooting
If all three values are correct you should now have sound! Problems with VideoText?? Tune to an "open" channel with videotext. If you cannot read the text or you see illegible characters, the fine tuning of the channel needs to be adjusted ( or you get a poor reception signal –strength ) Try Fine Tuning Menu"Kanäle"->Kanalliste-> select the desired the channel ( double-click) and adjust by using + and - . Already a mistuning by 0.25MHZ can cause bad data reception. VideoText cannot be activated: If in the Menu "Videodaten "the entry Videotext is light grey you have to activate the capturing of VBI - data in Capture. The VideoText window is not visible: Turn on "DIB-Ausgabe" MultiDec Crashes very often: For 99% this is an IRQ Problem. This means the TV-Card is sharing an IRQ with another device. You can check this by going to the device manager ( DoubleClick Computer ) If this is the case force the TV-Card to a separate IRQ! You can do this by changing the card from one PCI-slot to another until it has a separate Interrupt. Mabe you can also do in the BIOS of your Computer at booting ( press DEL and enter the PCIsetup section ) Surface Mode is not possible: You are using a color resolution in win9x of more than 16bit! So change it to 16Bit. You only need to do this if your graphic adaptor does not support overlay!! Problems with the audio Mixer settings: Start MultiDec and in addition the Volume Control Program ( Programs -> Accessories-> Multimedia) Check whether Volume Control changes when you mute or volume control out of MultiDec. If not, you have reassign ( "zuweisen" ) the volume and tone controls within Multidec: Menu "Ausgabe" -> SoundControl. You now have to use the pull down menus to match the MultiDec control with the win9x controls. 9. Known Bugs Subtitles for English channels ( Sky Box office, Sky 1 ) do not work
yet. 10. Hints Under videocrypt set "movieboost" or "y-strech" to around 20. You miss part of the picture but the FPS are higher.
11. Channellist 12. Request to MultiDec User The sections Troubleshooting and Hints are by no means completed. We have to rely on your experience which we ask you to share with others. If you have had problems which are not covered by this document and have solved please send the solution to…. Especially Sound and Channel selection needs to be treated in greater depth as I have no means to test it myself. It is very valuable if anybody with an "exotic" TV-Card ( Terratec, FlyVideo,… ) who has succeeded to make MultiDec work, would mail me his MultiDec.ini !!! Also any other .ini as I am trying to setup an automated hardware detection for MultiDec. 13. Credits Espresso für Multidec :-) |
