
   ----------------------
            xine
   ----------------------

     a free video player


Introduction
============

This documentation is intended for users of a dxr3 decoder card
from creative labs or a hollywood plus decoder card from sigma
designs.

This version of xine contains a plugin for the mentioned hardware
decoders "out of the box". The missing part is the linux kernel
driver. The driver can be obtained from the main dxr3/hw+ linux
development site at

	http://dxr3.sourceforge.net/

The various release formats (tarball, RPMs) are listed on

	http://dxr3.sourceforge.net/download.html

As setting up the dxr3/hw+ driver is a little bit tricky, please
consult also the HOWTO:

	http://dxr3.sourceforge.net/howto.html

The xine dxr3 plugin requires at least the version
em8300-0.8.1 of the linux drivers.

Additional information on using xine with the dxr3 and on how to
setup the kernel module along with precompiled RPMs can be found
here:
	http://www.amalthea.de/xine/


XINE dxr3 plugin
=================

There are two different ways in which xine can make use of the dxr3 
card.

1. mpeg-1/mpeg-2 (DVD, VCD, ...) decoding and displaying. 

This is the normal use.  Instead of doing the mpeg decoding in
software, xine sets up the display (TV or overlay) and sends the mpeg
data via the kernel driver to the mpeg decoder on the dxr3 card, very
much like the Windows player that you problably got with the card. In
this mode, you should be using the dxr3 video decoder plugin together
with the dxr3 video out plugin. 

Xine should select the dxr3 video decoder plugin automatically when it
encounters an mpeg stream, but it is possible it does not use the dxr3
video out plugin by default. In that case, start xine with the 
"-V dxr3" argument to specify the dxr3 video out plugin. If you use
another video out driver, such as Xv or XShm, xine won't be able
to use the mpeg decoding capability of the dxr3 hardware and will
use libmpeg2 instead. 

Here's a short overview what happens when you play a dvd with xine
using the dxr3 video out driver:

DVD -> split mpeg video and audio and audio streams 
-> send mpeg video to dxr3 -> image appears on screen

2. displaying non-mpeg video on dxr3 hardware. 

Non-mpeg video may be AVI, quicktime, windows media files or whatever 
else xine can decode. 

This option must be compiled in and requires a supported mpeg encoder. 
At the moment there are three:
- libavcodec from xine-lib's ffmpeg plugin (good quality, quite fast)
- libfame from fame.sourceforge.net (very fast, good quality)
  (currently the 0.9 versions of libfame don't work, use the 0.8 versions)
- librte (version 0.4) from zapping.sourceforge.net (fast, very good quality)
If configure finds one or both it will compile in encoding support into
the dxr3 driver. 

In order to use this driver for output instead of, say, Xv, just start
xine with the command line option "-V dxr3", for example
% xine -V dxr3 my_movie.avi

Unlike in case 1), where the card does the video decoding, in this
case Xine does the decoding in software, as usual, and sends the
decompressed image to the video out driver.  The dxr3 video out
driver encodes, in real time, this image as an mpeg-1 intra frame and
sends it to the mpeg decoder on the card.

Using this trick, we can display arbitrary video formats via the
tv out port of the dxr3 card. Nifty huh? The only downside is that
it requires extra computational power, because we have to both
decode the original video and encode to mpeg-1 in software. The
cpu power needed depends of course on the resolution and the source
format, but as a rule of thumb it is recommended to do this on a
system with at least 128 MB of RAM and a P-III/Athlon at 800 MHz.

Here's an overview what happens when you play an AVI this way
(compare this with the previous overview!)

-> split video and audio streams -> decode video stream 
-> encode video as mpeg-1 -> send mpeg-1 stream to dxr3
-> image appears on screen


XINE configuration
==================

The dxr3 video driver can be forced using the "-V dxr3"
command line option. Only the tvmode value has to be edited
if the default driver setting is not correct. Of course you can also
use xine-ui's setup dialog to edit your configuration. Have a look
at the DXR3 section of the configuration.

Here are some additional settings interesting for the DXR3:

video.driver:
	dxr3	The dxr3 video driver does all the necessary card setup
		and the mpeg encoding when playing non-mpeg video.
		(see above)

audio.driver:
	oss	The em8300 audio output is available as an usual
		OSS device. Therefore the audio driver must be
		set to oss. Can also be specified using "-A oss"
		on the command line.

audio.device.oss_device_number:
	0-16	Machines with a dxr3 installed often have a usual
		soundcard too. If audio playback occurs on the
		wrong device, the demanded device can be set using
		this option.

engine.decoder_priorities.dxr3-mpeg2:
	10	Priority of the dxr3 video decoder plugin. <5 means
		that hardware decoding by the card will be disabled
		and libmpeg2 will be used instead. Therefore all video
		material including mpeg will pass the software
		decoding and mpeg re-encoding stages.
		(see also above explanation of the encoding mode)


Zooming Feature (TVout Only)
============================
Pressing the 'z' key enables another tv-only mode which zooms into the 
centre of a 16:9 video to display much smaller (or none) black bars 
top & bottom.  It crops the video on the left and right sides to 
maintain the correct aspect ratio. Use SHIFT-z to disable.


TV mode Cycling Feature
======================
Pressing CTRL-o repeatedly will allow you to cycle between tv modes PAL, 
PAL60, & NTSC.  The format selected will only remain valid for the 
current xine session, on startup the tv mode will revert to the default
in .xine/config


VGA overlay feature
===================

In previous versions of xine support, one had to use dxr3view in order
to use the em8300 overlay mechanism. Now, since the xine 0.5 version,
it is possible to output the em8300 overlay directly in the video
out window. 

In order to activate it, "dxr3.output.mode" must be set to "overlay".
But it won't work until the old dxr3view works too (just a check). Before
a first use, "autocal" has to be run. This will store the right overlay
parameters in "~/.overlay". For more information, please consult the
dxr3 howto too.

As of version 0.9.5, you can now switch between overlay and tv-out modes 
on-the-fly, simply by hiding the video_out window ('h' key by default, 
see the README file).  If you want to start xine with video on the tv, 
you can run xine with the -H option to auto-hide the vo window, instead 
of changing the configuration (although you can still do that instead if you 
prefer, of course).

Have a look at the previous explained configuration options dxr3.output.keycolor
and dxr3.output.keycolor_interval too.


--- 
version of this file:
 $Id: README.dxr3,v 1.11 2004/12/12 22:00:47 mroi Exp $
