#300 KBPS CDROM Drives
17 messages in this thread
There are two articles in the Intel forum that discuss Indeo, AVI, & Video
for Windows that you may find interesting. I believe they're named AVI.txt
& AVITech.txt. They discuss why Indeo which V4W uses somewhat is so great.
They include contacts at Microsft & Intel. Jim
Jim what do you think … is VFW great? I couldn't find those files in the
INTEL forum can you get them to me?
-Mark
Let me look again. I have downloaded them but maybe I changed the names.
If I find the correct names, I'll let you know. If not, I'll mail them to
you. As far as "Is VFW great?", I can't say. I haven't tried it yet. The
AVI files are multimegabyte. Unlike fractal technologies. 15FPS doesn't
sound too impressive but you've sparked my curiosity. I'll just have to
download an AVI file and the runtime program and find out how good it is.
Jim
AVI will play OK in a smaller window but try sizing the window and see what
happens and what you think … a lot depends on what frame rate it's shot
at too (I think). How easy is it to fish articles out on Knowledge base?
You have to know what you are looking for … right?
-Mark
Mark:
PMJI, but I just recently discovered the Microsoft Knowledge Base myself,
and find it a wonderful resource, and easy to use. Searching is based on
keywords and some "full-text inversion" – you can find words in titles as
well as in the text of the doc or article.
One caveat: I found a number of errors, including in MS's definition of
CDROM! so handle with care and do searches as comprehensively as possible
to find possible corrections, etc.
Best — Rich Bowers
Microsoft has a Tech support CDROM itself now on all their own products.
It's supposed to become a subscription service soon.
The disk sells for $30. Have you or anyone elsoe seen it … or have you
seen the Support On Site disk from Ziff (I think)?
-Mark
Mark:
Haven't seen the MS disc, but have the SOS, and I wouldn't be surprised if
they contain much of the same info (SOS of course contains much more also).
It seems to me the Knowledge Base is largely an online version of the same
data. The question then becomes, of course, how often is each updated,
where is the most recent stuff, etc.
Rich
Have you seen the latest Computer Shopper? ZD Labs indicates that double
speed drives do not have any effect on MultiMedia playback. How does this
translate to double speed users' actual experience?
Steve:
>>ZD Labs indicates that double speed drives do not have any effect on
MultiMedia playback.<<
No, I didn't see this. It certainly is true that such material will
improve to no better than the slowest bottleneck in the system. Do you
recall what platform(s) they were using for their tests?
Rich
Its on p186-p194 of the February Issue. The systems tested ranged from a
386/33 to a 486/66. They found no appreciable playback difference between
the systems, save the Toshiba problem I mentioned in the other reply. That
drive looks to be marked for death<G>! Actually this confirms a basic
theory that I have that any sane MM publisher is going to tune their
application to the median, which would seem to be 150kbps and 400-600ms
access. As an aside to performance, I have noticed that Microsoft has
started advising CD-ROM users to remove Smartdrv from their systems. I ran
the MM 9th Symphany demo off the Cinemania, and suffered a pause everytime
it went to the hard drive. Which then brings up one of my forming pet
peeves with CD-ROM – Stay on the ROM #@$@@! I will try running the demo
without Smartdrv and see what happens…
I have used the Grolier MM Encylopedia on a Dell 486DX/2 50 with a Toshiba
TXM3301B and on a Gateway 2000 386DX/33 with a Texel DM-3024. Both
machines used the identical Future Domain TMC-850M SCSI-2 controller. The
film clips (320×200 boxes) would pause for a half second or so every 10
seconds on the Dell/Toshiba platform but ran smooth as silk on the GW/Texel
platform. So I definitely saw a difference in performance of MM. Both
units also have a 64K read ahead buffer. The only difference is that the
Toshiba is 325msec/150K unit and the Texel is a 265msec/300K unit. I would
think the performance difference would be even more pronounced if they were
running in identical PCs.
Dan Collins
The Toshiba was one of their test drives, and they indicated that it was
the only the drive they tested that failed to deliver smooth performance in
their MM test, which was playing the "Wolf" clip from the Mammals CD-ROM.
They said that all the other systems they tested played the clip properly.
Interesting…I have only skimmed the article myself. What this really
indicates is that specs do not tell the whole story on CD-ROM performance.
I have run the Microsoft Winspeed test against both units and the
throughput of the Texel was truly awesome (if I can find the file I'll post
the actual results). In general, having dealt with Toshiba, NCR, Amdek and
Texel CD-ROM drives I have to say that I have never felt that the CD-ROM
units were all that terribly slow in the first place. Where the double
speed systems seem to do best is under Windows. Comparing the same two
drives, bothe Bookshelf and Nautilus load and run MUCH faster on the Texel
than on the Toshiba. But both perform acceptably. The only thing we can
be sure of is that we can't be sure on anything! <g>
Dan Collins
(PMJI)
The *preliminary* Microsoft Developer's Network CD-ROM goes for $30. That
get's you 2 prelim CD's which have a wealth of information and a great
three-tiered navigation scheme (Index, Search and Viewer).
The nine major index topics are Highlights, Technical Articles (MS internal
stuff), Sample Code, Resource and Strategy (MS Tech direction), Knowledge
Base and Bug Lists, Books and Magazine Articles (including the complete
Petzold book and Microsoft Systems Journal), Product Documentation, Product
Tools and Utilities, and Unsupported Tools and Utilities.
Extremely valuable stuff for developers. I believe the actual product will
be updated quarterly, and have heard prices in the $195 to $295 range,
would assume this would be an annual subscription fee. I'm hoping the
prelim owners get some sort of a break for debugging efforts <g>.
Regards, Mark
Pretty easy to get Knowledgebase articles. GO MSKB I think and use a
keyword search. My guess is I probably got the files on V4W, AVI, & Indeo
in the Windows forum. Maybe there's a V4W forum by now. Jim
Alright, I finally found those two files on INDEO, AVI, & VFW. There in
the Multimedia Forum, Section 6, DOS/WIndows and are called INDEOP.txt &
INDEOB.txt. I'm downloading the VFW Runtime and a couple .AVI files right
now. Compuserve doesn't have enough of my money yet this month. Jim
You're right. I couldn't find them either. I don't know where I got them.
The MS Knowledge base include four articles on AVI. One is the same as I
mentioned to you – the V4W press release. I'll try tomorrow to upload the
articles I mentioned to you Monday. I'm not certain of the process but I
guess I can figure it out. Jim