IRIX 6.5 » Product Release Notes / Information
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dmedia_eoe
Introduction
Installation Information
Audio I/O System
Audio Control Panel
SoundScheme
CD Audio Support
DAT Audio Support
MIDI System
Software MIDI Synthesizer
Synthesizer Panel
Video I/O System
Video Panel
Audio/Video Compression
Supported Media File Formats
Digital Media DSO's
Digital Media Commands
Media Player Tool
Media Recorder Tool
Movie Maker Tool
Media Convert Tool
Sound Player Tool
Sound Editor Tool
CD Player Tool
DAT Manager Tool
MIDI Keyboard Tool
Compression Viewer Tool
Sound Track Audio Tool
Sample Sound, Movie, and Music Files
Recipes
FX Builder Tool
Disk Striping and Performance Testing Utilities
Synthesizer Editor
Introduction
1. Introduction
The IRIS Digital Media Execution Environment contains the
basic system components necessary to support audio, MIDI,
video applications on an IRIS workstation.
Note: Packaged with your software is a separate sheet that
contains the Software License Agreement. This
software is provided to you solely under the terms
and conditions of the Software License Agreement.
Please take a few moments to review the Agreement.
This document contains the following chapters:
1. Introduction
2. Installation Information
3. Digital Audio I/O System
4. Audio Panel
5. SoundScheme
6. CD Audio Support
7. DAT Audio Support
8. MIDI System
9. Software MIDI Synthesizer
10. Synthesizer Panel
11. Digital Video I/O System
12. Video Panel
13. Audio/Video Compression
14. Supported Media File Formats
15. Digital Media DSO's
16. Digital Media Commands
17. Media Player Tool
18. Media Recorder Tool
19. Media Maker Tool
20. Media Convert Tool
21. Sound Player Tool
22. Sound Editor Tool
23. CD Player Tool
24. DAT Manager Tool
25. MIDI Keyboard Tool
26. Compression Viewer Tool
27. Sound Track Tool
28. Sample Sound, Movie, and Music Files
29. Recipes
30. FX Builder Tool
31. Disk Striping and Performance Testing Utilities
32. Synthesizer Editor Tool
1.1 Release Identification Information
Following is the release identification information for the
IRIS Digital Media Execution Environment:
Software Product dmedia_eoe
Version 6.5
System Software Requirements IRIX 6.5
1.2 Online Release Notes
After you install the online release notes for a product
(the relnotes subsystem), you can view the release notes on
your screen.
Note: You can read the online release notes for most
products before installing the software. Refer to
the booklet in your CD-ROM case for more information.
If you have a graphics system, select ``Release Notes'' from
the Tools submenu of the Toolchest. This displays the
grelnotes(1) graphical browser for the online release notes.
Refer to the grelnotes(1) man page for information on
options to this command.
If you do not have a graphics system, you can use the
relnotes command. Refer to the relnotes(1) man page for
accessing the online release notes.
1.3 Product Support
Silicon Graphics, Inc., provides a comprehensive product
support maintenance program for its products.
If you are in the U.S. or Canada and would like support for
your Silicon Graphics-supported products, contact the
Technical Assistance Center at (800)800-4SGI. If you are
outside these areas, contact the Silicon Graphics subsidiary
or authorized distributor in your country.
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Installation Information
2. Installation Information
This chapter lists information that is supplemental to the
Software Installation Administrator's Guide and the
installation instructions in the Personal System
Administration Guide. The information listed here is
product-specific; use it with either of those Guides to
install this product.
2.1 IRIS Digital Media Execution Environment Subsystems
IRIS Digital Media Execution Environment includes these
subsystems:
dmedia_eoe.books.MediaTls_UG Insight on-line digital media
tools user's guide and help
information.
dmedia_eoe.books.FXBuilder_Help Insight on-line help
information for FXBuilder.
dmedia_eoe.data.moremovies Sample MPEG-1 systems
bitstream file.
dmedia_eoe.data.movies Sample movie files.
dmedia_eoe.data.music Sample MIDI files.
dmedia_eoe.data.prosonus Sample sound files.
dmedia_eoe.data.soundscheme SoundScheme desktop sound
server data files.
dmedia_eoe.data.synth General MIDI sound set for use
with the software synthesizer.
dmedia_eoe.man.pages Manual pages for digital media
execution environment.
dmedia_eoe.man.relnotes Release notes for digital
media execution environment.
dmedia_eoe.sw.audio Base digital audio execution
environment including audio
kernel software and Audio
Library runtime libraries for
o32, n32, and 64-bit
applications.
dmedia_eoe.sw.base Base digital media execution
environment including systems
software for built-in video
I/O and compression devices,
MIDI systems software, the
SoundScheme desktop sound
server, digital media file
type rules, and digital media
command-line utilities.
dmedia_eoe.sw.lib Digital media runtime
libraries for o32 executables.
dmedia_eoe.sw.plugins Effects plug-in software for
o32 digital media
applications.
dmedia_eoe.sw.synth Software audio synthesizer.
dmedia_eoe.sw.tools Digital media graphical user
interface tools.
dmedia_eoe.sw32.lib Digital media runtime
libraries for n32 executables.
dmedia_eoe.sw.plugins Effects plug-in software for
n32 digital media
applications.
2.2 IRIS Digital Media Execution Environment Subsystem Disk
Space Requirements
This section lists the subsystems (and their sizes) of the
IRIS Digital Media Execution Environment.
You can use the software installation instructions in the
Personal System Administration Guide to install this
product. If you are installing this software for the first
time, the default subsystems are installed if you click the
Install Automatically button. To install a different set of
subsystems, click the Customize Installation button and make
your new selections. Then click the Start button to launch
the installation.
Note: The listed subsystem sizes are approximate. Refer to
the Software Installation Administrator's Guide for
information on finding exact sizes.
Subsystem Name Subsystem Size
(512-byte blocks)
dmedia_eoe.books.FXbuilder_Help (default) 1062
dmedia_eoe.books.MediaTls_UG (default) 14140
dmedia_eoe.data.moremovies 20000
dmedia_eoe.data.movies (default) 1663
dmedia_eoe.data.music 689
dmedia_eoe.data.prosonus 21927
dmedia_eoe.data.soundscheme (default) 4986
dmedia_eoe.data.synth 56793
dmedia_eoe.man.pages (default) 536
dmedia_eoe.man.relnotes (default) 204
dmedia_eoe.sw.audio (default) 1358
dmedia_eoe.sw.base (default) 9920
dmedia_eoe.sw.lib (default) 17248
dmedia_eoe.sw.plugins (default) 16860
dmedia_eoe.sw.synth (default) 2272
dmedia_eoe.sw.tools (default) 18581
dmedia_eoe.sw32.lib (default) 28764
dmedia_eoe.sw32.plugins (default) 1509
2.3 Installation Method
This section lists the installation method for the IRIS
Digital Media Execution Environment subsystems. Refer to
the Software Installation Administrator's Guide for complete
installation instructions.
Subsystem Name Method of Installation
dmedia_eoe.books.FXbuilder_Help IRIX
dmedia_eoe.books.MediaTls_UG IRIX
dmedia_eoe.data.moremovies IRIX
dmedia_eoe.data.movies IRIX
dmedia_eoe.data.music IRIX
dmedia_eoe.data.prosonus IRIX
dmedia_eoe.data.soundscheme IRIX
dmedia_eoe.data.synth IRIX
dmedia_eoe.man.pages IRIX
dmedia_eoe.man.relnotes IRIX
dmedia_eoe.sw.audio Miniroot
dmedia_eoe.sw.base Miniroot
dmedia_eoe.sw.lib IRIX
dmedia_eoe.sw.plugins IRIX
dmedia_eoe.sw.synth IRIX
dmedia_eoe.sw.tools IRIX
dmedia_eoe.sw32.lib IRIX
dmedia_eoe.sw32.plugins IRIX
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Audio I/O System
3. Audio I/O System
An audio I/O system is included with most Silicon Graphics
workstations, including Indy, Indigo2, Onyx2, OCTANE, and
O2. Audio is an optional feature available for Origin,
Onyx, Challenge and Power Challenge machines. This section
details the changes, known bugs, and caveats in the audio
system itself. See other sections of these release notes for
information on sound utility commands and graphical user
interface tools for recording, editing, and playback, as
well as CD audio, DAT audio, sound synthesis, and other
features.
The audio execution environment dmedia_eoe.sw.audio includes
basic kernel software to support SGI audio I/O devices as
well as o32, n32, and 64-bit versions of the Audio Library
DSO, libaudio.so. The Digital Media Tools image
(dmedia_eoe.sw.tools) contains most of the audio tools, such
as apanel(1) and soundplayer(1).
3.1 Changes and Additions
This section describes changes/additions to the audio I/O
system between the IRIX 6.2 and IRIX 6.5 releases. The
audio system provided with all OCTANE and Onyx2 systems
supports a new eight-channel digital audio ADAT interface.
This is in addition to the analog and two-channel digital
audio interfaces as provided in previous workstations. The
audio system also supports a Professional Digital Audio
Option, which has additional ADAT and AES I/O.
The audio system in IRIX 6.3, IRIX 6.4, and IRIX 6.5 is
based on a new Audio Library (2.0) which supports multiple
audio I/O devices in a single system.
+ The audio system now supports multiple audio devices.
On systems which have more than one independent input
and output, you can now select the audio devices you
wish your applications to use. Applications can use
multiple devices simultaneously.
+ The audio system now supports a wider variety of audio
devices. Some of the new devices include the 8-channel
ADAT I/O and the 16-channel SMPTE 272M digital I/O on
the DIVO video option for Onyx2.
+ The audio system supports sample rates that are slaved
to video sources. Only some devices support this; look
under "Preferences" for the device in the Audio Control
Panel.
+ The microphone and line-input gains are now
independent. This means you seldom need to adjust the
input gain when you change input sources. Now when you
select a new input source, the gain will automatically
revert to its value when that source was previously
selected.
+ The audio system now provides support for reading and
writing digital audio subcode. You can select
consumer-mode or professional-mode subcode on the AES
digital output using the Audio Control Panel. This
allows the AES output to work with a wider variety of
devices, since some devices require a particular kind
of subcode.
+ The Audio Control Panel has been generalized to support
multiple audio I/O devices. See the "Audio Control
Panel" chapter of these release notes for more
information.
+ The Audio Library is now a DSO rather than a statically
linked library. Applications which were linked with
libaudio.a (in releases prior to IRIX 6.3) will
continue to function properly on IRIX 6.5.
+ Indigo R4000 (IP20) has full support for AL 2.0,
including features previously available on that machine
under AL 1.0, such as precise synchronization support.
Correctly written AL 2.0 applications will now work
across all supported IRIX 6.5 configurations.
3.2 Bug Fixes
This section lists the audio system bugs fixed in IRIX 6.5.
+ A problem existed in IRIX 6.2 where a rare race-
condition could panic the system if a multi-process
application closed an audio port in one process while
it attempted to use the port in another process. (SCR
334606)
+ Prior to IRIX 6.5, there was no way to choose between
consumer-mode and professional-mode subcode on AES
output. This caused the AES output to fail with some
devices requiring a particular subcode format. (SCR
578672).
+ On O2 only, there was a chip bug which, under extremely
rare circumstances, could cause data corruption. This
has been worked around (SCR 568567 and 568568).
3.3 Caveats
+ On Onyx2, OCTANE, or with the PCI digital audio option,
some digital audio devices
which use S/PDIF ("consumer") signals (.5V peak-to-
peak) may not work reliably with the AES digital input.
This input primarily supports AES-3id signals (1V
peak-to-peak).
+ On Onyx2, OCTANE, or with the PCI digital audio option,
the audio software currently supports both AES3
("professional") subcode format and S/PDIF ("consumer")
subcode on the AES digital output. Some devices may
only work with one or the other format. If you have
difficulty getting the output to work with some device,
try switching the subcode format. You can do this using
apanel by selecting "preferences" for the AES Out
device. Note that the AES digital input accepts either
subcode format.
+ The Onyx2, OCTANE, and O2 systems do not support four-
channel analog mode. They do however support eight-
channel digital audio I/O (O2 requires the PCI
Professional Audio Option) and have compatibility so
that programs that ask for four-channel ports will use
the first four channels of the eight-channel ADAT port.
+ On Onyx2, OCTANE, and O2 systems, the audio panel
application (apanel) can display the rate of the AES
digital input. However, the display will be invalid
after rebooting the system until audio is started for
the first time. Likewise, applications which query the
digital input sample rate will receive invalid results
until audio is first started. The workaround is to
start (and optionally then stop) audio before using the
digital input rate. This can be accomplished, for
example, by briefly enabling a "Meter" in apanel.
+ On Onyx2, when using video locking, only "NTSC"
(525/59.94) and "PAL" (625/50) timings are supported.
The audio software switches between them automatically.
If an invalid video signal is present, lock will be
lost and the device will revert to its nominal rate.
+ On Onyx2, video lock will not work after rebooting the
system until audio is started for the first time. This
particularly affects AES and ADAT digital outputs:
while these output can be used as clock inputs to other
devices even when audio is not running, these output's
sample rates will not be locked to video until audio is
started for the first time.
+ In some systems including Indy, Indigo2 and
Audio/Serial Option, the digital input could be used to
monitor or record the output of audio applications when
nothing was plugged into the digital I/O jack. You will
need an external loopback cable to accomplish this on
Onyx2, OCTANE, and O2, because the jacks are physically
separated.
+ The O2 system does not have a built-in digital I/O
jack. In some systems, the digital input could be used
to monitor or record the output of audio applications
when nothing was plugged into the digital I/O jack.
This feature does not work on O2 without the PCI
Professional Audio Option, which includes digital I/O.
+ The O2 audio system contains two independent digital-
to-analog converters (DACs). Device "AnalogOut"
represents the DAC that drives the internal speaker,
headphone output, and the line-out connectors on the
side panel of the system. The volume buttons will
affect the gain on this device, including line-out.
Device "AnalogOut2" represents the DAC that drives the
line-out connectors on the rear panel of the system.
The volume buttons do not affect gain on "AnalogOut2".
Audio signals played through one device will not be
heard on the other. For example, audio sent to device
"AnalogOut2" will not be heard on the internal speaker,
the headphones, or the line-out connectors on the
system side panel. A method for connecting multiple
devices together at the system level is planned for a
subsequent release.
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Audio Control Panel
4. Audio Control Panel
Audio Control Panel (invoked from the command line as
audiopanel(1)) provides a graphical user interface and
command line interface for controlling and monitoring audio
I/O device parameters.
4.1 Changes and Additions
This section lists changes/additions to the Audio Control
Panel between the IRIX 6.2 and IRIX 6.4 releases.
IRIX 6.4 continues use of the new, generalized version of
the Audio Control Panel first included with IRIX 6.2, which
has been designed to accommodate multiple audio I/O devices
installed in the same system:
+ With the new requirement of having to manage multiple
input and output devices, audiopanel's menu bar
structure changed. Previously, the Input and Rate had
their own top-level menus. Now, before adjusting the
input source or sample rate for a particular device,
the device must first be selected by clicking the right
mouse button over a device panel. After the selection
is made, the Selected menu contains submenus for
modifying Input Source and Sample Rate. Availability
of these submenus and/or entries on these submenus will
vary depending on which device is currently selected.
+ The Options menu selection for Input (or Output)
Sliders Independent has now moved to the Selected menu
under the toggle entry Group Sliders. Audiopanel keeps
track of the slider grouping status for each device
independently.
+ For Indigo2 and Indy machines, the toggling of four-
channel mode and stereo microphone as previously done
in the Options menu. These functions have been moved
to the Device Preferences Dialog for the AnalogIn
device, This dialog can be reached by first selecting
the AnalogIn device, then by choosing the
Preferences... option in the Selected top-level menu.
+ Previous incarnations of audiopanel had a choice of a
Digital Input in the Input source menu for Indy,
Indigo2 and the Onyx Audio/Serial Option. Under the
new audio architecture, the input source Digital Input
is now handled as its own device, called Digital In ,
which is independent of the Analog In device. Setting
the default input to the Digital In device on these
machines will provide the same functionality as
switching the previous audiopanel's input source to
Digital In.
+ Previous incarnations of audiopanel had a Use Input
Rate option as part of the output sample rate menu.
Unfortunately, this convenience feature is not
available in this newer version of audiopanel.
+ Previous incarnations of audiopanel had a Digital Input
choice for output sample rates device by setting its
sync source to AES In and matching its sample rate to
the Digital In (or AES In ) device on the same audio
subsystem.
+ It should be noted that digital output devices have no
sliders to control gain and no signal meters, because
gain control and signal monitoring on these devices is
unsupported. A blank looking control panel for a
digital output device is completely normal. Sample
rates and input sources are still modifyable as they
are appropriate for the device.
+ Audio controls for the Presenter Flat Panel display are
no longer relegated to a separate window. Presenter
Controls will now appear alongside those of the
appropriate baseline Analog Out device on the system.
+ Normally, all outputs interfaces for a particular audio
output device are active. If an output device supports
the choice of directing output to a single output
interface, the device's popup menu and Selected menu
will have an additional Output Destination Menu, akin
to the Input Source, allowing the user to select which
output is to be active.
4.2 Bug Fixes
+ BUG 458608 - The apanel Selected->Make Default menu
would give all the user interface indications that the
Default Device was changed, however, with the insidious
little side effect of not actually telling the audio
system to change the Default Device.
+ BUG 469264 - Apanel's Device List panel would not
always be able to accommodate long device names,
especially those with subsystem names prepended. The
Device List now is sized accordingly.
+ BUG 437617 - Apanel's command line would not accept
fully qualified or typed names of audio resources (such
as "RAD1.AES In" or "A3.Microphone", etc.). The command
line can now handle the much more robust references
that alGetResourceByName() provides.
+ BUG 415586 - Subsystem names now appear on sync sources
when its appropriate to distinguish between similarly
named, but distinct time bases.
+ BUG 423362 - Apanel would not recognize user-interface
oriented command-line and resource file settings
specified for default devices. Examples were -meteron
-meteroff and resources effecting filter operations of
the meters.
+ BUG 475753 - Apanel meters on digital devices no longer
use a DC filter by default. Analog devices, however,
still use a DC filter by default.
+ BUG 483191 - With DC filtering off, apanel's right
meter would not always display correct information
(only when the device was a stereo device).
+ BUG 481235 - Apanel's File->Revert menu would not turn
the audio system back to its factory settings as
indicated in the help. Now it does.
4.3 Known Problems and Workarounds
+ The minimum input slider position does not correspond
to infinite attenuation on Indy and Indigo2. This is
an audio hardware limitation.
. The In-Use indicator on the title bar for each device
is known to not switch on or off correctly when the
Default Output is changed. Restarting audiopanel has
been known to clear up the problem.
+ Presenter gain controls are operable only when the
device's sliders are ungrouped. Tone controls currently
don't work just yet.
+ If a data file is opened for recovering audiopanel
layout and system state that is invalid, the device
panels currently in view will disappear. They can be
restored by re-selecting them through the View pane.
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SoundScheme
5. SoundScheme
soundscheme is an X-based server daemon which provides
high-level audio playback services for applications. Based
on the audio and audiofile libraries, soundscheme mixes and
plays sounds on demand as requested by multiple client
programs using a single audio port. Each client may provide
an X resource file which specifies a palette of sound names
and the mappings of these names to soundfiles. Named sounds
are activated within applications using function calls from
the server's client library. The soundscheme server is
started automatically at login from the Xsession file for
SGI's IRIX Interactive Desktop(TM) user environment.
A few sounds are assigned to system events (such as
launching applications, dropping file icons and searching
for items in the system). There are no interface tools at
this time for user customization of sounds. However,
knowledgeable users may edit *.soundfile resource items in
the client resource files to assign different soundfiles to
defined events. The system default client resource files
are located at the following path:
/usr/share/data/sounds/soundscheme/schemes
Soundfiles referenced within the system default resource
files should be placed at:
/usr/share/data/sounds/soundscheme/soundfiles
Soundfiles to be used by SoundScheme must be in AIFF-C
format and recorded at 44.1kHz sampling rate. The sound
server will ignore files that do not meet these
requirements.
In IRIX 6.4 and previous releases, root access was required
to create custom sounds. The user would have to edit the
defaultScheme.ss client resource file, and the sound changes
affected the whole system for all users. In IRIX 6.5, users
familiar with X resource files can create custom sounds and
put them into effect only for their own login session, and
root access is not required.
The output level (volume) of SoundScheme sounds may not be
changed independently of the system-wide audio level.
Altering the system audio level via apanel (audio control
panel) will affect the SoundScheme level as well.
The SoundScheme sounds may be disabled by using the IRIX
Interactive Desktop Sounds panel provided for customization
of the user's environment. This panel contains a Desktop
Sounds checkbox used to set the enabled or disabled status
for SoundScheme. Changed settings take immediate effect for
some applications; other applications won't pick up the
change until the next login. Note that this toggle does not
kill the soundscheme process itself, but rather shuts off
the desktop requests to SoundScheme. In IRIX 6.5, the user
can also use the Sounds panel to redirect SoundScheme sounds
to a different audio output device, such as the rear
analog-out jacks on an O2, instead of to the Default audio
output device, which is typically the headphones and
speakers.
To disable the SoundScheme server daemon from starting up at
all, use chkconfig to set 'soundscheme off'. In this case,
the change will not take effect until the system is
restarted.
The version of SoundScheme included in the IRIX 6.4 release
is the same as the version included with the 5.3 release.
The IRIX 6.5 SoundScheme has changed since IRIX 6.4.
5.1 Changes and Additions to IRIX 6.5 SoundScheme
+ A possible security vulnerability was removed.
+ A new allowOverlap resource will, if set to true for a
given sound, allow soundscheme to start playing the
sound again even if it is already playing. This was
introduced to allow dynamic audio feedback for the
"type to select" feature in the IRIX Interactive
Desktop.
+ The audio output device can now be changed dynamically.
+ In IRIX 6.5, SoundScheme accepts a -aux filename
command-line option that makes it load an auxiliary
scheme database to override sounds defined in the
/usr/share/data/sounds/soundscheme/schemes/defaultScheme.ss
soundscheme. This allows users to change sounds
without having root access.
To hear customized sounds, users who create their own
soundscheme must kill soundscheme, then restart it
using the -aux filename option where filename is the
name of their soundscheme. To have their sounds
remembered across logins, users can copy the
/var/X11/xdm/Xsession.dt file to their home directory
as $HOME/.xsession, then edit the copy and add the -aux
filename option to the soundscheme startup line. Users
must exercise caution, as the $HOME/.xession file will
run instead of the system /var/X11/xdm/Xsession.dt
file, and errors in the $HOME/.xsession file can
prevent the user from logging in at the console.
Here is an example personal soundscheme file:
*soundPalette: Warning
*Warning.soundfile: 08.ting.aifc
*Warning.label: Warning
The above file, when used as an auxiliary soundscheme,
will cause a triangle sound to play when a new file
icon appears on the desktop instead of the default
piano sound. Other desktop sounds will remain
unaffected (ex., the sand shifting sound will still
play when the user moves an icon on the background).
+ These old SoundScheme message types which were
implemented previously as simple no-op placeholders are
now no longer supported: create, destroy, start, stop,
set, get, query, and enable.
+ The ssplay utility program now accepts a -o command-
line option for setting and querying the current
SoundScheme audio output device.
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CD Audio Support
6. CD Audio Support
This section describes changes, bug fixes, known problems,
and known documentation errors relating to the audio
capabilities of the SCSI CD-ROM drive.
Starting with IRIX 6.3, The Digital Media Execution
Environment subsystem for 6.5 (dmedia_eoe.sw.tools) includes
the program cdplayer(1), which provides a number of
improvements over its predecessor, cdman. Cdplayer uses the
standard digital media look-and-feel and provides much more
extensive facilities for moving between tracks and for
copying digital audio from CD tracks to sound files on disk.
The program formerly known as cdplayer has been renamed
cdheadphone and resides in /usr/bin/X11.
6.1 Known Problems and Workarounds
+ Cdplayer doesn't handle slower CD-ROM drives well. In
particular, when playing off of a 1x or 2x CD-ROM
cdplayer will sometimes let the audio ring buffer
underflow, resulting in audible clicks. This is not a
problem on Onyx2 and O2 system CD-ROMs.
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DAT Audio Support
7. DAT Audio Support
This section describes changes, bug fixes, known problems,
and known documentation errors relating to the audio
capabilities of the SCSI DDS drive for IRIX workstations.
Starting with IRIX 6.3, subsystem dmedia_eoe.sw.tools
includes a new DAT playback/capture program called
datplayer. Datplayer provides a transport control panel
interface to the audio capabilities of a DAT tape drive
include a track scanning mechanism and convenient audio
capture utilities. It also provides a facility for building
a database of the contents of a tape, so that the tape's
tracks may be listed by name.
Datplayer does not have any recording capabilities. Users
can master DAT tapes by using the Export file menu option in
SoundTrack.
Datplayer does not replace the application datman since
datman is currently the only way to "spot record" onto DAT
tapes.
PLEASE NOTE that as of 6.5, DAT audio is no longer
officially supported.
7.1 Changes and Additions
+ We have added support for DDS3 drives from Sony. These
drives have excellent audio capabilities without the
firmware problems exhibited in older drives.
7.2 Known Problems and Workarounds
There are a number of firmware problems with the older DDS2
drives. They are also very sensitive to tape residue. We
strongly recommend frequent cleaning and the use of new tape
when possible (particularly for mastering).
+ Please note that datplayer does not work reliably with
the DDS2 drives.
+ DAT audio firmware problem: data tape at BOT.
Assume a DDS (data) tape (ie, a tape previously
recorded in data mode) is inserted in the DAT drive.
The drive will rewind the tape to logical BOT, which on
a data tape is different than physical BOT. If you
attempt to write audio data to the drive, it begins
writing at logical BOT. When the tape is later re-
inserted into the drive, it is incorrectly recognized
as a data tape since DDS format data exists between
physical BOT and logical BOT.
Workaround: Check to see if the tape in the drive is
DDS media and at BOT. If so, in audio mode write a
frame of data to move the tape off logical BOT, then
issue a rewind. This will cause the tape to rewind
back to physical BOT.
+ DAT audio firmware problem: read position bug.
The DAT drive firmware incorrectly returns its position
via the MTGETAUDIO ioctl to the IRIX tape driver. There
are two modes to this behavior.
+ Immediately following a seek: Suppose you seek by
A-time (absolute time). Then MTGETAUDIO returns
the correct A-time, but incorrect P-time (program
time). Suppose you seek by P-time. Then MTGETAUDIO
returns the correct P-time, but incorrect A-time.
+ Following a read or write: Both A-time and P-time
are wrong.
Workaround: Read a frame from the tape and decode the
subcode information. This of course moves the tape, so
you may have to seek back to the previous location or
otherwise account for the resulting 1 frame difference
between the frame read and the new tape position.
+ DAT audio firmware problem: read delay bug.
If not used for 60 seconds, the DAT drive unloads the
tape from the heads. Once this happens, subsequent
reads will fail.
Workaround: Avoid 60 second delays between subsequent
operations.
+ Write following read: A write following a read is not
frame-accurate. It may go onto the tape several frames
too early, overwriting some of the data just read.
Workaround: None (because of the following bug).
+ DAT audio firmware problem: Write following seek.
A write following a seek is not frame-accurate. About
50% of the time, a write following a seek will go onto
the tape a few frames early.
Workaround: None.
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MIDI System
8. MIDI System
The MIDI execution environment consists of the kernel MIDI
driver, the MIDI library DSO libmd.so, and the startmidi(1)
and stopmidi(1) commands.
The MIDI library DSO is installed from the subsystem
dmedia_eoe.sw.lib (or dmedia_eoe.sw32.lib for n32
applications).
The other core MIDI execution environment components are
installed from the subsystem dmedia_eoe.sw.base.
The MIDI driver allows applications programs to read or send
time-stamped MIDI events via one or both of the serial ports
on an Onyx2, Indy, Power Indigo2, Indigo2, or Indigo,
workstation. The MIDI library provides an application
programming interface to the capabilities of the driver.
In order to operate a serial port on your IRIS workstation
as a MIDI port, you must first connect it to a standard
Apple Macintosh-compatible serial-to-MIDI interface, such as
the Opcode Translator ProSync(tm). Many of these interfaces
offer additional useful features, such as SMPTE time-code
conversion.
Before any MIDI applications can use the serial port, it is
usually necessary to configure the serial ports for use with
MIDI. This is done through the System Manager Port Tool.
Bring up the Port Tool, and connect the desired serial port
to a MIDI device. To use the port for other devices (such
as a printer), simply disconnect the port using the Port
Tool, and then connect to whatever device you desire. The
name of the MIDI port will be "midiPortX", depending upon
which serial port you connect to.
The MIDI subsystem in IRIS Digital Media Execution
Environment 6.4 is the same as the version included in the
6.2 release.
8.1 Known Problems and Workarounds
+ On Onyx2, the Port Tool can not be used to configure
serial ports for MIDI. Instead, startmidi(1) must be
run manually. For example, to use serial port 3 for
MIDI, run
startmidi -n ttyMidi3 -s 31250 -d /dev/ttyd3
+ External MIDI converter boxes that draw power from the
SGI workstation's serial port (rather than from an AC
adapter) may not work reliably.
+ MIDI I/O through the serial ports on an O2 workstation
is not a supported feature at this time. Work is
underway to provide this feature via a patch in the
future. Internal (interprocess) MIDI is supported on O2
systems.
+ Machines have been observed to crash as a consequence
of changing the physical location of cables while MIDI
is running.
It is recommended that changes to the cabling of MIDI
only be done while the machine is powered down.
+ Currently, the MIDI system does not automatically
synchronize to an external sequencer or drum machine,
nor does it generate MIDI clocks to synchronize other
devices.
+ Some Indigo^2 machines exhibit erratic behavior when
receiving system exclusive messages. If you have a
problem, please contact the TAC (800.800.4SGI).
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Software MIDI Synthesizer
9. Software MIDI Synthesizer
The software wavetable MIDI synthesizer, midisynth, is a
server daemon which provides MIDI wavetable synthesis
services for applications. The MIDI synthesizer generates
sounds on demand as requested by client programs using a
single audio port, and it is started automatically on demand
when a client MIDI application attempts to connect to it
through a software MIDI port.
The MIDI synthesizer is installed from the optional
subsystem dmedia_eoe.sw.synth. To enable General MIDI
synthesis, it is also necessary to install the subsystem
dmedia_eoe.data.synth, which contains a full set of General
MIDI presets for the synthesizer.
These related tools are also included in
dmedia_eoe.sw.synth:
+ Synthesizer Panel (synthpanel(1)), a graphical control
panel for the software Synthesizer. See the
"Synthesizer Panel" chapter in these release notes.
+ MIDI Keyboard (midikeys(1)), a "virtual" MIDI
controller which may be used to control the internal
software synthesizer or an external MIDI device. See
the "MIDI Keyboard Tool" chapter in these release
notes.
+ Synthesizer Editor (syntheditor(1)), a graphical
preset/voice editor for the software Synthesizer. See
the "Synthesizer Editor" chapter in these release
notes.
Sound Player (soundplayer(1)), installed from the
dmedia_eoe.sw.tools subsystem, can be used to play back
standard MIDI files along with the software synthesizer and
General MIDI sample set.
A collection of sample General MIDI compositions is included
in the optional subsystem dmedia_eoe.data.music. These
compositions are stored as Standard MIDI Files, and are
installed in the directory /usr/share/data/music. Try
loading them into Sound Player and playing them back using
the internal software synthesizer.
9.1 Changes and Additions
This section lists changes/additions to the MIDI synthesizer
since the IRIX 6.3/6.4 PCI Audio Option support + general
audio and MIDI synthesizer bug-fixes patch.
+ A chorus effects unit is now available, and both it and
the reverb effects unit are now channel-specific.
Channel levels are controlled via the EFFECTSLEVEL1 and
EFFECTSLEVEL3 MIDI controller messages. The chorus
type and settings may be set via synthpanel.
+ Preset and sample loading are now handled in a separate
thread, so on-the-fly preset loads do not interrupt the
playback of voices.
+ Voice limits may now be set on a preset-by-preset
basis. This eliminated the problem of the percussion
track monopolizing all the synthesizer voices, and made
several other presets, such as the Acoustic Grand
Piano, function more efficiently.
+ Reverb and Chorus are now on by default when running in
General MIDI mode (the default). The default channel
level for both effects is zero, though, so no effects
will be heard unless 1) the MIDI file being played sets
the effect levels (see above) or 2) the user sets a
global reverb level for all channels using the Global
Reverb Level slider in the synthpanel Run Time
Parameters window (see the release notes for
Synthesizer Panel).
+ Closely related to the previous item: Reverberation no
longer "cuts out" when CPU usage reaches preset limit;
CPU limiting is handled via voice stealing only.
This section lists earlier changes/additions to the MIDI
synthesizer made between the IRIX 6.3/6.4 release and the
patch described above.
+ Preset bank files, specifically those in SoundFont2-
compatible format, may now be loaded as alternates to
the default General MIDI bank which comes with the
distribution. Banks may be loaded via the Synthesizer
Panel. These banks may also be specified and loaded as
directories containing preset files which follow the
midisynth GM filename system (see synthpreset(4) for
details).
+ Now responds to GS bank-select messages, allowing the
selection of GS preset variations (if available in the
current bank) and selection of the various GS
percussion banks.
+ Now handles Registered Program Numbers (RPN's) 0, 1,
and 2 along with Data Entry MIDI messages.
+ Now handles combination presets with overlapping key
and/or velocity ranges.
+ Many new preset parameters are available, including
envelope attack and release time modulation and
variable keyboard tuning.
+ Envelope generators may now have their gain modulated
by other envelope generators or by control oscillators.
+ Now reports errors due to missing or unreadable bank
files, preset files, sound files, and unknown
parameters and illegal parameter values. These will be
displayed by Synthesizer Panel, MIDI Keyboard, and/or
Synthesizer Editor if any of these are running.
+ Up to 16 preset file names may be specified on the
command line when starting midisynth by hand.
+ Synthesizer performance (measured by number of
simultaneous voices) has been improved by about 40%.
9.2 Bug Fixes
+ Voice stealing now works without clicks, which also
enables mono voice mode.
+ MIDI Channel volume and expression controller
messages are now correctly mapped into the channel
gain, as described in the MIDI spec.
+ LSB (Least Significant Byte) MIDI controllers are
now handled (they were being ignored).
+ A Reset All Controllers MIDI message to a single
channel now resets only that channel, as per the
MIDI spec, and does not alter the volume,
expression, or pan values. The All Notes Off and
All Sound Off messages also now are channel-
specific, as per the MIDI spec.
+ Continuous controllers (e.g., Modulation Wheel)
now are scaled properly. Earlier versions were
producing twice the expected modulation amount.
+ MIDI synthesizer now correctly handles the General
MIDI Mode On/Off message.
+ Program changes now work on MIDI channel 10
(percussion channel) when in non-GM mode.
+ MIDI synthesizer now reports via the system log if
the General MIDI preset file set or sound file set
(installed from dmedia_eoe.data.synth are missing
at startup time.
+ Multiple audio oscillators in a voice may now be
enveloped separately. A bug had caused all
oscillators to follow the first oscillator's
envelope.
+ Envelope looping (forward, backward, or forward
and backward) now work properly.
+ Low frequency control oscillator (LFO) frequencies
are now not affected by pitch bend or master tune
unless they are also tracking the keyboard.
+ Reverb unit now tracks the sampling rate setting.
Before this, reverb times were distorted if
sampling rates other than 44100 were used.
+ Many memory leaks fixed.
9.3 Known Problems and Workarounds
+ MIDI synthesizer has a tendency to use a lot of memory,
often exceeding 15 Mb. Currently there is no way to
recover/reduce this memory without killing and
restarting the synth process. This workaround is the
option currently available via the Synthezier Panel
API.
+ The audio output of the MIDI synthesizer will
occasionally break up when other uninterruptable
processes (such as screen updates) compete for the CPU.
This is best solved by running the synth at times when
other CPU-intensive activities are not being run.
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Synthesizer Panel
10. Synthesizer Panel
The Synthesizer Panel (invoked from the command line as
synthpanel(1)) provides a graphical control panel interface
for monitoring the status of the software MIDI synthesizer,
for manually changing preset banks and presets on each of
its 16 channels, and for adjusting a number of its global
and per-channel control parameters. It should be noted the
the new 2.0 version of this application is not compatible
with older versions of the MIDI synthesizer (see the release
notes in Chapter 9). The new versions of both which are
contained within this release should be used together.
The MIDI synthesizer and its related applications, including
this tool, are installed from the optional subsystem
dmedia_eoe.sw.synth. To enable General MIDI synthesis, it
is also necessary to install the subsystem
dmedia_eoe.data.synth, which contains a full set of General
MIDI presets for the synthesizer.
10.1 Changes and Additions
This section lists changes/additions to Synthesizer Panel
since the IRIX 6.3/6.4 PCI Audio Option support + general
audio and MIDI synthesizer bug-fixes patch.
+ A new pop-up panel (invoked from the Options->Synth
Startup Configuration... menu item) allows users to
customize the software MIDI synthesizer's behavior via
its startup file. This allows customizing of
parameters such as the number of audio output channels,
the audio output port, the maximum CPU usage, the
default GM preset bank path, and several others.
+ The "Reverb + Tune" pop-up panel has been renamed "Run
Time Parameters", and is invoked from the Options-
>Synth Runtime Parameters... menu item. It now
includes a set of controls for customizing the new MIDI
synthesizer Chorus algorithm (see the release notes in
Chapter 9). In addition, a new reverb control "Global
Reverb Level" has been added to allow reverberation to
be added to all midisynth channels. This was needed
now that reverberation levels are set on a channel-by-
channel basis using the standard GM/GS MIDI
controllers.
+ A new Synth System Reset menu command has been added
which allows you to reset midisynth to its startup
state. This includes purging of all loaded preset
banks, presets, and sample files. All subsequent file
loads will reuse that memory space, preventing runaway
growth of the midisynth processes.
This section lists changes/additions to Synthesizer Panel
between the IRIX 6.4/6.4 release and the above-mentioned
patch.
+ A new panel has been added which contains eight drop
pockets for specifying alternate preset banks to be
used by the MIDI synthesizer. This panel is hidden by
default, and may be displayed by pressing the "show
banks" button.
+ The volume and expression display has been modified to
match the new functionality: According to the MIDI
specification, the total volume for a channel is
determined by the formula: gain = (channel volume *
expression) / (127 * 127). The old, incorrect formula
added the two, limited the result to 127, then divided
by 127. This caused most of the range to be unusable.
+ The preset display panel now displays the "Preset Name"
field from the preset file, rather than creating a name
by truncating the name of the preset file. This allows
more elaborate preset names with embedded spaces, etc.
10.2 Bug Fixes
+ The General MIDI Preset Mode menu item now sends the
correct MIDI message to any GM-compatible device.
+ All Notes Off, All Sound Off, and Reset All Controllers
MIDI messages now generate a channel LED flash for only
the channel on which they occur. Earlier versions
flashed all channels.
10.3 Known Problems and Workarounds
+ If a preset bank file load fails for any reason, and no
previous bank file had been loaded in the drop pocket,
a "nonexistent file" icon (looks like an oval) will be
left showing in the pocket. This is harmless, and
should be ignored.
+ Whenever a preset is loaded from a preset bank file
(such as a SoundFont2 bank) as opposed to from a bank
directory, its icon will show as the "nonexistant file"
image rather than the expected Synth Preset icon. This
is also harmless.
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Video I/O System
11. Video I/O System
The Silicon Graphics Video Library is a device independent
library for video devices on Silicon Graphics workstations
equipped with video hardware. VL EOE is the first release
of the execution environment and supports the built in video
in Indy systems, as well as Galileo Video on Indigo2, Power
Indigo2, and Indigo, and Indy Video on Indy. Future
releases will support additional video devices.
The execution environment for video includes the video
daemon, a control panel, videopanel, that can be launched
from the Icon Catalog, as well as videoin, an application
that displays video in a window on the screen. On hardware
options that support video output capabilities, the
environment also includes videoout, an application that
allows you to select a windowed area of the screen or the
whole screen to send to video output connectors. There are
also two command line applications, vidtomem and memtovid
that support frame in from video and frame out to video.
Documentation of these tools is included in the Utilities
Guide.
The Video Library Execution Environment subsystem in IRIS
Digital Media Execution Environment 6.4 is the same as the
5.3 version.
11.1 Configuration Files
The video devices have certain configuration values. There
are factory defaults for each device stored in :
/usr/etc/video/videod.defaults.device, where device is ev1
for Galileo Video and Indy Video, and vino for Indy VINO
(Video In No Out). Using videopanel you can restore these,
as well as saving and restoring a local configuration in
/usr/etc/video/videod.defaults.
11.2 Known Problems and Workarounds
+ Not all applications follow default input. When using
videopanel to set the default input, you may need to
quit and restart the application if it is already
running.
+ There is no concept of a default device in the current
video environment. When you switch devices in the
video control panel, there is no event sent to the
application. It is up to the application to present a
way to switch devices. This is only an issue for
systems with multiple boards in them.
+ For certain monitors and timings you may want to use
the setmon command. See the man page for details.
11.3 Changes and Additions
+ The Video Library Execution Environment subsystem in
IRIS Digital Media Execution Environment 6.4 is the
same as the 5.3 version.
11.4 Bug Fixes
+ XXX
11.5 Indy VINO Problems and Workarounds
+ When viewing video from an external source, if you fast
forward or rewind the source, the videoin application
can loose synchronization. Restart the application to
regain a clean video signal.
+ If yo have an IndyCam and have not installed
vino.sw.eoe or if you do not have the IndyCam plugged
in when you boot your system, the hardware inventory
command hinv reports:
Vino video: unit 0, revision 0, Indycam not connected.
Be sure to plug the IndyCam in before you start up your
system. Once you install vino.sw.eoe. and reboot,
your system will report correctly:
Vino video: unit 0, revision 0, Indycam connected.
+ If the input video stream is frozen (by using Freeze on
the videopanel) and the window is obscured and then
uncovered, the video frame is not redrawn correctly.
Unfreeze the video to have it redrawn.
11.6 Galileo Video and Indy Video Problems and Workarounds
+ If you resize the videoin application to it's minimum
size, 96 x 72, you may see garbage lines on the bottom
and the right edge of the image.
+ When using vidtomem to capture a burst of consecutive
frames, you can only capture up to 4 at once. To
capture more frames call vidtomem repeatedly.
+ There is one line of invalid data across the bottom of
the videoin window using PAL format.
+ There may be one line of invalid data across the top
and side of the videoout image.
+ Galileo Video on the Indigo platform will only work
with the R4000 CPU using XS, XS24, XS24Z, XZ, and Elan
level graphics.
+ Galileo Video on the Power Indigo2 platform will only
work with the XZ and Elan level graphics. It will not
work with the XL graphics.
11.7 Documentation Errors
+ There are no known errors in the documentation.
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Video Panel
12. Video Panel
The Video Control Panel (invoked from the command line as
videopanel(1)) provides an easy-to-use graphical interface
to control all the installed video hardware. It allows you
to set various hardware parameters through various sliders,
menus and pushbuttons in panels sorted by function.
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Audio/Video Compression
13. Audio/Video Compression
The Digital Media Execution Environment provides a set of
software and hardware codecs for audio and video. The
programming interfaces and compression manager software for
software codecs and for memory-to-memory image
compression/decompression using hardware acceleration (eg,
the O2 image processing/compression engine) are included in
the Digital Media Library, libdmedia.so. The programming
interfaces for the Cosmo Compress and Impact Compress
devices and for MPEG-1 video decompression are included in
the older Compression Library, libcl.so.
The dmedia_eoe.{sw,sw32}.lib subsystems contain o32 and n32
versions of the software image and audio codecs. The codecs
themselves are installed as individual DSO's in the
directories /usr/{lib,lib32}/dmedia/imageconverters and
/usr/{lib,lib32}/dmedia/audioconverters.
Runtime support for the realtime memory-to-memory motion
JPEG encoder/decoder available for the O2 workstation is
included in the dmedia_eoe.sw.base subsystem.
Runtime support for the Cosmo Compress motion JPEG codec
option (which works in conjunction with the IndyVideo,
Indigo2 Video, and Galileo Video video I/O) is shipped as
part of the cosmo option product. Runtime support for the
Impact Compress motion JPEG codec option (which works in
conjunction with Impact Video) is shipped as part of the
impactcomp option).
13.1 Audio Codecs
The following software audio codecs are bundled with the
Digital Media Execution Environment in IRIX 6.3 and later:
+ ITU G.711 mu-law/A-law speech codec
+ ITU G.722 speech codec
+ ITU G.726 speech codec
+ ITU G.728 speech codec
+ GSM speech codec
+ DVI ADPCM codec
+ MPEG-1 audio codec (see "MPEG-1 Audio/Video Codec"
section below)
+ Federal Standard 1016 CELP codec
+ DV Audio (DIF)
Tools like SoundPlayer(1) and MediaPlayer(1) may be used to
play back sound or movie files which contain compress audio
data encoded using the above standard compression schemes.
MediaConvert(1) and dmconvert(1) may be used to convert
to/from these various encoded formats.
13.1.1 Awarer, Inc MultiRate Audio Codec
The Digital Media Execution Environment includes built-in
support for a high-fidelity audio codec from Aware,Inc
called the MultiRate codec. This codec offers a lossless
mode which provides approximately 2:1 or 3:1 data
compression for CD-quality audio sample data.
To run applications that use Aware,Inc MultiRate codec
technology on a given Silicon Graphics system, you must
purchase a FlexLM license from Silicon Graphics.
An Aware codec license will allow you to play/record AIFF-C
files which contain MultiRate-encoded data by invoking
sfplay(1) or soundplayer(1) for playback and sfrecord(1) for
recording. The license will enable conversion to/from
AIFF-C files which contain MultiRate data via dmconvert(1)
or MediaConvert(1).
See the online man page Aware(5) for an overview of the
Aware MultiRate compression technology available to
developers and end users.
13.2 Image Codecs
13.2.1 Changes and Additions This section lists
changes/additions to the image codecs between the IRIX 6.2
and IRIX 6.3/6.4 releases.
+ Indeo encoding: Intel Indeo compression (a scheme
commonly used with AVI movie files and sometimes used
with QuickTime movies) is now supported. Tools like
MediaConvert(1) and dmconvert(1) can be used to create
Indeo-encoded content.
+ No license required for Cinepakr Video encoding:
Cinepak (also called "QuickTime Compact Video")
compression is now bundled with the IRIS Digital Media
Execution Environment. MediaConvert(1) and dmconvert
will now create QuickTime Cinepak movies without a
license.
+ Improved software JPEG codec: The performance of the
standard software JPEG codec included in the Digital
Media Execution Environment has been improved for IRIX
6.3 and 6.4.
+ Realtime JPEG codec on O2 systems: The O2 image
processing/compression engine provides support for
motion JPEG encode and decode. Realtime encode/decode
at resolutions up to NTSC, PAL, CCIR601/525, and
CCIR601/625 are supported. See the section of "O2
Realtime JPEG Codec" below.
13.3 Realtime JPEG Codec for O2 Workstations
The Silicon Graphics O2 workstation family includes
integrated support for realtime memory-to-memory JPEG encode
and decode at resolutions up to NTSC, PAL, CCIR 601/525, and
CCIR 601/625.
The compression/image processing engine is a shared system
resource, so realtime encode/decode performance is not
guaranteed when the engine is being shared between
applications or being used to encode/decode multiple JPEG
streams simultaneously by a single application.
13.3.1 Known Problems and Workarounds
+ Restrictions on image dimensions: The realtime JPEG
codec provides support for encoding/decoding images
which have height/width dimensions that are multiples
of 8. For other image sizes, the system falls back to
the standard software JPEG codec.
13.4 Cosmo_Compress_JPEG_Codec
The Cosmo Compress option for Indy and Indigo2 enables
realtime motion JPEG capture from video and playback to
video on those systems. (The product does not provide a
realtime memory-to-memory JPEG codec capability like the
capability offered by the built-in image
processing/compression engine in the O2 workstation.)
Driver and Compression Library software support for the
Cosmo Compress is provided separately in the cosmo product
which ships along with the Cosmo hardware. See the cosmo
release notes for information about bug fixes, new features,
and known problems specific to the Cosmo JPEG codec.
13.5 MPEG-1 Audio/Video Codec
13.5.1 What is MPEG? MPEG is a set of standards for
digitally coding video and audio. The name is derived from
Moving Pictures Experts Group, which is the technical
committee of ISO/IEC (the International Organisation for
Standardisation and the International Electrotechnical
Commission) responsible for developing these specifications.
Several standards have been developed, targeted for
different applications. MPEG-1 encodes non-interlaced
material and is optimized for single-speed CD-ROM bitrates
(about 1.5 Mbps). MPEG-2 handles interlacing and is
intended for applications at higher bitrates (4 Mbps or
greater) like studio-quality TV. MPEG-4 is in its early
stages and is targeted for very low bitrates that may be
useful for videophone and other applications. (MPEG-3 was
intended for HDTV/ATV but was merged with MPEG-2).
Below we summarize the components of MPEG-1. This standard
specifies the syntax for three types of bitstreams : video,
audio, and systems.
+ Video : Compression utilizes transform coding and
motion estimation, which attempt to remove spatial and
temporal redundancies in the original image sequence.
Image dimensions up to 4096 by 4096 pixels and various
frame rates up to 60 Hz are specified (field
information is not defined in the video bitstream),
with bitrates up to 105 Mbps allowed.
+ Audio : Compression is based on subband coding, which
divides the input into different frequency bands and
allocates bits across frequencies based on perceptual
importance. Mono and stereo sources are supported at
sampling rates of 32, 44.1 and 48 KHz, and allowable
bitrates range from 32 to 448 Kbps.
Three layers of encoding are specified : Layers I, II,
and III. Generally speaking, the higher layers provide
better compression (lower bitrates for the same audio
quality) at the expense of greater computational
complexity. The higher layers are also supersets of
the lower layers in the sense that a Layer III decoder
must be able to decode an audio bitstream of any layer,
and a Layer II decoder must be able to decode
bitstreams from Layers I and II.
+ Systems : The systems specification defines how the
compressed audio and compressed video bitstream are
multiplexed; no additional compression is performed.
This layer serves to packetize and interleave the
compressed audio and video data, along with timestamp
information and decoder buffering requirements. Up to
16 video and 32 audio streams may be multiplexed in a
single systems stream.
For more details on the MPEG standard, see the man page
mpeg(4).
13.5.2 MPEG Support in IRIX 6.3 The software MPEG codec
included in Digital Media Execution Environment 6.3
implements a subset of the MPEG-1 standard indicated below.
(Subsequent references to MPEG in these release notes assume
MPEG-1 unless otherwise specified.)
+ Video :
- encoded width min=16 max=4080 pixels
- encoded height min=16 max=4080 pixels
- bit rate min=100K max=4.5M bits per second
+ Audio :
- layers I, II
+ Systems :
- video streams 1
- audio streams 1
- pack size min=500 max=10000 bytes
- bit rate min=150K max=5.0M bits per second
13.5.3 Changes and Additions since IRIX 6.2
+ No license required for MPEG audio/video encoding. The
MPEG-1 audio/video encoding software included in
dmedia_eoe is now available on all systems. The
command-line tool dmconvert(1) and the graphical tool
mediaconvert(1) may be used to create MPEG-1 audio,
video, or systems files from other input formats
(QuickTime, AVI, AIFF, WAVE, etc).
13.5.4 Bug Fixes in IRIX 6.5.4
+ BUG 673369 - Some Octane systems with the Impact
compression option card installed may panic on power up
if they have been off for more than 4 hours. The
driver does not allow sufficient time for the
controller to complete reset processing. The reattach
routine now waits for a longer period of time after the
bus reset before attempting any GIO bus transactions.
+ BUG 672908 - clDecompress hangs with single frame and
Impact Compression. This happens when hardware
interleaving is turned on. When interleaving is turned
on for every 2 fields of compressed data you get back
only 1 frame of uncompressed data. Low level routines
did not account for the halving in the number of
received frames. This has been fixed in this release.
+ BUG 650934 - dmplay fails on ip22 w/ impact
compression. One of the Bug fixes to deal with single
frame compression did not propogate to the ip22/ip28
device driver. Now dmplay works on IP22/IP28
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Supported Media File Formats
14. Supported Media File Formats
The Digital Media Execution Environment includes shared
libraries (DSO's) which implement read/write support for a
variety of standard digital media file formats. These file
formats can be created and read by any applications which
are based on these DSO's, including the standard digital
media commands and tools which are shipped with
dmedia_eoe.sw.base and dmedia_eoe.sw.tools.
The shared libraries which implement support for digital
media file formats are:
+ libaudiofile.so: the Audio File Library (installed from
dmedia_eoe.sw.lib).
+ libmoviefile.so: the Movie File Library (installed from
dmedia_eoe.sw.lib).
+ libifl.so: the Image Format Library (installed from
ifl_eoe). See the release notes for the "Image Format
Library Execution Environment" for more information.
Digital media tools for converting between different sound,
movie, and image file formats include dmconvert(1) and
mediaconvert(1). There are a variety of digital media tools
included in dmedia_eoe which provide recording, playback,
import/export, and editing support for the sound and movie
formats supported by libaudiofile.so and libmoviefile.so.
14.1 Supported Sound File Formats
These sound file formats are supported by the Digital Media
Execution Environment:
+ AIFF and AIFF-C files (.aiff or .aifc)
+ Sun/NeXT sound files (.au or .snd)
+ Microsoft RIFF WAVE files (.wav)
+ MPEG-1 layer I, II audio bitstreams (.mpg)
+ Berkeley/IRCAM/CARL sound files
+ Sound Designer II files (.sd2)
+ Creative Labs SoundFont 2 files (.sf2)
+ SampleVision files (.smp)
+ Creative Labs VOC files (.voc)
+ Audio Visual Research files (.avr)
+ Amiga IFF/8SVX files (.iff)
In addition, several tools including soundplayer(1) and
dminfo(1) provide support for reading standard MIDI files.
14.2 Supported Movie File Formats
These movie file formats are supported by the Digital Media
Execution Environment:
+ QuickTime files
+ AVI files
+ DIF (Raw DV) files
+ MPEG-1 video bitstreams
+ MPEG-1 systems bitstreams
+ SGI Movie files
14.2.1 Changes and Additions This section lists
changes/additions to the movie file format support in the
digital media execution environment between the IRIX 6.3/6.4
releases and the IRIX 6.5 release.
+ DIF (Raw DV) files Read/Write support added for 6.5 and
later.
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Digital Media DSO's
15. Digital Media DSO's
A number of shared execution libraries (DSO's) are included
in the dmedia_eoe images. The directory /usr/lib contains
versions of these DSO's for use by o32 applications, and the
directory /usr/lib32 contains versions for use by n32
applications. The subsystems dmedia_eoe.sw.lib and
dmedia_eoe.sw32.lib install the o32 and n32 versions of the
base DSO's respectively. The subsystems
dmedia_eoe.sw.plugins and dmedia_eoe.sw32.plugins install
the o32 and n32 versions of special-effects plug-in modules.
This section briefly describes the functions of the
different digital media DSO's.
15.1 Audio Library
The Audio Library provides an application software interface
to the audio I/O device capabilities of the system.
15.1.1 Changes and Additions
+ In IRIX 6.4, and starting with IRIX 6.3, the Audio
Library is now a DSO rather than a static library. It
is installed as /usr/{lib,lib32,lib64}/libaudio.so.1.
Applications which were linked with libaudio.a in
previous releases will continue to operate properly in
IRIX 6.4.
15.2 Video Library
The Video Library provides an application software interface
to the video I/O device capabilities of the system, as well
as access to special video hardware paths such as video to
screen or screen capture to memory on some systems which
have these features. The Video Library DSO is installed as
/usr/{lib,lib32}/libvl.so.
15.3 Digital Media Library and Image/Audio Converters
The Digital Media Library provides core functionality for
digital media applications. Functionality in IRIX 6.4
includes:
+ Image conversion management: a software framework for
managing software image codecs and realtime memory-to-
memory image codecs which rely on hardware
acceleration.
+ Audio conversion management: a software framework for
managing audio data conversion including
compression/decompression, sampling rate conversion,
sample data format conversion, and channel matrix
conversion.
+ Digital media buffer system: a software framework which
allows memory buffers containing compressed or
uncompressed image data to be moved with copying
between various subsystems including video I/O ports,
software or realtime memory-to-memory image
compressors, and OpenGL.
+ Software color space conversion: the Digital Media
Library includes optimized code for performing high
quality color space conversion in software.
+ Digital media networking: a network-independent
framework which allows the interchange of DMbuffers
between processes, whether on the same machine or on
machines connected by a network.
15.3.1 Digital Media Library DSO's The Digital Media
Library is composed of the following DSO's:
+ /usr/{lib,lib32}/libdmedia.so: The Digital Media
Library.
+ /usr/{lib,lib32}/dmedia/imageconverters/*.so: Image
converter modules for software image codecs and
realtime memory-to-memory hardware-accelerated codecs.
These modules are loaded at runtime by the Digital
Media Library when required by an application. They are
not loaded directly by applications.
+ /usr/{lib,lib32}/dmedia/audioconverters/*.so: Audio
converter modules for audio compression/decompression,
audio sampling rate conversion, and audio data format
and channel matrix conversion. These modules are loaded
at runtime by the Digital Media Library when required
by an application. They are not loaded directly by
applications.
+ /usr/{lib,lib32}/libcl.so: The "old" Compression
Library. This library provides the developer interface
and software framework for several image codecs and a
few audio codecs in IRIX 6.2 and earlier releases. The
full IRIX 6.2 functionality is supported in IRIX 6.4
and future releases for backward compatibility with
existing applications. Low level image codec modules in
the "imageconverters" directory are now shared by
libdmedia.so and libcl.so.
+ /usr/{lib, lib32}/libawareaudio.so: Aware,Inc audio
compression framework DSO. There are no routines in
this DSO that are visible to developers. This DSO is
used internally by libcl.so for interfacing to the MPEG
and Aware, Inc MultiRate codecs only.
+ /usr/{lib, lib32}/libaudioutil.so: In earlier releases,
this library included audio conversion and compression
operations. In IRIX 6.3 and IRIX 6.4, audio conversion
operations have all been centralized in the Digital
Media Library, libdmedia.so. As a result,
libaudioutil.so is now a symlink to libdmedia.so.
+ /usr/{lib,lib32}/libdmnet.so: This library provides a
standard API for moving Digital Media buffers between
applications on the same machine or applications
separated by a network.
15.3.2 Changes_and_Additions
+ IRIX 6.5.14 adds support for decompressing QuickTime
Planar RGB movie files which have a depth of 8, 24, and
32 color and 8 bit grey scale.
+ IRIX 6.5.12 added support for decompressing Microsoft
RLE. This will only work with data which was previously
generated using Quicktime(*).
+ The DMNet API for Digital Media Networking is an
addition to IRIX 6.5. It provides a standard API on
all IRIX platforms for interchanging Digital Media
buffers between processes, whether they are on the same
machine or separated by a network.
15.4 Movie Library
The Movie Library provides core library software for
reading, writing, editing, and playing back standard movie
file formats (QuickTime(*), AVI, MPEG-1 video/systems
bitstreams, SGI Movie).
Starting with IRIX 6.3, the Movie Library is now composed of
a set of DSO's rather than a single static library.
Applications which were linked with libmovie.a in previous
releases will continue to operate properly in IRIX 6.4.
15.4.1 Movie Library DSO's The Movie Library is composed
of the following DSO's:
+ /usr/{lib,lib32}/libmoviefile.so: The Movie File
Library. This DSO implements file read, write, edit
support. It is a high-level library which builds on top
of the image compression/conversion and audio
compression/conversion functions in the core Digital
Media Library.
+ /usr/{lib,lib32}/libmovieplay.so: The Movie Playback
Library. This DSO provides high level playback and
transport control functions to applications. It is
built on top of the "lower level" functions provided by
the Movie File Library, and uses OpenGL and the Audio
Library for rendering synchronized audio/image output.
+ /usr/{lib,lib32}/dmedia/movie/*.so: Movie display ports
and rendering modules loaded internally by the playback
engine, libmovieplay.so, as required at runtime.
Applications do not load these modules directly.
+ /usr/{lib, lib32}/{libmovie.so,libmovieGL.so}: These
are now "stub" DSO's which simply make available all
the public symbols from libmovieplay.so and
libmoviefile.so. They exist only to provide backward
compatibility with link lines for applications that
were previously built using "-lmovie" or "-lmovieGL".
In IRIX 6.4, it is strongly recommended that developers
explicitly link with "-lmovieplay -lmoviefile" or just
"-lmoviefile" as appropriate.
15.4.2 Changes and Additions
+ IRIX 6.5.14 adds to the support for reading QuickTime
None movie files which have a depth of 1, 2, 4 and 8
bit color and 4,8 bit grey scale.
+ IRIX 6.5.14 adds support for reading QuickTime BMP
movie files which have a depth of 1, 2, 4, 8, 24 and 32
color and 4, 8 bit grey scale.
+ IRIX 6.5.14 adds support for reading QuickTime Planar
RGB movie files which have a depth of 8, 24, and 32
color and 8 bit grey scale.
+ IRIX 6.5.12 adds support for reading of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16
and 24 bit uncompressed AVI files. Originally only 32
bit uncompressed AVI files were supported.
+ IRIX 6.5.12 adds support for reading of Microsoft RLE
compressed AVI files.
+ IRIX 6.5.12 adds support to allow reading of compressed
header Quicktime(*) movie files.
+ As of IRIX 6.3 the Movie Library is no longer
statically linked into applications. It is now composed
of two high-level DSO's, libmoviefile.so and
libmovieplay.so, which contain the public movie file
and playback API's, as well as several of rendering and
playback modules loaded internally by libmovieplay.so.
15.4.3 Bug Fixes
Bug 610006: An internal Movie Library data structure
and the algorithm that managed its growth could
fragment the application memory heap and cause poor
performance during movie capture. The data structure
and algorithm have been corrected in Irix 6.5.1m.
+
15.5 Audio File Library
The Audio File Library, /usr/{lib,lib32}/libaudiofile.so,
provides core library software for reading and writing a
variety of sound file formats (see the "Supported Media File
Formats" chapter of these release notes).
The Audio File Library is a high-level library that makes
use of the lower-level audio compression and conversion
functions offered by the core Digital Media Library.
15.5.1 Changes and Additions
+ Addition of support for 32- and 64-bit floating point
AIFF-C files.
+ Addition of support for AIFF-C files which use IMA4:1
compression, and full compliance with Apple, Inc.
AIFF-C compression specifications.
15.6 MIDI Library
The MIDI Library, /usr/{lib, lib32}/libmd.so, provides an
application interface to the IRIX MIDI I/O system built.
This system offers support for timestamped MIDI I/O through
serial ports, and for delivery of interprocess MIDI events
(eg, play back a MIDI sound file using ISoundPlayer(1) and
trigger music synthesis on a second process, the software
MIDI synthesizer).
15.6.1 Changes and Additions
+ The MIDI Library has not changed since IRIX 6.2.
15.6.2 Known Problems and Workarounds
+ In IRIX 6.4, MIDI I/O through the serial ports is fully
functional for the Onyx2 workstation and also for
Origin2000 with the optional base audio option. In
IRIX 6.3, MIDI I/O through the serial ports is not
functional on the O2 workstation. It is our hope that
we will be able to provide this functionality for IRIX
6.3 in the form of a patch.
(*) QuickTime is a registered trademark of Apple Computer,
Inc.
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Digital Media Commands
16. Digital Media Commands
The digital media subsystem dmedia_eoe.sw.base contains a
number of command line utility programs. This chapter
describes changes, additions, and bug fixes to these
commands.
16.1 Digital Media File Conversion Commands
The following digital media file conversion and information
utilities are included in dmedia_eoe.sw.base:
+ dminfo(1) display info about sound,
movie, image files
+ dmconvert(1) general purpose sound, image, movie
converter tool
+ sfinfo(1) display info about sound files (link
to dminfo)
+ aifcresample(1) sampling rate converter (link to
dmconvert)
+ aiff2aifc(1) convert AIFF to AIFF-C (link to
dmconvert)
+ aifc2aiff(1) convert AIFF-C to AIFF (link to
dmconvert)
+ aifccompress(1) compress AIFF(-C) data (link to
dmconvert)
+ aifcdecompress(1) decompress AIFF(-C) data (link to
dmconvert)
+ sfconvert(1) sound file converter (link to
dmconvert)
+ makemovie(1) movie file converter (link to
dmconvert)
dmconvert is a general-purpose command-line tool for
converting between a variety of digital media file formats.
It can be used to convert between different movie file
formats (e.g. SGI movie, QuickTime, MPEG-1 systems
bitstream, MPEG-1 video bitstream), different sound file
formats (e.g. AIFF, AIFF-C, MPEG-1 audio bitstream), and
sequences of images in various formats (e.g. SGI image,
JFIF, TIFF, GIF, FIT).
dminfo is a command-line utility program which displays
detailed information about the audio and/or image tracks in
a digital media file (sound file, movie file, or image
file). The tool also displays general information such as
the total playing time for the file.
16.1.1 Changes and Additions since IRIX 5.3
+ dmconvert(1) is a new general-purpose digital media
file conversion utility which replaces aifc2aiff(1),
aiff2aifc(1), aifccompress(1), aifcdecompress(1),
aifcresample(1), sfconvert(1), and makemovie(1). The
older programs are still available for backwards
compatibility.
+ dminfo(1) is a new utility program which displays
various attributes of the audio and/or image data
stored in a digital media file. It replaces
aifcinfo(1), sfinfo(1), and makemovie -D. The older
programs are still available for backwards
compatibility.
16.1.2 Changes and Additions This section lists
changes/additions to the digital media conversion commands
between the IRIX 6.2 and IRIX 6.3/6.4 releases.
+ dmconvert includes the ability to convert to the AVI
movie format.
+ dmconvert includes support for the Intel Indeo 3.2
compressor.
+ dmconvert no longer requires an SGI license to enable
MPEG-1 audio, MPEG-1 video, or Cinepak encoding. These
capabilities are now bundled with the base IRIX 6.3 and
6.4 software releases.
+ dmconvert includes support for additional sound file
formats: Creative Labs SoundFont 2, SampleVision,
Creative Labs VOC, Audio Visual Research, Amiga
IFF/8SVX.
+ dmconvert includes support for several additional audio
compression schemes: CCITT G.726, CCITT G.728, GSM
06.10, IMA DVI ADPCM.
16.2 Known Problems and Workarounds
+ dmconvert does not yet handle transfer of inst chunk
information for any formats other than AIFF and AIFF-C.
Similarly, many miscellaneous chunk types are not
transferred between all available file types. dminfo
also fails to parse much of this information in the
other file formats. There is sample code in
/usr/share/src/dmedia/soundcommands showing methods of
doing these things.
16.3 Audio Recording and Playback Commands
The following sound utility commands are included in
dmedia_eoe.sw.base:
+ sfplay(1) sound file playback command
+ playaifc(1) installed as a symbolic link to
sfplay
+ playaiff(1) installed as a symbolic link to
sfplay
+ sfrecord(1) sound file recording command
+ recordaifc(1) installed as a symbolic link to
sfrecord
+ recordaiff(1) installed as a symbolic link to
sfrecord
+ passthru(1) user-level audio in to audio out
utility
The IRIS Digital Media Development Environment 6.4 (shipped
as part of IRIS Development Option 6.4) includes complete
source code for all of the above commands.
16.3.1 Changes and Additions This section lists
changes/additions to the sound commands between the IRIX 6.2
and IRIX 6.3/6.4 releases.
+ sfrecord is a new general-purpose command-line tool for
recording sound files. The older playaifc and playaiff
invocations are retained for backward compatibility.
sfrecord supports a number of output formats: WAVE,
Sun/NeXT, raw sample data, and the CCITT G.726, CCITT
G.728, GSM, MPEG-1 audio, and DVI ADPCM codecs.
16.4 Video Utility Commands
The following video I/O utility commands are included in
dmedia_eoe.sw.base:
+ videoin(1) display video input in a window
+ videoout(1) send a portion of the screen to video
out
+ vidtomem(1) single video frame capture to memory
+ memtovid(1) single video frame output from memory
+ vintovout(1) user-level video in to video out
utility
+ vlinfofP(1) display Video Library
configuration information
The IRIS Digital Media Development Environment 6.4 (shipped
as part of IRIS Development Option 6.4) includes complete
source code for all of the above video utility commands.
16.4.1 Changes_and_Additions This section lists
changes/additions to the video commands between the IRIX 6.2
and IRIX 6.3/6.4 releases.
+ Each of the above video commands is supported on the
built-in video I/O subsystem for video-equipped O2
workstations.
16.5 Video Disk Recording and Playback Commands
The following audio/video disk recording and playback
commands are included in dmedia_eoe.sw.base:
+ dmrecord(1) record motion JPEG video with audio
to disk
+ dmplay(1) play back motion JPEG video with
audio from disk
dmrecord is a command-line tool for hard disk video
recording. It records an SGI movie file which contains a
JPEG-compressed video track and, optionally, a synchronized
audio track. dmrecord supports real-time video recording to
disk through ev1 video (Galileo Video, Indigo2 Video, Indy
Video) and the Cosmo Compress JPEG video compressor.
Starting with IRIX 6.3, dmrecord also supports real-time
recording to disk using the built-in audio/video input ports
and built-in realtime JPEG encoding capabilities of the O2
workstation. By default it produces QuickTime movies using a
new format, which is not playable using the previous version
of dmplay. It can however be instructed to produce SGI
movies in the old format.
Starting with IRIX 6.3 for O2 R10000, dmrecord can also
produce movies by capturing the images on the monitor
screen.
dmplay is a command-line tool for hard disk video playback.
It plays back an SGI movie file which contains a JPEG-
compressed image track. By default, dmplay uses the Cosmo
Compressor JPEG decompressor to decode the image track in
real-time. The decompressed video output from Cosmo is
passed through the ev1 video device and is displayed in a
video window on the screen. dmplay supports synchronized
audio playback when video is decompressed using Cosmo.
Starting with IRIX 6.3, dmplay also supports real-time
playback from disk using the built-in audio/video output
ports and built-in realtime JPEG decoding capabilities of
the O2 workstation. The O2 memory-based architecture allows
decompressed video to be passed directly to the graphics
framebuffer in main memory for display to the screen, either
by itself or simultaneously with display to video. This
version of dmplay can play both SGI movies of the old format
and the QuickTime movies of the new format.
dmplay also supports playback in a graphics window using
software JPEG decompression. In this mode, video playback is
non-real-time, and audio playback is not supported.
The IRIS Digital Media Development Environment 6.4 (shipped
as part of IRIS Development Option 6.4) includes complete
source code for dmplay and dmrecord.
16.5.1 Changes and Additions This section lists
changes/additions to the digital media recording and
playback commands between the IRIX 6.2 and IRIX 6.3/6.4
releases.
+ dmrecord now supports synchronized audio/video capture
on video-equipped O2 workstations using the built-in
memory-to-memory realtime JPEG encoding capability of
the system.
+ dmplay now supports synchronized audio/video playback
on the O2 workstation with display to screen and or
video out using the built-in memory-to-memory realtime
JPEG decoding capability of the system. (Display to
video out is only available on video-equipped systems.)
16.5.2 Changes and Additions This section lists
changes/additions to the digital media recording and
playback commands between the IRIX 6.3 and IRIX 6.3 for O2
R10000 releases.
+ dmrecord now can produce JPEG movies by capturing
screen images.
16.5.3 Bug Fixes
+ dmplay now performs the zoom option correctly.
+ The performance of dmplay is much improved for both
graphics and video display.
16.6 Synchronized Audio/Video Realtime Uncompressed Disk
Recording and Playback Commands
The following synchronized audio/video uncompressed realtime
disk recording and playback commands are included in
dmedia_eoe.sw.tools:
+ avcapture(1) realtime capture command
+ avplayback(1) realtime playback command
The IRIS Digital Media Development Environment 6.5 (shipped
as part of IRIS Development Option 6.5) includes complete
source code for all of the above commands.
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Media Player Tool
17. Media Player Tool
MediaPlayer (invoked from the command line as mediaplayer)
is a graphical tool that allows you to play back movie or
sound files. Movie files can be created using MovieMaker,
MediaConvert, dmconvert(1), or MediaRecorder (see below).
Sound files may be created by the above tools, SoundEditor
or SoundTrack (multiple track sound editor).
See the man page mediaplayer(1) or MediaPlayer's on-line
help for more information.
The directory /usr/share/data/movies contains sample movies,
if the subsystems dmedia_eoe.data.movies and/or
dmedia_eoe.data.moremovies are installed. There is an SGI
movie file, somersault.movie, and a sample QuickTime movie,
sampleQT.mov. studio.mps is an MPEG systems stream movie.
17.1 New features in MediaPlayer 4.4.0, released with IRIX
6.5 for O2
+ MediaPlayer now supports the playback of other types of
media other than movies. This includes sound, MIDI,
and still image files.
+ MediaPlayer now supports the playback of some types of
compressed audio embedded in QuickTime movies. (IMA4
and DV-Audio)
+ MediaPlayer now has the ability to display video to the
video out jack at the same time as it is playing to
graphics.
+ MediaPlayer now supports the playback of DIF streams
(raw DV data) .
+ A new command line flag is supported, "-P", which tells
the playback engine to start in "Play Every Frame"
mode.
17.2 Known Problems and Workarounds
This section lists problems in the MediaPlayer software and
ways to work around them.
+ In order to play movies to video out on an O2, the
video ouput signal's Output Sync must be set to
"Internal". Failing to establish this setting will
cause Media Player to hang. To adjust or verify the
Output Sync setting, open vcp(1), choose Pro -> Video
Output -> Signal Controls. Then from the Video Output-
Signal panel choose "Internal" on the Output Sync
pulldown menu.
+ The "-S" command line flag is no longer supported. Use
the standard X mechanism using "-geometry +X+Y".
+ MIDI playback has some problems. If you should
encounter problems playing a MIDI file, you may use
soundplayer(1) instead.
+ The current SGI movie format version number is 3.
Movies made or edited with IRIX 5.1 or later releases
of Movie Maker might not play or might play incorrectly
with the IRIX 4.0.5 version of MediaPlayer However,
the current version of MediaPlayer plays all versions
(1, 2 and 3) of SGI movies correctly.
+ MediaPlayer does not work correctly over the network.
The user interface and images will display on the local
machine, but the audio will play on the remote machine.
In addition, if you are displaying MediaPlayer from an
IRIX 6.2 or later system to an IRIX 5.3 system, you may
need to install one of the following patches on your
IRIX 5.3 system which fixes an OpenGL problem: number
450, 720, or 926.
+ MediaPlayer does not support the playback of FIT image
sequences in this release. You can work around this
problem by using MovieMaker or dmconvert to convert
your FIT images to a supported movie format.
+ If you choose "Play Every Frame" from the "View" menu,
audio is disabled while the movie is playing. To
restore audio, deselect "Play Every Frame."
+ For MPEG movies only: the "Copy" command will only
provide a still image; it will not provide movie-file
or audio-file targets of the selection.
+ MediaPlayer is not able to play certain MPEG movies
where the MPEG information starts at an offset other
than 0. For these movies, Movie Player may hang or
crash.
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Media Recorder Tool
18. Media Recorder Tool
The Media Recorder Tool (invoked from the command line as
mediarecorder) is a graphical tool that allows you to record
audio files, movie files or still images from the camera or
other video source, microphone and workstation screen.
Currently, the video capture modes of Media Recorder work on
the following hardware:
+ The O2 workstation
+ The Octane workstation with Octane Video, Octane
Compression, or Octane Personal Video option boards
+ the Indy workstation, including the Indy Video and
Cosmo Compress option boards
+ the Indigo2 workstation with the Galileo, Indigo2
Video, Indigo2 Video for IMPACT, or Cosmo Compress
option boards.
Audio capture is supported on all systems with an audio
input.
See the man page mediarecorder(1) or Media Recorder's on-
line help for more information.
18.1 Changes and Additions
This section lists changes and additions to Media Recorder
since the IRIX 6.2 release.
+ The Media Recorder Tool replaces the old Capture Tool,
found on IRIX 5.x and 6.2. Media Recorder contains
many new features, user interface improvements,
improved reliability and performance compared to the
Capture Tool.
The command name capture and its command line syntax
have been retained for backwards compatibility, but
their use is strongly deprecated. Please refer to the
manual page for mediarecorder(1) and update your
scripts accordingly. Note that mediarecorder(1) offers
new features not supported by capture, which may be
accessed only through the new command line syntax.
+ Media Recorder directly supports motion JPEG
compression hardware, such as the Cosmo Compress board
and the motion JPEG capabilities built into the O2
workstation.
+ Media Recorder allows you to record movie files from
the workstation screen.
Screen recording via software (the X server) is
supported on all systems. On SGI systems with optional
or built-in video capability, such as the O2
workstation, the Indy/Indigo2 with the Cosmo Compress
option, or the Octane with Octane Personal Video, you
can record QuickTime movies with motion JPEG
compression from the workstation screen.
+ Media Recorder provides greatly improved video
recording performance and audio-video synchronization
as compared to the Capture Tool.
+ Media Recorder is now capable of using multiple disk
volumes at once to achieve higher rate captures, given
the appropriate hardware. See the mediarecorder(1)
manual page for more details.
+ Media Recorder can also take advantage of IRIX
scheduling priorities to achieve better video capture.
See the mediarecorder(1) manual page for more details.
+ Media Recorder fully supports the IRIX Interactive
Desktop(TM). Newly recorded media files appear as
icons right inside the Media Recorder display. You can
rename them or drag them to other applications. You
can also choose the directory in which to record files
by dragging a desktop folder into the icon pocket in
the Media Recorder display.
+ Media Recorder now allows you to choose audio and video
jacks directly from within the application. The Audio
and Video control panels can still be used to set
signal timing (NTSC vs. PAL) and to adjust audio input
levels.
+ There is a new user interface for selecting regions of
the screen, which is improved over that provided by the
Capture Tool.
+ You can now set a time delay before recording starts,
allowing you to grab screenshots of menus and other
mouse-sensitive tasks.
+ The user interface for choosing movie parameters has
been greatly improved compared to the Capture Tool.
You can now choose from a list of "smart presets"
appropriate to specific recording tasks. You can still
control all aspects of the capture, if you so choose.
+ Media Recorder now supports Copy and Paste to other
applications, include Media Maker and Sound Track.
+ The still image feature now supports several popular
formats, including JPEG, GIF and TIFF. You can also
view captured images in place, rather than in a
separate window.
+ The audio recording feature now supports AIFF and WAVE
file formats. It also supports four-channel and
eight-channel recording.
+ Media Recorder now provides estimates of the amount of
time remaining, based upon data rate and free disk
space, while capture is in progress.
18.2 Bug Fixes
This section lists problems in Media Recorder which have
been fixed since the IRIX 6.4 release.
+ The command line options have been enhanced. You can
now specify compression, color packing, and interlacing
settings for movie files, specify screen recording
options, and direct the tool to record without human
intervention. For more details, see the mediarecorder
manual page.
+ There have been several minor user interface
improvements. The Clip Bin has been reworked to look
and behave more like other desktop media applications
such as moviemaker. You can now freely adjust the size
of the Clip Bin relative to the viewing area. More
prompts have been added in areas to help those
unfamiliar with the tool, and Media Recorder now
visually highlights the chosen recording mode (movie,
image or audio) onscreen.
+ There are new new menu options to launch external
editors, players, conversion and info displays on media
files. For more details, see the online user
documenation.
+ Support for Apple's QuickTime Motion JPEG-A format has
been included. This Motion JPEG format is compatible
with QuickTime running on non-SGI platforms. The SGI
Motion JPEG format has been preserved, for
compatibility with applications running on earlier
releases of IRIX.
+ Media Recorder's ability to perform data conversions
when writing movie files has been enhanced. This allows
you to select movie parameters, such as size, color
space, interlacing, and compression settings, without
regard for the capabilities of your system's underlying
video hardware. Media Recorder will take advantage of
hardware capabilities, such as color space conversion
and Motion JPEG compression, and perform software
format conversion only when necessary.
+ If recording aborts because audio or video was dropped,
you will still get a useful media file. Previous
versions of the tool would discard the file if audio or
video was dropped while recording.
+ Audio recording and waveform display now uses less CPU
time than earlier versions of the tool.
+ The Movie Settings dialog now accurately displays the
dimensions for the final movie file, based upon the
current video signal being recorded.
+ Media Recorder now displays time elapsed as well as
time remaining when recording video and audio files.
+ Fixed startup problems when Media Recorder was invoked
multiple times concurrently on systems equipped with
video.
+ Added support for the Octane Personal Video hardware
option.
+ Other minor bug fixes to improve reliability in error
situations, and with certain video option boards.
18.3 Known Problems and Workarounds
This section lists known problems in Media Recorder. Also,
please see the mediarecorder manual page for more usage
notes.
+ Since the system has limited video resources, it is
best to avoid running more than one application that
uses video. In particular, you shouldn't run Live
Video Input (videoin from the command line) at the same
time as running mediarecorder. Nor should you attempt
to run two instances of mediarecorder both capturing
video at once.
+ When switching to quarter sized video, it is possible
to make the window so small that the buttons overlap
one another. To work around this problem, make the
window larger.
+ It can take up to a second for video to start or stop
recording after you press the Record button.
+ If you completely fill the disk while recording a
movie, you often cannot get a usable movie file. This
is because there is insufficient temporary disk space
available to create the final movie file. To work
around this problem, set up your scratch disks on a
different drive or filesystem than the one which will
contain the final movie file. Alternately, you can
avoid the practice of recording video right up until
the moment the disk is full.
+ If you are creating JPEG compressed movies on O2, and
you customize the capture "Task Settings" from the
"Tasks -> Show Task Settings" menu, then you must take
care to ensure that the "Advanced Options ->
Interlacing" pop-up menu is set to "Two Fields".
Otherwise, mediarecorder may crash or hang when it
performs its "post-processing" operation. A movie that
is captured with "Two Field" interlacing may be
converted to non-intlaced "One Frame" format by using
moviemaker or dmconvert.
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Movie Maker Tool
19. Movie Maker Tool
MovieMaker (invoked from the command line as moviemaker) is
a graphical tool for creating and editing multitrack
QuickTime movies. Movies can include clips from QuickTime,
AVI, DIF (Raw DV data), MPEG and SGI movie files, images and
audio files.
On-line help is available describing in detail how to go
about creating and editing movies.
19.1 New features in MovieMaker 4.4.0, released with IRIX
6.5 for O2
+ MovieMaker sports a clip-oriented interface.
Individual pieces of media appear as a separate items
in the timeline and clip bin.
+ MovieMaker now has a "Print To Videotape" feature.
+ MovieMaker now supports importing DIF files (raw DV
data).
+ MovieMaker now supports importing some types of movies
with compressed audio.
+ MovieMaker now supports multiple layers. Layers at the
top of the timeline appear in front of those lower in
the timeline. All audio tracks are mixed no matter
where they appear in the stacking order.
+ MovieMaker now supports a single level of Undo.
+ MovieMaker now supports drag-n-drop to and from the
clip bin.
+ MovieMaker now supports the use of Audio and Video
filters for adding flair to your compositions. Of
special note is the "Custom 3D Effect..." accessible
from the "Effects" menu.
+ MovieMaker now has a built-in titling facility for
adding text and drawing annotations to your movie.
+ MovieMaker also has a synchronized audio recording
feature that lets you add voice-over annotations to
your movie while playing the movie.
19.2 Bug Fixes
Bug 610693: As of Irix6.5.1m, uncompressed frame-based YUV
422 movies will be fully compatible with QuickTime 3.0
running on other platforms (Mac, Windows). (Note that this
fix applies to the SGI movie library and all dmedia tools;
for more information, please see the dmedia_dev release
notes on the SGI movie library.)
19.3 Known Problems and Workarounds
This section lists problems in the MovieMaker software and
ways to work around them.
+ MovieMaker only supports editing within the QuickTime
file format. When opening an SGI, AVI, DIF, or MPEG
file formats, you will be prompted to import that file
into a new QuickTime file. In order to get the
resulting movie back into one of these file formats,
you can use the "Export As..." menu command.
+ MovieMaker may appear to copy and paste the wrong
number of frames. This is because QuickTime files can
have variable image durations. It may appear that the
selection did not contain the correct number of frames
after it was pasted. The user should verify that the
duration of the pasted selection is the same as the
duration of the original selection.
+ Movie files will grow in size when you add data to a
movie while editing, either by using the "Import..."
command, or by using the "Paste" command. This happens
even if you do not explicitly save the movie file. To
reduce the size of your movie file, use the "Save
As..." command to save your movie into a new filename,
and any unreferenced data will not be included in the
new file.
+ MovieMaker creates temporary files in /usr/tmp
(specified in the TMPDIR environment variable) during
edit and cut and paste operations. These files can
sometimes reach a large size. If MovieMaker exits
abnormally, these temporary files may not be deleted
from /usr/tmp. You may need to check your /usr/tmp and
remove these files manually.
+ We do not recommend that you use MovieMaker over the
network. Just say no.
+ If you are inserting images or another movie that have
a frame size larger than the current movie setup size,
the images will automatically be scaled to the movie
setup size.
+ When working with a composition of different sized
tracks, filtered information from larger sized tracks
will be added to smaller tracks. To workaround this
problem, run filters on the smaller sized tracks first
or save the file and reopen it into moviemaker before
running additional filters. This is especially
noticeable when running filters which make use of
texture mapping, like the "Custom 3D Effect..." (a.k.a
"FxBuilt Filter").
+ The "Picture-In-Picture" by default maintains the
aspect ratio of the track when resizing. To scale
nonuniformly, hold down the shift modifier key.
Experts may want to specify the exact transformation by
expanding the dialog.
+ Occasionally, the timeline display will create new
"lanes" when repositioning clips. To move a clip to a
new lane without changing its start time, hold down the
shift key while moving the clip. If there are a number
of empty lanes, use the "Set Number of Timeline
Lanes..." to a new number.
+ When running a video filter on an image clip, the icon
in the clip bin changes to a video icon. This is
correct behavior as there are now more than one image
in the clip (introduced by the filter). When the
filter is removed (by selecting and deleting from the
clip bin), the icon will revert back to the image icon.
+ Setting the background color occasionally does not take
effect until the current time has changed. Also, the
background color may not be saved as part of the movie
file under certain conditions.
+ Although the fonts used in the titler are specified in
the X resources, not all fonts are currently supported.
Changing to a new font may cause the application to
exit abnormally.
+ Applying filters to multiple clip selections is not
suggested. Unusual results may occur. You should
apply filters to only one clip at a time.
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Media Convert Tool
20. Media Convert Tool
Media Convert (invoked as mediaconvert(1)), is a digital
media file conversion tool that provides a simple user
interface for creating movie, audio, and image files from
other movie, audio, and image files. Media Convert replaces
the tool ``Movie Master'' which was introduced in the IRIS
Digital Media Tools version 5.4 (WebForce 1.0).
For more details, consult the manual page, or the on-line
help which is available from within the tool. In addition,
you may want to refer to the documentation for dmconvert(1),
since Media Convert invokes dmconvert for the actual file
conversion operation. Most new features and bug fixes for
dmconvert will also apply to Media Convert.
20.1 Supported Conversion Operations
This release of the tool supports the following file
conversion operations.
sound file --> sound file
image sequence --> image sequence
image sequence --> video-only movie
video-only movie --> video-only movie
video-only movie --> image sequence
audio/video movie --> sound file
audio/video movie --> video-only movie
audio/video movie --> image sequence
audio/video movie --> audio/video movie
sound file + video-only movie --> audio/video movie
sound file + image sequence --> audio/video movie
20.2 Supported File Formats
The following partial list of file formats is supported.
For a complete list, see the manual page for dmconvert(1).
Sound file formats:
AIFF
AIFF-C
NeXT/Sun
WAVE
MPEG-1 layer I, layer II audio bitstream
Movie file formats:
QuickTime (Photo, Animation, Video, Cinepakr compression)
MPEG-1 video bitstream
MPEG-1 systems (audio/video) bitstream
SGI Movie
AVI (Indeor, Cinepakr compression) -> input-only
Image file formats:
SGI rgb image
JFIF
GIF
TIFF
FIT
PhotoCD -> input-only
20.3 Consolidation of Tools
In IRIX 6.4 as in IRIX 6.2, mediaconvert and dmconvert have
been enhanced to provide a superset of features that were
previously available from numerous older programs. Users of
the older programs will find the following backwards
compatibility support.
The graphical tools, soundfiler(1) and movieconvert(1), are
now symbolic links to mediaconvert.
The command-line tools, aifc2aiff(1), aiff2aifc(1),
aifccompress(1), aifcdecompress(1), aifcresample(1),
sfconvert(1), and makemovie(1), are all still available, but
have been re-implemented to internally invoke dmconvert.
20.4 Related Tools
MovieMaker(1): Graphical tool for editing movie files. Not
primarily intended as a movie conversion tool, however there
is an Export Options panel which allows user to set various
export file format parameters. Tool supports SGI Movie and
QuickTime (including Cinepak) movies. Will not read MPEG
movies.
20.5 Known Problems and Workarounds
This section lists problems in Media Convert and ways to
work around them.
+ If you are converting a QuickTime movie which contains
non-uniform frame durations, Media Convert will always
generate a movie with a constant frame rate.
Therefore, the size of the output file may increase
because Media Convert may duplicate source frames into
the output file. To work around this problem, be sure
to set the frame rate in the "Video Output Parameters"
dialog when you use a QuickTime movie as an input file.
+ If you specify an SGI movie file as output, the
progress indicator bar may show 100% completion, and a
delay on the order of a minute may occur before writing
the SGI movie file has been completed.
+ You cannot create a JPEG Cosmo compress movie from a
source movie with an odd number of pixels for the
height. You will first need to convert the source
movie to a movie with an even number of pixels for the
height, and then the intermediate movie file can be
used to create a Cosmo movie.
20.6 Changes from Previous Media Convert
This section lists the changes in the functionality and
interface of Media Convert from the versions shipped with
IRIS Digital Media Tools 5.4.
+ The "Open Input File" dialog is now dismissed after a
file is selected.
+ You can directly combine an AIFF audio file with an
MPEG video file.
+ The default output settings for converting to MPEG is
MPEG-1, Layer II.
20.7 Bug Fixes
This section lists the bugs fixed since the IRIS Digital
Media Tools 5.4 version.
+ It is easier to type in a path name in the input file
text fields.
+ You can now specify input files containing a "#"
character in the file name.
+ Media Convert can accept QuickTime movies which have a
non-integer frame rate.
+ You can now drop a QuickTime movie file with audio
tracks into the Audio drop pocket.
+ The output parameter settings are now "sticky." They
remain unchanged until a new input file is specified.
+ The default name for the output file now gets an
automatic suffix corresponding to the output type.
+ Media Convert no longer prints an error message if
Cosmo Compress is not installed.
+ If Media Convert should run into an error while
performing the conversion (running out of disk space,
for example), or if the conversion is cancelled before
it is completed, the incomplete file is now
automatically deleted.
+ Media Convert handles the error condition if the output
file specified cannot be written or created.
+ Media Convert now warns the user if the output file
will be over-written.
+ Media Convert provides better user feedback if a
necessary CODEC license is missing (such as Cinepak or
MPEG).
+ Media Convert works on smaller displays, because the
output parameters settings are displayed in a separate
dialog box, instead of expanding the Media Convert
window.
+ Media Convert now correctly converts an MPEG movie file
into a sequence of image files.
+ A problem which caused Media Convert to fail to create
a JPEG SGI movie format file has been fixed.
+ Movies created from Cosmo Compress JPEG movies have
improved image quality.
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Sound Player Tool
21. Sound Player Tool
Sound Player (invoked from the command line as
soundplayer(1)) is a Motif application for playing sound and
MIDI files. Sound Player supports a variety of file formats
including:
+ AIFF file format (.aiff)
+ AIFF-C file format (.aifc)
+ Sun/NeXT Format (.au or .snd)
+ Microsoft RIFF WAVE Format (.wav)
+ MPEG-1 layer I, II audio bitstreams
+ Berkeley/IRCAM/CARL SoundFile
+ Sound Designer II
+ Audio Visual Research
+ Amiga IFF/8SVX
+ SampleVision
+ VOC
+ SoundFont2
+ Raw (headerless) sounds
+ Standard MIDI Files
+ RIFF MIDI Files
This program requires a Silicon Graphics system with digital
audio hardware components (Iris Audio Processor) in order to
play back sounds.
You may provide a soundfile name when invoking Sound Player
from the shell. Sound Player loads this file (if it exists)
and begins to play automatically.
Sound Player supports Standard MIDI File playback. In order
to play MIDI files, you must either:
+ Connect an external MIDI sound module to your
workstation using one of the serial ports (together
with a Mac serial port to MIDI adapter, commonly called
a "dongle")
OR
+ Install the software MIDI synthesizer, a standard
element of the Digital Media Execution Environment
(software systems: dmedia_eoe.sw.synth and
dmedia_eoe.data.synth).
For more information regarding configuring the serial ports
for MIDI, see the graphical System Manager tool accessible
from the Toolchest under the System menu.
For more information regarding the software MIDI
synthesizer, see the manual page for midisynth(1) and the
release notes (Digital Media Execution Environment, Chapter
9).
You may customize the appearance of Sound Player by altering
its Motif application defaults file, SoundPlayer, in the
directory /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults.
See your Motif/X11 documentation regarding use of the
application defaults file. See the man page soundplayer(1)
and Sound Player's on-line help for additional information
about the tool.
21.1 Bug Fixes
This section lists the bugs fixed since the 6.3/6.4 release.
+ MPEG Layer 3 files now produce an appropriate error
message rather than hanging the application.
+ SoundPlayer now correctly "chases" all MIDI controller
messages when beginning MIDI file playback at arbitrary
locations in a file.
21.2 Changes and Additions
This section lists changes and additions to Sound Player
since the Digital Media Execution Environment 6.3/6.4
release.
+ Added support for playback of RIFF MIDI (.rmi) files.
21.3 Known Problems and Workarounds
This section lists problems in Sound Player and ways to work
around them.
+ No known problems.
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Sound Editor Tool
22. Sound Editor Tool
Sound Editor (invoked from the command line as
soundeditor(1)) is a Motif application for recording and
editing soundfiles that use AIFF format soundfiles.
Although AIFF or AIFF-C files may be opened, all files are
saved in uncompressed AIFF format. Use the mediaconvert
utility to convert soundfiles in other formats to AIFF for
use with Sound Editor.
This program requires a Silicon Graphics system with digital
audio hardware components in order to capture and audition
sounds. On systems without audio hardware, the record and
play functions will be disabled, but soundfiles may still be
viewed and edited.
A graphical display of the audio stream data is presented
for editing. Familiar word processor-style commands are
available for manipulating the audio content. Sound segments
can be cut, copied, pasted, or mixed by marking a region
with the mouse and invoking the proper command. Additional
functions are provided to modify levels and to perform fades
and special effects.
Sound Editor accepts a command line option, "-nofork", which
will force the program to run in the foreground. Without
this option, the standard behavior is for Sound Editor to
fork and run in the background.
Also, you may provide a soundfile name when invoking Sound
Editor from the shell. This file, if it exists, will be
loaded on startup. Otherwise, the file name will be used
for a new file.
You can customize the appearance of Sound Editor by altering
its Motif application defaults file, SoundEditor, in the
directory /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults.
See your Motif/X11 documentation regarding use of the
application defaults file.
See the man page soundeditor(1) and Sound Editor's on-line
help for additional information about the tool.
22.1 Bug Fixes
This section lists bugs which were fixed between the 6.2 and
6.5 releases.
+ The program is now able to record sound files with a
sample bit width equal to 24.
22.2 Changes and Additions
The version of Sound Editor included in IRIX 6.5 is the same
as the version that was shipped with IRIX 6.3 and 6.4.
22.3 Known Problems and Workarounds
This section lists problems in Sound Editor and ways to work
around them.
+ Sometimes, if you paste sound data from another
application into Sound Editor, the time-ruler may not
get redrawn properly. If you force a redraw of the
window by resizing it, the time-ruler will get updated
properly.
+ If all the audio ports are open, and Sound Editor
cannot allocate an audio port, Sound Editor may crash.
+ Under certain conditions, the keyboard accelerators can
become disabled. Bringing up the menu containing the
desired command usually corrects this situation.
+ Although the program can open either AIFF or AIFF-C
files, there is no way within Sound Editor to export
files in a particular format. Use the mediconvert
utility program to convert a file to another format.
+ The cut-and-paste operations do not work correctly
between different host machines. To work around this,
copy all files to be edited to the same host.
+ When altering the selected region during repeat play,
it is possible for the play region to lag behind the
user's input or sometimes play material outside the
marked region. This behavior normally corrects itself
after cycling through the marked play region.
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CD Player Tool
23. CD Player Tool
CD Player, invoked from the command line as cdplayer, allows
you to play audio CDs on an IRIX-supported SCSI CD-ROM
drive. The audio is played through the IRIX audio hardware.
CD Player also lets you copy digital audio data from CD
directly across the SCSI bus to a disk file in the
computer's file system. Any such copying is, of course,
subject to copyright law.
23.1 Changes and Additions
+ Starting with IRIX 6.3, The Digital Media Execution
Environment subsystem for 6.5 (dmedia_eoe.sw.tools)
includes the program cdplayer(1), which provides a
number of improvements over its predecessor, cdman.
Cdplayer uses the standard digital media look-and-feel
and provides much more extensive facilities for moving
between tracks and for copying digital audio from CD
tracks to sound files on disk.
+ For IRIX 6.5, the timeline selection operations were
changed to match those other digital media desktop
tools, notably MovieMaker.
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DAT Manager Tool
24. DAT Manager Tool
DAT Manager, invoked from the command line as datman, allows
you to play audio DAT tapes on an IRIX-supported SCSI DAT
drive. The audio is played through the IRIX audio hardware.
DAT Manager is a recorder as well as a player. It can
record data coming from the IRIX audio hardware or from a
file in the computer's file system to DAT. The tapes
recorded and played by DAT Manager are compatible with
commercial DAT recorders. DAT Manager also allows you to
capture digital audio data directly from a tape across the
SCSI bus to a disk file.
The IRIX Digital Media Noship subsystem for 6.5
(dmedia_noship.sw.dat) includes source code for a command-
line tool, dodat, which allows you to copy tracks between
an audio DAT and sound files on disk.
The version of DAT Manager included in IRIX Digital Media
Tools 6.5 is the same as the version that was shipped with
the 6.2 release.
PLEASE NOTE that as of 6.5, DAT audio is no longer
officially supported.
24.1 Known Problems and Workarounds
This section lists problems in the DAT Manager software and
ways to work around them.
+ DAT Manager does not let you cue to an index on a tape.
+ The only nonaudio data DAT Manager currently records is
program number and absolute time code. This means that
DAT Manager does not record program time. There is
currently no way to renumber the programs on a tape or
to erase a program number.
+ DAT Manager displays uncorrected frame numbers when
playing back a tape recorded with SMPTE time code in
place of running time.
+ When recording to a file from DAT Manager, the sampling
rate stored in the AIFF-C file header is the rate of
the most recently played portion of the DAT. This
means that given a DAT that has programs recorded at
different sampling rates, DAT Manager might create a
file with the wrong sampling rate if you have just
played a program with a different sampling rate from
the program about to be recorded.
Workaround: When recording to disk from a DAT that
contains programs with different sampling rates, use
separate AIFF-C files for the different programs. When
you are about to record a DAT program to disk that has
a different sampling rate from the last program you
played, first play a portion of the new program. Then,
rewind to the beginning of the program and begin
recording to an AIFF-C file.
+ The music catalog function used by CD Manager is not
currently implemented for tapes because so few of them
have the table of contents necessary to uniquely
identify a tape.
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MIDI Keyboard Tool
25. MIDI Keyboard Tool
The MIDI Keyboard application (invoked from the command line
as midikeys) is a graphical user interface which displays a
three-dimensional piano keyboard. Using the mouse or
computer keyboard key shortcuts, you may play notes on this
piano, which functions as a MIDI controller. Midikeys sends
MIDI Note-On, Note-Off, and controller events, over the MIDI
interface selected in its MIDI->Interface menu. This
allows you to play the internal Software MIDI Synthesizer
midisynth(1) without need for an external MIDI keyboard.
Midikeys can also monitor MIDI activity on any single MIDI
channel. If the menu item Options->MIDI Input Animation is
toggled, midikeys will automatically press and release its
keys that correspond to Note-Ons and Note-Offs received on
the selected channel.
The MIDI synthesizer and its related applications, including
this tool, are installed from the optional subsystem
dmedia_eoe.sw.synth. To enable General MIDI synthesis, it
is also necessary to install the subsystem
dmedia_eoe.data.synth, which contains a full set of General
MIDI presets for the synthesizer.
See the midikeys(1) and midisynth(1) man pages for
additional information.
25.1 Bug Fixes
+ Key-downs triggered by the mouse button are now
released correctly even if the mouse leaves the
midikeys window.
25.1.1 Known Problems and Workarounds
+ If the mouse is moved slowly over the keyboard with the
left button depressed, certain key transitions will
generate an oscillation of key-up and key-down events
between the keys. This is usually not a problem under
normal usage.
+ Not all combinations of computer keyboard key shortcuts
may be played simultaneously, i.e., the number of
chords playable via the computer keyboard shortcuts is
limited. This is a computer keyboard hardware
limitation, and there is no workaround other than to
use an external MIDI keyboard.
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Compression Viewer Tool
26. Compression Viewer Tool
The compview(1) tool provides a graphical user interface
which allows you to view an original image and the result of
compressing the image with either the SGI software JPEG
compressor or the Cosmo Compress JPEG compressor (if
installed). Compview also provides statistical information
about the differences between the original and compressed
images.
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Sound Track Audio Tool
27. Sound Track Audio Tool
SoundTrack (invoked as soundtrack) is a graphical
application for recording and assembling multi-channel audio
projects. SoundTrack supports non-destructive editing and
processing with multiple levels of undo/redo for up to 32
tracks of audio. The program can also import and export a
wide variety of soundfile and sample formats. Cut-Copy-
Paste functions allow easy transfer of data to and from
other digital media applications such as Movie Maker.
While running SoundTrack, the help menu provides access to
detailed information about creating and editing audio
projects. Also, please see the manual page (soundtrack) for
a list of program features and basic techniques.
27.1 Changes and Additions
+ The selection semantics for importing multi-channel
(e.g. stereo) files has been improved. If no tracks are
selected, SoundTrack adds two new tracks to the end of
the track list. If one track is selected, the first
channel is written to that track then SoundTrack
inserts any additionally required track after the
selected track.
+ Previewed movie information is now saved with along
with the rest of the project information.
+ Users now have the option of importing the audio from a
movie when the movie is opened.
27.2 Known Problems and Workarounds
This section lists problems in the IRIX 6.5 version of the
software and ways to work around them.
+ The program does not handle running out of disk space
very well at this time. Be sure to set the project
directory ('File | New') to a drive with plenty of
space for recording and processing. To help deal with
space issues, the status line at the top of the main
application window displays both the available disk
space as well as the amount of space taken up by the
current project.
+ If the program is invoked from a directory where the
user does not have write permission, it will attempt to
reset the working directory to a write-able temporary
file directory. In this case, the user should invoke
'File | New' prior to any recording or editing
operations in order to set the project directory
properly.
+ During recording and editing, SoundTrack creates
temporary files in the current project directory with
the filename prefix "_temp". If SoundTrack is not
exited normally, these temporary files may still exist
in the project directory. You may need to remove these
files manually. Hint: saving the project file
regularly during a session helps to manage errant temp
files as well as prevent the loss of data in the event
your work is interrupted.
+ When playback/recording starts, the audio input port
which reads the record signal is synchronized with the
output port which is playing back the other tracks.
After this initial sync-up, no additional sync
alignment is performed. In general this will not be a
problem; however, if there are drop-outs in either of
the audio port streams, they will no longer be
synchronized. This situation occurs when other system
processes interfere with the audio thread's access to
the cpu. In the future, we anticipate implementing
periodic sync correction beyond just the initial
startup.
+ This revision of the program does not handle automatic
monitor operations such as muting a track while it's
being recorded over or passing the input signal through
to the output while recording. To hear the input
signal, select the monitor option in the audio control
panel. Note that if you are recording from a
microphone (not line) input, it's best not to monitor
the signal through a nearby speaker since this can
cause noisy feedback.
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Sample Sound, Movie, and Music Files
28. Sample Sound, Movie, and Music Files
The directory /usr/share/data/sounds/prosonus contains a
collection of music and sound files created by Prosonus
especially for your Silicon Graphics computer system. See
the man page prosonus(5) for more information about these
sound files.
The subsystem dmedia_tools.data.movies, which is marked for
default installation, includes two sample movie files. The
movies are installed in the directory
/usr/share/data/movies.
+ somersault.movie is a movie file in the SGI Movie
format. The image data in the movie was compressed
using the SGI MVC1 compression scheme.
+ sampleQT.mov is a sample QuickTime movie. The image
data in the movie was compressed using the QuickTime
Animation compression scheme.
The subsystem dmedia_tools.data.moremovies, not installed by
default, includes the sample MPEG-1 systems bitstream file
studio.mps. This is an MPEG-1 movie which includes both an
audio track and a video track. The size of the file is
about 10 MB, and the playing time is about 59 seconds.
Movie Player can be used to view the movie. The audio and
video tracks are decompressed using the standard MPEG-1
audio and video decoder engines which are included in IRIS
Digital Media Execution Environment 5.5.
The movie was created by compressing sequence of rendered
frames (SGI image files) and a soundtrack (AIFF file) using
the new Media Convert. The original animation sequence was
created using a variety of applications running on Silicon
Graphics computer systems.
If you wish to create similar MPEG movies, you can obtain a
Silicon Graphics MPEG Encoder License which unlocks the
software MPEG-1 audio/video compressors included with IRIS
Digital Media Execution Environment 5.5.
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Recipes
29. Recipes
This chapter lists some tasty recipes for you to enjoy.
29.1 Kung Pao Chicken
This classic Chinese dish is a zesty blend of chicken,
peanuts and vegetables in a spicy sauce.
29.1.1 Ingredients
1 Chicken, about 2 1bs (1 kg) or 1 lb (450 g) Chicken Breasts
8 pieces Dry Hot Red Pepper, 1 piece about 3" (7.5 cm) long
1/2 cup (120 ml) Unsalted Peanuts (optional)
1 tsp Ginger, chopped
1 Green Pepper, chopped into 1 inch (2.5 cm) squares
1/2 White Onion, chopped into 1 inch (2.5 cm) squares
Marinade:
1 1/2 tablespoons Cornstarch
1 1/2 tablespoons Cold Water
1 tablespoon Soy Sauce
For Cooking:
5 cups (1200 ml) Peanut Oil
Seasoning Sauce:
2 tablespoons Soy Sauce
1 tablespoon Chinese Rice Wine
1 tablespoon Sugar
1 teaspoon Cornstarch
1/2 tablespoon Chinese Black Bean Sauce
1 teaspoon Sesame Oil
29.1.2 Procedure 1. Remove all bones from chicken, cut
into 1 inch (2.5 cm) cubes, add water, cornstarch and soy
sauce. Stir evenly in one direction and soak for one half
hour.
2. Chop green pepper and onion, set aside. Chop ginger, set
aside. Wipe clean, remove tips and seeds of dry red pepper,
cut into 1 inch (2.5 cm) long pieces, set aside. Mix
ingredients for seasoning sauce, set aside.
3. Heat oil in wok. Fry peanuts until golden. Remove and
let cool.
4. Fry chicken in boiling oil for a half minute. Remove
chicken and drain off oil from wok.
5. Return 2 tablespoons oil to wok. Heat until very hot,
then add ginger and red pepper. Fry until red pepper turns
black (watch out for pepper fumes), then add onions and
green pepper. Stir fry for one minute.
6. Return chicken to wok, stir quickly, then add seasoning
sauce. Stir until thickened and heated thoroughly, then
turn off heat. (Be careful not to heat sauce too
thoroughly, as it can caramelize). Add the peanuts (deep
fried or roasted). Mix well and serve immediately with
steamed rice.
29.2 Tiramisu
This famous Italian dessert delicately layers cookies,
chocolate and coffee with a rich blend of cream and Italian
Mascarpone cheese. It is sure to wow the guests at your
next dinner party.
This recipe was contributed by Sean Yamamoto
(seany@sgi.com).
29.2.1 Ingredients
100 g Mascarpone cheese
1 Egg, separated
1 tablespoon Sugar
0.25 liter Heavy Cream
Espresso (1 espresso cup per 5 people), cold
Lady's fingers cookies
Bittersweet chocolate and cocoa, grated (powder)
Vanilla extract
Optional:
Liqueur (brandy, cognac or rum)
Layers of chocolate or cocoa (with the two other layers).
29.2.2 Procedure 1. In mixing bowl combine the mascarpone,
the sugar and the egg yolks. Mix well.
2. In another bowl whip the heavy cream with the vanilla.
3. Whip the egg whites into soft peaks (separately).
4. Fold together the mascarpone mixture, whipped cream, and
egg whites.
5. Pour the coffee (no sugar) in a bowl and steep the lady's
fingers.
6. In the serving dish make a layer of cookies, then a layer
of the cream.
7. Repeat until there are 3 or 4 layers (until the cream is
finished).
8. At the end, sprinkle some chocolate or cocoa.
9. Put in the refrigerator (minimum 4 hours).
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FX Builder Tool
30. FX Builder Tool
FX Builder (invoked as Custom 3D Effect from moviemaker
under the Effects menu) is a graphical tool for creating 3D
filters for movies. Imported objects include IRIS
ImageVision Library image files and Open Inventor 3D model
files.
On-line help is available describing in detail how to go
about creating and editing filters.
30.1 Known Problems and Workarounds
This section lists problems in the FX Builder software and
ways to work around them.
+ Importing movies is not functioning in this release.
No workaround.
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Disk Striping and Performance Testing Utilities
30. Disk Striping and Performance Testing Utilities
The new tools diskalign and diskperf are tools to assist in
the configuration and performance testing of high
performance striped logical volumes.
There are extensive manual pages with describing the usage
of these utilities. Extensive tuning tips and tricks are
also documented in the manual page.
30.1 Known Problems and Workarounds
This section documents known problems and workarounds.
+ Currently you must use the -c (create) option when
doing write testing using filesystems with diskperf.
No workaround.
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Synthesizer Editor
10. Synthesizer Editor
The Synthesizer Editor (invoked from the command line as
syntheditor(1)) provides a graphical interface for creating,
editing, auditioning, and saving software MIDI synthesizer
(midisynth(1)) presets. Syntheditor communicates with
midisynth via MIDI system exclusive messages, and has its
state updated by MIDI sysex messages returning from
midisynth. All this communication takes place over the MIDI
port "Software Synth" in real time: MIDI instruments may be
edited as they are playing back to allow instantaneous
feedback for all changes. Syntheditor "listens" on on MIDI
channel at a time.
Syntheditor reads and writes synthesizer preset files, which
are plain ASCII text files containing a complete
specification of a MIDI instrument or instrument combination
for a given MIDI channel. When a preset file is loaded into
syntheditor, midisynth will be instructed to load the same
preset file so that immediate playback and modification may
be done. A complete description of these preset files is in
the synthpreset(4) man page.
The MIDI synthesizer and its related applications, including
this tool, are installed from the optional subsystem
dmedia_eoe.sw.synth. To enable General MIDI synthesis, it
is also necessary to install the subsystem
dmedia_eoe.data.synth, which contains a full set of General
MIDI presets for the synthesizer.
10.1 Known Problems and Workarounds
+ The preset envelope editing panel is somewhat clumsy
due to the lack of a drag-and-release interface. No
workaround.
+ The editor may become confused if given a preset name
on the command line if that preset (and its associated
samples) takes a significant amount of time to load.
Workaround: Start the editor with no filename
arguments, and then load the preset using the Open menu
command.
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