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Display Control Interface

Question: What is the recommended system for playing video files compressed with Indeo® video Release 3.2?
The recommended system for Indeo® video Release 3.2 is a Pentium® processor-based PC, 75 MHz or faster, running Windows* 95 with Direct Draw* graphics support or Windows* 3.x with DCI* graphics support, 16 MB of RAM, and a VGA monitor capable of displaying at least 65,536 simultaneous colors (16­bit color mode).


Question: What are DCI* and Direct Draw*?
The graphics routines included in the Windows* Graphics Device Interface (GDI) do not directly support video playback. The Display Control Interface (DCI) was added to Microsoft*'s Video for Windows* to boost video performance as video became popular on PCs. DCI allows Windows* 3.x applications to access the video memory directly, as well as enabling image scaling and color conversion hardware on some graphics cards. DCI requires Video for Windows* 1.1e or higher, a DCI-supporting codec such as Indeo® video, and DCI-enabled graphics card drivers.

Direct Draw can be thought of as the Windows* 95 equivalent of DCI. It provides direct access to the video memory on the graphics card, so that applications can access special features of the graphics card. For more information on Direct Draw, contact Microsoft* at (206) 635­7040 or your graphics card manufacturer.


Question: What about Indeo® video interactive and DCI* or Direct Draw?
Indeo video interactive supports DCI for Windows* 3.1 and Direct Draw for Windows* 95. In Windows* 3.1 with a DCI-enabled graphics system supporting hardware color space conversion and interpolation (resizing), Indeo video interactive can deliver full screen (640 by 480) video at near-VHS quality.

As Direct Draw drivers become available for graphics cards, Indeo video interactive will be able to take advantage of the additional acceleration capability provided in more capable, general-purpose graphics subsystems to provide even better full-screen video performance and quality.



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