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This archive contains version 0.53 of Avifile library, an AVI player and a couple of sample apps.

Requirements

Linux ( should work on all modern distributions, kernel 2.2.0 or newer ) or FreeBSD 4.1 RELEASE ( thanks to Hiroshi Yamashita ). Win32 binaries for compression/decompression of video ( available from site ). Some test programs expect to find 38428824 BMP file './uncompr.bmp'. Processor: Intel Pentium or compatible. MMX is strongly recommended. C++ compiler, compatible with latest C++ standard ( such as gcc 2.95.2 ).

Requirements for 'aviplay' sample:
XFree86 3.x or 4.x.
Qt library ver. 2.1.0 or newer ( NOT 1.44! ). If you've built Qt from sources, environment variable QTDIR should point at root of installation or you should specify path to Qt in ./configure options. SDL library ver. 1.1.3 or newer.

Requirements for 'qtvidcap' sample:
Qt library ver. 2.2.0 beta2 or higher. Video capture card with V4L1 interface driver. Tested on bttv: http://www.in-berlin.de/User/kraxel/bttv.html. For Miro DC10+ cards you should read carefully README from driver package ( section related to uncompressed video capture ).

I suppose you know what you are doing if you are trying to use it, so no documentation about capturing process is available yet.

Installation ( ideal variant ):

mkdir /usr/lib/win32
unzip ./binaries.zip -d /usr/lib/win32 tar zxf ./avifile-x.xx.tar.gz
cd avifile
./configure
make
make install
aviplay <your-file>

You can use 'make install-strip' instead of 'make install' if you are worried about disk usage. It'll give you additional 3-4 Mb of disk space, but you won't be able to produce gdb backtraces ( see below, section Reporting Bugs ).

By default it installs main shared library into directory /usr/local/lib, you should make sure that /usr/local/lib exists in search part of dynamic linker ( file /etc/ld.so.conf and environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH ).

./configure options:

 --enable-release       Turn on optimizations. Does not affect
                        player performance.
 --disable-sdl          Disables SDL code. Not recommended.
 --disable-qt           Disables Qt utilities.
 --prefix=<your-directory>
                        Where to install library. Default is /usr/local.

--with-qt-dir=<your-directory>
--with-qt-includes=<your-directory>
--with-qt-libraries=<your-directory>

                        Specify these options if ./configure fails
                        to find your Qt installation, if you receive
                        strange Qt-related errors or if you want to
                        build 'aviplay' for an alternative version of Qt. 

PERFORMANCE

Avifile tries to be relatively efficient, but it's still very CPU-intensive product. It's hard to tell what are its minimum requirements. For playing of DivX ;-) AVI files in 720x480 you'll need P2-300 ( with good video card ) or P3-600 ( with bad one ). For 384x288 DivX ;-) lower limit is about P2-233 to P2-400. Check doc/VIDEO_PERFORMANCE if you are having problems with performance.

Player will use 2D hardware acceleration if it's available in your system. As of 11/25/2000, you'll need the following:

• XFree86 4.0 or newer.
• One of the following video cards:
  • Matrox G400.
  • Any NVIDIA card with installed binary driver, that is available from http://www.nvidia.com.

It may also work with the other video cards, but you will need latest driver. Refer to XFree86 4.0.2 documentation for details about XVideo extension support in various card drivers.

Hardware acceleration slightly ( by 20-30% in 16-bit color ) reduces CPU load and allows to perform hardware scaling of the picture. Here are CPU load numbers, measured on Pentium II-400(480)/Riva TNT, 16 bpp, 384x288 movie at 25 fps ( by Sergey Zhitomirsky, szh@7ka.mipt.ru ):

ZOOM       HARDWARE          SOFTWARE
1x         20-25%            25-30%
2x         20-25%            40-45%
1024x768   20-25%            45-50%

Acceleration can be disabled from 'config' player menu.

REPORTING BUGS:

Please include output log and gdb backtrace in case of segfault or lock-up. Backtrace is desired for all running threads: $ gdb aviplay
(gdb) run <your-file>

( type 'cont' if gdb stops with non-fatal messages ) (gdb) info threads
(gdb) thread 1
(gdb) bt
(gdb) thread 2
...

The amount of these data is the only significant factor in catching your bug. I can't understand what's going wrong for you if you only tell me that 'aviplayer has crashed when closing'.

Your comments are welcome, but please look through the FAQ before posting them. It's up-to-date version is available at http://divx.euro.ru/faq.htm. Mail your questions and at divx@euro.ru.