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WarpVision is a command line DivX viewer. WarpVision is freeware. With my hardware configuration I wasn't able to get any image on my screen although this time I could hear the sound. You can find more information about it here.

QuickView is in fact a 32-bit DOS program that supports a multitude of video and audio formats. I got the best results viewing all kinds of Video-CDs and DivX movies with this software on my system. QuickView is shareware.

Installation

Installation of QuickView is very straightforward. After you have downloaded qvpro248.zip just unzip this file in the directory you want QuickView to be installed in.

There is no installation script but you can easily create a program icon on your desktop by using the New Program template in the Programs folder.

QuickView is started with the command qv.exe.

Configuration and Usage

Sound Blaster detection Ver. 1.01 by Wolfgang Hesseler
hesseler multimediaware com, http://www.multimediaware.com/qv/

SoundBlaster 16 or compatible on address 220 hex found.
The sound card works on IRQ 5 and DMA channel 1 (for 8-Bit samples) and
DMA channel 5 (for 16-Bit samples).

The BLASTER environment variable in your AUTOEXEC.BAT should start with: A220 I5 D1 H5

A bit further in this article we'll explain what the BLASTER environment variable is all about.

QuickView has several options that can be passed on the DOS command line. You can get an overview of all available options by entering the following command in a DOS box

qv -?

A full explanation about what all these options are meant for can be found in the accompanying documentation file qv.txt

You can start QuickView by just entering the following command in a full screen DOS box

qv.exe

If you have a Sound Blaster compatible audio device and don't hear any sound, you can try to start it with

qv -W1,220,5,1

Where:
220 = IOPortAddress 220h
5 = IRQ 5
1 = DMA 1

or you can add the BLASTER environment variable that was mentioned in the output from the sbdetect utility to your AUTOEXEC.BAT SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 After you've done this start a new DOS box and try the following commands qv -W4 and if this doesn't succeed qv -W5

Once you've started QuickView you see the following screen

If you press F1 you get an overview of all available commands

As I don't know where to begin to explain all these commands and options I'll try to give you an impression of QuickView by giving an example how you can use it.

Suppose I want to play a MPEG file named goodtime.mpg that is located on drive F

Start QuickView in a full screen DOS box and press Alt-D A popup window appears asking for the drive letter of the drive you want to change to. Now just press F All the possible video and audio files that are probably supported are highlighted in white.

You can now select the desired mpg file by using the cursor keys or by pressing the first letter of the filename, in our example G. You can get some additional information about this file when you press F3

Perhaps now is the right moment to explain the meaning of the screen resolutions that you see on top of the screen. As you can see in the 'File info' window this MPEG movie has a resolution of 352 x 240. If the resolution option 'Automatic' is active, then this means that QuickView will automatically choose the smallest screen resolution the MPEG movie will fit in. In this case this smallest screen resolution is 640 x 480. You can force a specific screen resolution by pressing the + or - key of the numeric keyboard. QuickView will refuse to play a file in a screen resolution that is smaller than the resolution of the file. If we now play our MPEG movie by pressing the Enter key while it is selected, it will be played in a rectangle of 352 x 240 in a screen with a resolution of 640 x 480. You can stop the movie at all times by pressing the ESC button.

You have also the option to blow up the size of the movie image with or without respect of the aspect ratio so that it fits the specified screen resolution. Make sure you have the screen that allows you to select a multimedia file active and press Alt-O.

As you can see you have the following options for altering the scale

No scaling As the name implies the image size remains unchanged. 2x zoom The image size is increased two times. If you have low resolution MPEG files like the one in our example the squares that are used in the MPEG encoding will be getting more visible and the image will be less sharp. 2x zoom with black lines Instead of just increasing the size two times, a much more refined technique is used. After every image line there will be a blank (black) line. In our example this renders the encoding squares much more invisible and the image will be much clearer and sharper than if we had just used the option 2x zoom. Software full screen the image will be (depending if you have checked the option 'Keep video/picture ratio with scaling') increased to the full screen resolution without or with respect to the aspect ratio. The increase is done purely in software. Hardware full screen this has the same effect as 'Software full screen' but this time the increase is done by the hardware functions of your video card if hardware scaling is supported for your chipset.

If you check the video option 'Loop' then the multimedia file is played over and over again. This can come in very handy when you want to use QuickView for unattended shows like e.g. in demos, kiosks, ...

Suppose I want to play a video CD

qv -VCD

As mentioned before, add if necessary the option -W4 or -W5 to get sound on a Sound Blaster compatible system.

Supported Codecs

Video formats

• AVI, Sound can be either PCM, Microsoft ADPCM, IMA ADPCM, A-law, u-law,
• DIV: GSM 6.10 and Audio MPEG incl. MP3.
• MOV: Sound can be "raw", "twos", A-law, u-law, IMA ADPCM or GSM 6.10. Supported video codecs for AVI and MOV:
  • Cinepak [cvid] (8 and 24 bit),
  • CLJR [cljr] (24 bit),
  • Creative Video Blaster [cyuv] (16 bit),
  • DIB (4,
  8, 16, 24 and 32 bit),
  • DivX ;-) Low Motion [div3] (24 bit),
  • DivX ;-) Fast Motion [div4] (24 bit),
  • DivX 4.0 [divx] (24 bit),
  • Indeo(tm) 3.1,
  3.2 and 5 [IV31, IV32 and IV50] (24 bit),
  • I420 (24 bit),
  • IYUV (24 bit),
  • Motion JPEG [MJPG] (24 bit),
  • Microsoft MPEG 4 Version 3 [MP43] (24 bit),
  • MS Video 1 [msvc] (8 and 16 bit),
  • QPEG [QPEG] (V1.0 and 1.1,
  8 bit),
  • Rainbow Runner [dmb1] (24 bit),
  • RLE (8 bit),
  • Ultimotion (OS/2 AVIs) [ULTI] (16 bit),
  • VYUY (24 bit),
  • Y41P (24 bit),
  • V422 (24 bit),
  • YUY2 (24 bit),
  • YV12 (24 bit),
  • YVU9 (24 bit),
  • Apple codecs:
  • Animation [rle] (1,
  4, 8, 16 and 24 bit),
  • BMP [WRLE] (4,
  8 and 24 bit),
  • Component [YUV2] (24 bit),
  • Graphics [smc] (8 bit),
  • JPEG [jpeg] (24 bit),
  • Motion JPEG A [MJPA] (24 bit),
  • None [raw] (4,
  8, 24 and 32 bit),
  • Planar RGB [8BPS] (grayscale,
  8, 24 and 32 bit),
  • Video [rpza] (16 bit, only HiColor Playback)
• DL: Versions 1,2 and partly 3
• CEL (Original Animator CEL Files),
• .FLC,
• .FLI
• GIF animations
• MPG, .M1V, .MPE, .MPV and .DAT: MPEG 1 video files. DAT files are files from the VideoCD that are usually named AVSEQ01.DAT and so on.
• VideoCDs and CD-i (partly) are supported using the -VCD command.

Picture formats

• BMP: uncompressed: 1, 4, 8, 16 and 24 color bits, RLE compressed: 4 and 8 color bits including OS/2 bitmaps furthermore all kindred formats: .RLE, .DIB, .BGA, .VGA, .RLE, .RL4, .RL8
• GIF: 1-8 color bits. GIF 87a and GIF 89a extensions
• JPG, Baseline and Progressive JPEG, with grayscale, YCrCb or RGB colorę
• JIF, space
• JPE:
• PCX: 1-4, 8 and 24 color bits
• TGA: uncompressed: 8, 15, 16 and 24 color bits, black & white RLE compressed: 8, 15, 16 and 24 color bits, black & white

Sound formats

• .MP1, Audio MPEG 1.0/2.0/2.5, Layer 1,2 and 3
• .MP2,
• .MP3:
• .VOC
• .WAV: Supported audio codecs are:
  • PCM
  • Microsoft ADPCM
  • IMA ADPCM
  • Creative Labs ADPCM
  • A-law
  • u-law
  • GSM 6.10
  • MPEG Audio

All these codecs fit in one executable qv.exe with an amazing small size of only 290.428 bytes. This is not a typo, it is really that small. The programmer has written practically everything in assembler to get the best performance.

Additional information

If anything isn't working as expected don't start to yell but try to provide the author with a full reproducible error report so he is able to correct the problem in case of a bug.