TITLE: AVS to AVI File Converter - X1.01 KEYWORDS: AVS, AVI, AMII, Indeo, PLV AVS to AVI File Converter -- X1.01 AVSTOAVI is a Windows application program that converts AVS files to AVI files. It is provided by Intel Corporation as a convenience to our customers. AVS is the multimedia file format used by DVI(R) technology. AVS files were created by a number of software products from Intel Corporation, but are never created under Microsoft Video for Windows. You can tell AVS files by their ".AVS" file suffix. If you don't have any AVS files or if you don't use Microsoft Video for Windows, you don't need to use AVSTOAVI. AVI is the multimedia file format used by Microsoft Video for Windows and adopted by Intel Corporation. You will need to convert any AVS files you have to AVI files before you can edit or play the files under Microsoft Video for Windows. If you use Microsoft Video for Windows to capture, compress, and edit digital video you are already working with AVI files. AVSTOAVI does its conversion automatically. AVSTOAVI determines the type of audio and video encoded in the AVS file and passes the audio and video through to the AVI file, possibly modifying the data as described in the "Conversion Rules" section below. Please refer to the "Known Problems" section for descriptions of proposed changes in future releases. Conversion Rules ---------------- AVS Input: AVI Output: See Notes ---------- ----------- --------- RTV 2.0 video chunks Indeo(TM)-compatible video chunks 1,2 RTV 2.1 video chunks Indeo-compatible video chunks 1,2 PLV 2.0 video chunks PLV 2.0 video chunks 3,4 PCM8 audio chunks PCM8 audio chunks 5 ADPCM4 audio chunks PCM8 audio chunks 6 Unrecognized chunks Unrecognized chunks 7 Notes for Conversion Rules ------------------ (1) Rectangular pixels (5:4 aspect ratio) converted to square pixels (1:1 aspect ratio). This includes decompression and compression steps, with resulting loss of image quality. (2) If set, doubling bits are reset and the video is compressed double size. See the "Known Bugs and Deficiencies" section. (3) No video chunk conversion performed; no loss of image quality. (4) Requires PLV 2.0 driver for playback. (5) No audio chunk conversion required; no loss of audio quality. Supported sampling frequencies for input are: 11.025, 22.05 or 44.1 kHz. Stereo and mono inputs are supported. (6) Requires decompression and transcoding, with resulting loss of sound quality. Supported sampling frequency for ADPCM4 is 33.075 kHz. Output sampling frequency is fixed at 22.05 kHz. Stereo and mono inputs are supported. (7) Unrecognized data is passed through without modification. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Once the .AVS file has been converted to a .AVI file, you can use the WaveEdit utility in Microsoft Video for Windows to edit the audio in the file, and you can use VidEdit to edit the video and audio in the file. Please refer to the "Microsoft Video for Windows User's Guide" for additional information about editing .AVI files. Installation ------------ AVSTOAVI is distributed in self-extracting compressed file, "AVSAVI.EXE". To install the file conversion utility, copy AVSAVI.EXE into the directory of your choice. Run AVSAVI.EXE to decompress the files and follow the installation directions in the text file, "INSTALL.TXT". Read AVSTOAVI.TXT for instructions on how to use the utility. If you wish, you can create a program item for AVSTOAVI so that you can launch AVSTOAVI from the Windows Program Manager. Using AVSTOAVI -------------- Start AVSTOAVI by using the "File...Run" menu item from the Windows Program manager, or double click on the AVSTOAVI icon that you created in the Windows Program Manager. The user interface is a dialog-like window that has edit fields for an input AVS file name and an output AVI file name. A "Browse" button is available for each edit field which allows you to search for file names. After filling in the file name edit fields (wild-card characters are not supported), click on the "Run" button to perform the conversion. Click on the "Cancel" button to cancel a conversion. Click on the "Exit" button to quit AVSTOAVI. Click on the "AVS Info" button to display information about the AVS input file. The status line indicates how far AVSTOAVI is in the conversion process. Note that the conversion process is lengthy. It takes approximately 1 second per video frame to do the conversion. A message box appears when conversion completes. This message box tells you either that the conversion succeeded or that the conversion failed. If the conversion failed, the message box reminds you to delete the incomplete AVI output file. There is no recourse if conversion fails. A message box appears if an input file is in a format that is not supported, and conversion terminates. Known Problems -------------- The following problems and warnings have been noted. Beta Release 1.01: 1. There is no way to convert batches of files automatically. 2. File conversion will take approximately 1 second per video frame. 3. AVS allows many video and audio channels within a file, but the conversion utility works only on files with one video channel and up to two audio channels. Most AVS files meet this restriction. If this situation arises, conversion will stop and a dialog box will be displayed to indicate that an error occurred. 4. Compressed audio is not supported in Microsoft Video for Windows version 1.0, so compressed audio in AVS files is automatically uncompressed. 5. AVSTOAVI does not work with audio-only files. 6. AVSTOAVI never outputs 16-bit uncompressed audio (PCM16). Instead, it always generates 8-bit uncompressed audio (PCM8). This should be a user-settable option. 7. The only supported ADPCM4 input sampling rate is 33.075 kHz. This is converted to PCM8 at 22.05 kHz only. 8. Some .AVS files contain bitstreams in which half of the data to reproduce an image in X, Y, or both is included in the bitstream. These .AVS files expect the decompressor to recognize this condition and to expand the bitstream when the bitstream is decoded. The reason for this is to reduce the bandwidth required to decompress and display the video, or to reduce the amount of disk required to store the compressed video. This version of AVSTOAVI expands these .AVS files, so that some .AVI files may be up to four times bigger than the unconverted .AVS file. A future version of AVSTOAVI will correct this problem. 9. It may be possible to successfully convert files which are playable through the software driver, but are not playable through the ActionMedia II or RTVideo board. This is because it is possible to convert files that result in unsupported playback resolutions on these boards. AVSTOAVI should warn the user before converting the file that the output will only be playable using the software drivers.