FAQ for newbies

Questions

  1. Add files dialogs. What's difference?
  2. Keyframes. What is it?
  3. DXVA. What is it?
  4. Video renderers. What's difference?

Answers

  1. Add files dialogs. What's difference?

    Open dialog - standart Windows dialog, everybody knows it.


    Extended open dialog - this is a very functional, media-oriented open dialog (all kinds of disc and devices including network ones, favorites, life time highlight, misc options of files add and so on). But it can me very slow some times (depends on your computer configuration), if directory have a few hundrends or thousands of files.
    You can quickly open file there with mouse left button double click.


    ТВ-oriented dialog - simplified version of extended open dialog. Because of using minimum info about a file, can work in directories with thousands of files a lot faster than previous one. This is a only open dialog where you can set colors and font size (from small to really big), which allows you use it, laying on the sofa, drinking a juice and moving a radiomouse on your cat.


    Fullscreen dialog - designed to be used with TV and remote. Minimum of UI elements. In case of keyboard, everything can be controlled with Tab, Arrow Keys and Enter.


    Folder - standart Windows open folder dialog. Hovewer, its main purpose is more comfortably implemented in Extended and TV-oriented dialogs.
     
  2. Keyframes. What is it?
    Key frames are used to store all the information about the video image. Other frames - only about change the video image with respect to the previous one, which is good to do not waste available space. Key frame features:
    + when referring to key frame you don't need to handle sequence of previous frames. So this is why seek by key frames is a lot faster, and some times - instantaneous.
    - because key frames takes a lot of space, they are rare. So this is why key frame seek have a deviation in +/- 2 seconds (for some very bad encoded movies its about ~10 seconds).
     
  3. DXVA. What is it?
    DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration) - its a method that allows video decoding to be hardware (videocard) accelarted. Greatly reduces the load on the CPU (processor). Usually videocard makes decoding with less computing resources, which means - less power consumption, less computer heat, less noise from coolers. DXVA is possible only for some specified video encoding methods (for example, h264 - is supported, but XviD - not). DXVA can be activated only when in filters tree between video decoder and video renderer no intermediates (software video processors, subtitles and so on)
     
  4. Video renderers. What's difference?
    Video renderer(VR, for short) — is a kind of software which renders the content on an output device (rendering video content on your monitor, in other words).

    These video renderers are recommended for Windows XP and lower:

    These video renderers are recommended to be used with Windows Vista and higher:

    MadVR is a special case.

    Detailed installation process, settings and nuances about madVR you can read in this section.