************************************************************************ * * * INSTALLATION AND HELP FOR THE * * KIWISOFT VIDEO DISPLAYER V1.0 * * Copyright (c) 1997 Kiwisoft Programs Ltd * * (6 May 1997) * * * * Kiwisoft lives at http://www.kiwisoft.co.nz * * * ************************************************************************ T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S I. INTRODUCTION - READ THIS FIRST FOR SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS II. INSTALLING VIDEO DISPLAYER ON YOUR HOME SYSTEM III. INSTALLING VIDEO DISPLAYER ON YOUR WEB HOMEPAGE IV. SOUND FILES V. PARAMETERS FOR VIDEO DISPLAYER VI. HTML PAGE DESIGN VARIATIONS FOR USING THE VIDEO DISPLAYER VII. GETTING A GOOD VIDEO VIII.POSSIBLE USES FOR THE VIDEO DISPLAYER IX. SUPPORT FROM KIWISOFT X. TERMS AND CONDITIONS XI. LIMITATIONS ON VIDEO CONVERSION SERVICE ************************************************************************ I. INTRODUCTION - READ THIS FIRST FOR SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ************************************************************************ Congratulations. You have just received the next major step in the WEB revolution after animated GIF. The Kiwisoft Video Displayer allows almost everyone to have and play video clips both at home and on the internet without a Plug-In. The Kiwisoft Video Displayer offers a variety of new possibilities for widespread web viewing without any unusual preconditions on the viewer's computer system. Individuals or companies can freely use the Video Displayer for: - Personal video statements to the world - Personal video archive or library - News video clips for everyone - Demonstrations for all - Training video clips - Sales and advertising videos You MUST have a Java enabled browser or else Java itself on your system. Currently Apple, Windows-95, Windows-NT, OS/2 V3 or later, Unix, and Linux all have them. Current Java enabled browsers include Netscape V2 and V3, Internet Explorer V3 or later, and HotJava. If you are in doubt, try installation and running of the program and then run the 'example.htm' file in your browser. If that page comes up saying that you must have a Java enabled browser, then you do not have a Java enabled browser and should get one. If you don't have a browser, you should check your local dealer for help in finding one or upgrading your system. What you see with the Kiwisoft Video Displayer depends only on your platform and your browser. A Pentium 100 (or faster) running Windows-95 at 640x480x256 and Internet Explorer V3 or Netscape V3 will show videos at full speed in good color. Slow computers will show the video slowly. The audio should generally sound right (except under OS/2) as long as you have a standard sound card. You should be running a VGA or SVGA video card to see all the colors. A local computer dealer can help you upgrade your hardware if necessary. Print this file so that you can easily refer to the material for installation and for later reference when you are creating your own videos. Visit the Kiwisoft internet site at http://www.kiwisoft.co.nz for the latest information and videos. While there, save the html pages as examples of what you can do and for future reference if you want Kiwisoft to convert your own videos. Print the Kiwisoft pages for future reference. Good luck with your installation and Kiwisoft hopes that you get as much pleasure from our Video Displayer program as we have in presenting it to you. ************************************************************************ II. INSTALLING VIDEO DISPLAYER ON YOUR HOME SYSTEM ************************************************************************ 1. Different platforms Instructions are given here for installation on Windows-95, the most common platform. Users of other systems should be able to figure out for themselves how to do the equivalent operations on their systems. Unix people may need to rename the ".htm" files to ".html" to get them to work properly. OS/2 users should change their color resolution to 16 bits (65536 colors). 2. Downloading files into directory VIDPLAY First, create a directory VIDPLAY on your system drive C:. This can be done from either an MS-DOS command prompt typing md C:\VIDPLAY or it can be done from the Windows File Manager. You will then need to either download the files from http://www.kiwisoft.co.nz/kiwidl.htm or copy the files down from the CD-ROM disk following instructions supplied with the CD-ROM into the new directory. If you were supplied with a ".zip" file, then use PKUNZIP or follow the instructions supplied. For individual files supplied, move all of the program files into the directory or save them there when you download them from the internet. Typical MS-DOS commands to copy them from CDROM D:\VIDPLAY to your disk C:\VIDPLAY are: copy D:\VIDPLAY\0.class C:\VIDPLAY copy D:\VIDPLAY\1.class C:\VIDPLAY copy D:\VIDPLAY\2.class C:\VIDPLAY copy D:\VIDPLAY\3.class C:\VIDPLAY copy D:\VIDPLAY\kwVideoDisplayer.class C:\VIDPlAY copy D:\VIDPLAY\example.htm C:\VIDPLAY copy D:\VIDPLAY\example.au C:\VIDPLAY copy D:\VIDPLAY\example.kw0 C:\VIDPLAY copy D:\VIDPLAY\README.txt C:\VIDPLAY 3. Go back to the desktop and run your browser refusing to connect to the internet. Under the "File" menu option pick "Open" and then browse and switch to the VIDPLAY directory and open the "example" document. You should see the video loaded onto the screen and displayed. 4. Congratulations. You have successfully installed the Kiwisoft Video Displayer on your own system. You can now use it with your browser to build up and view a library of Kiwisoft video tapes on your own computer. Note that load times for local videos are at disk loading speeds which are fast, not modem transfer speeds, which are slow. 5. The next step is to check your CD-ROM for Kiwisoft videos and load them on your system or else to go to the Kiwisoft site on the internet and get any videos you want. 6. Later you can get some of your own videos converted by Kiwisoft and build up a library of exciting or useful material to show your friends, colleagues, and clients on your home system, the internet, or intranet. ************************************************************************ III. INSTALLING VIDEO DISPLAYER ON YOUR WEB HOMEPAGE ************************************************************************ 1. Different platforms Instructions are given here for installation from Windows-95, the most common platform. Users of other systems should be able to figure out for themselves how to do the equivalent operations on their systems. 2. Get the Kiwisoft Video Displayer set up on your own personal system first. You should get the Video Displayer and set it up in directory C:\VIDPLAY by following the instructions in the section above. This will allow you to do development and testing of web pages on your home system first where video load speeds are much faster and consequently testing time is reduced. 3. Installing the programs in your web homepage directory If you do not have a homepage, you might check with your school or local Internet Service Provider about how to set up a homepage and how much it will cost. Shop around. There are very cheap options available. Be particularly concerned about the cost of disk space if you want to have a lot of videos on your web site. Videos eat up lots of disk space! Your Internet Service Provider will have given you a home directory on the web and a means to access that directory to add and remove files. Typically you would use an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program. We assume that you know how to move files across to your web directory and also that you know how to create subdirectories. (Check with your ISP if you need help.) Move all of the Video Display class files over from VIDPLAY to the homepage directory in BINARY mode. There are five files: kw0.class kw1.class kw2.class kw3.class kwVideoDisplay.class Also move over to the same directory in BINARY mode the example files: example.htm example.au example.kw0 If you plan to allow people to download the .kw0 video and keep it on their local system, you should check with your ISP help-desk to ensure that the .kw0 video files are seen by the ISP server as binary or object files. The ISP system administrator can easily fix the server to treat the .kw0 file type as a binary or an object file type. (If the ISP doesn't do it, the ISP will treat the file as text and insert extra characters into the file if it is downloaded for local storage. You can spot the problem by noticing a change in the file size.) This is NOT necessary if you only plan to show the videos, not give them away. 4. Connecting the example video up to your current homepage You may want to move a copy of your current homepage file to your local system and edit it there with your favorite editor. Then copy the new version back up to your web homepage directory. Insert the following line somewhere sensible inside your homepage file: Play my example video Test it out on your local system by copying the modified homepage into the VIDPLAY directory and then starting the browser without connecting to the internet. Ignore the fact that the browser won't be able to load your GIFs and any other files. Look on the page to see if the 'Play my example' link is visible and in a sensible spot. If so, then try clicking on it and see if the local example video will play. If you have any problems edit the homepage again to fix them. Next, copy the homepage back up to your internet homepage directory. Then just run your browser connecting to the internet. Try the new 'Play my example' link on your homepage to verify that it works. Congratulations. You can now offer videos on the internet. 5. Moving more videos to the web While you could put additional video file sets (".au", ".htm", and ".kw0" files) into your homepage, this would complicate your directory. Go to your internet homepage directory and create a new subdirectory, 'video'. Typically FTP provides a command to create a remote directory. Check with your ISP if you have trouble. Using binary mode, copy all the class files (see above) into the video subdirectory so that now you have a copy of the program files down in the video subdirectory also. Now take any new video you get and binary copy all files into the video subdirectory. A link from your home page to run the new video should look like this: See my airplane If you end up with lots of videos, you might want to consider keeping all files for each video in its own subdirectory. However, you will either need to ensure you have the class files in each subdirectory, or else you will need to move the ".htm" video display files up to a directory having the class files and fix the references to the ".au" and ".kw0" files in the htm to point down to the correct subdirectory. ************************************************************************ IV. SOUND FILES ************************************************************************ Providing Additional Sound Files: You may also submit separate ".wav" uncompressed PCM sound files for conversion. The files will need to be converted to ".au" format MU-LAW files which are 8012 samples per second, mono, and 8 bit. You can create these files with a microphone attached to your sound card (remember to set the sample rate, mono, and 8 bits.) Stereo and higher rates can be converted but is wasteful and requires a much bigger ".wav" file. There is no charge for the sound conversion as long as it accompanies a video for conversion. Note that you may want to create your own audio tracks to accompany the video OR to play while the video is loading over the internet. As a rough guide for the length of sound file to use while loading videos, make the audio last about one sixth the duration of the video (1 sec per 6 sec); experience will give you a better rule. ************************************************************************ V. PARAMETERS FOR VIDEO DISPLAYER ************************************************************************ 1. FRAMECOLOR Form: Use: Set the background color of the button area of the picture Default: lightgray Values: black, blue, cyan, darkgray, gray, green, lightgray, magenta, red, white, yellow 6 hex digit color value for rgb where 00 to ff (use upper or lower case letters) in hexadecimal represent 0-255 in decimal. Color digits are put in rgb order (i.e. in rrggbb form) eg: ffafaf (Pink) 0000ff (Blue: 255 level, brightest) 00ff00 (Green: 255 level, brightest) Examples: Note: Do not use this parameter with Netscape V2. Netscape V2 puts a large lightgray box around the video regardless of your framecolor settting. You are better off using the default lightgray background everywhere. Note: Netscape V3 uses only the 8 major colors (red, green, blue, white, black, cyan, purple, and yellow) plus lightgray in Java. If you prefer compatibility and want the applet background to match the page background just use these colors for the page and applet backgrounds. (The 8 colors are made by using only hex 00 or FF for r, g, and b. E.g. white is FFFFFF.) 2. VIDEONAME Form: Use: Use your own label for the video start button Default: Use "Video" Values: Preferrably a meaningful name of 6 or less letters Examples: 3. RESETNAME Form: Use: Use your own label for the reset button Default: Use "Reset" Values: Preferrably a meaningful name of 6 or less letters Examples: 4. TITLEFILE Form: Use: Have a still image up before the start of the video Default: First image in video is used Values: Any standard jpg or gif file including animated GIF. Examples: 5. TRAILFILE Form: Use: Have a still image up after the end of the video Default: Last image in video is used Values: Any standard jpg or gif file including animated GIF. Examples: 6. AUDIOLOADFILE Form: Use: Have an audio file play while the video file is loading Default: No audio file is played during image load. Values: must be the name of a standard MU-LAW file with .au extension. Examples: 7. AUDIOFILE Form: Use: Have an audio file play during the video Default: No audio file is played during the video Values: must be the name of a standard MU-LAW file with .au extension. Examples: 8. VIDEOFILE Form: Use: Have a video file to play. Default: No video file is played. Values: must be the name of a Kiwisoft format video file with .kw0 extension. Examples: 9. LOOPWAIT Form: Use: select initial conditions of looping video or wait before play. Default: Single play of the video starts automatically at the end of video load. Values: wait: when finished loading goto first frame or title frame and wait loop: when finished loading play continuously unless reset button hit. If reset button hit, then play once every time video button hit. omit the parameter to display normally with automatic display once upon finishing image load. Examples: 10. A Sample HTML page to show a video Kingston Flyer

Kingston Flyer

NO VIDEO CAN BE SHOWN

You must have a Java enabled browser to see the video.

Hints:
Kiwisoft will assume that you know something about html language. The title, Kingston Flyer will appear on printouts. In the body the 'Kingston Flyer' is the large heading above the applet. The code between and sets up and displays the Kingston Flyer video and audio. The code below the framecolor line will only display if Java is not enabled for the viewer; the text says no video can be shown and offers them advice on how to get a Java enabled browser. Adding the to code to an html page is sufficient to add the video to that page providing you haven't stuck it in the middle of some other html entity such as . Just change the audiofile and videofile parameters to point to your own files. Note that the "./" means that the file is in the current directory having the html page. To specify a subdirectory, use something like "./video/" in front of the file name to specify the video subdirectory in the current directory. Note in the above example that the background will be lightgray and the video will play as soon as it is loaded and that there is no titlefile or trailfile so the video stops and shows the last video frame and 'Reset' repositions to the beginning of the video and shows the first frame. 11. A Sample HTML link pointer to video page using jpg picture [Kingston Flyer] Kingston Flyer 12. Debugging your own HTML video display page Be sure to check your directory offsets and names for the audio and video file parameters in the applet statement in the html page. These are often wrong with the result that you don't hear or see anything when you try the html page. File names should be specified relative to the html and kwVideoDisplayer directory. Note that the kwVideoDisplayer must generally be in the same directory as the html page. If the background color appears wrong on the applet, then you may be running Netscape and have run into color selection limitations. Otherwise check to see if you spelled the color name correctly or chose a legal color name or used 6 hex digits to describe the color. If the title or trailer images don't appear, it could again be a case of specifying the wrong directory or misspelling the names or not specifying a ".jpg'" or ".gif" image. Make sure your audio file is a MU-LAW 8-bit, mono, 8000 sample/sec ".au" file. Check your spelling for "param", "name", and "value". Check that you have matched pairs of double quotes. ************************************************************************ VI. HTML PAGE DESIGN VARIATIONS FOR USING THE VIDEO DISPLAYER ************************************************************************ The parameters allow a variety of possibilities for varying what you display and how you display it. You can change labels on the buttons, change the applet background color, add title and trailer images or animated images, and even add a sound file to play while the video is loading. There are two main options for putting the video on html pages. First, you could put it on a page which loads the video giving no warning that that is happening. Second, you could put a link to the video on an html page and warn viewers that there will be a delay while the video loads. Your choice depends on how large the video file is and how important showing that video is to you. There is really no point in putting more than one video on a page. The result would be that both videos would have to load at the same time on the page which would mean that the time to load the pair would probably be the time required to load BOTH videos. That is generally not a good idea. A good approach to displaying multiple videos is to put multiple links on one page using still images (or animated images) to show what each is. The viewer could then go off to view whichever one was of interest and return to this page. This technique is good for collections and for shopping. See the Kiwisoft list of free videos on the internet for an example; save the code page as an example. This multiple links on a page could be extended to a tree-structured topic list. Be sure to indicate the length of the video in the link; that will keep down frustration levels. ************************************************************************ VII. GETTING A GOOD VIDEO ************************************************************************ 1. Making the video Generally the content of a video should have a little story with a beginning and end. It should last long enough to be understood which typically means at least two seconds. Technically a video ought to have a subject which at least fills one quarter of the screen in order to be clearly seen on the 160x120 Video Displayer screen. Of course, larger is better. More contrast between image and background in the video is better. More colorful videos are also more pleasing. Zooming in from an overview to detail is better than zooming out. Smooth zooming is difficult but a good goal. Avoid jerkiness on extreme zooms by using a tripod or bracing the camera. Keep internet videos as short as possible since load times are so long with current modems. 2. Digitizing the video Digital video files can be made on your computer from your VCR using a video capture board such as the Miro board from http://www.miro.com or the Hauppauge board from http://www.hauppauge.com. Check with your local dealer for board and price. You want to be able to capture at 15 frames per second which generally means you will need to have a Pentium computer not a 486. If you can't find a capture board locally, do a search on the internet. Another alternative is to check with local schools and universities to see if someone there already has a video capture board which you can use with your own videos to make digital video files. You can check in your yellow pages for a local video processing company which offers digital video creation and editing. For really basic digitization services you ought to get by with a reasonable charge. Try to get a Quicktime file made with Cinepak compression as recommended below. Kiwisoft will try to convert any format digital video. However, we may not be able to do them all. We will have a page on the internet providing information on our limitations. Currently we can't cope with sound in MPEG video before July 1997 and we can't cope with Indeo V4.1 compression in any video or Indeo V2.1 for OS/2. Kiwisoft requires that you supply your video in the form of a digital video file. Common file formats include ".avi" using the Microsoft standard or ".mov" using the Apple Quicktime standard. Use a compressed format. We will try to convert whatever you supply. If we can't convert it, we'll tell you and add that information to our internet pages. Other formats such as MPEG or FLI can also be converted. The details for best choices (if you have a choice) are: Microsoft AVI ".avi": Resolution: 160wx120h framesize, 15 frames/sec Sound:11,025 mono, 8 bit Compression: Cinepak (best), Indeo R3.1, or Microsoft Video1 Color Space: BGR3 (best), LUT8, or other Apple Quicktime ".mov": Resolution: 160wx120h framesize, 15 frames/sec Sound:11,025 mono, 8 bit Compression: Cinepak (best) or Apple Video Color Space: BGR3 (best) or other While you could supply higher resolution video or sound than recommended here, the extra resolution would be wasted and simply add to the file size. 3. Getting the digital video converted to Kiwisoft Video Displayer format Kiwisoft does NOT convert frames in the video to GIF or JPEG still images for you. See our Tips below for our suggestions. Make sure that video files sent to Kiwisoft have the correct display time. Kiwisoft does not convert parts of files. Kiwisoft will only convert the whole file. Similarly, audio files should be of the correct duration. Kiwisoft does not convert part of an audio file, only whole files. 4. Providing Additional Sound Files You may also submit separate ".wav" uncompressed PCM sound files for conversion. The files will need to be converted to ".au" format MU-LAW files which are 8012 samples per second, mono, and 8 bit. You can create these files with a microphone attached to your sound card (remember to set the sample rate, mono, and 8 bits.) Stereo and higher rates can be converted but is wasteful and requires a much bigger ".wav" file. There is no charge for the sound conversion as long as it accompanies a video for conversion. Note that you may want to create your own audio tracks to accompany the video OR to play while the video is loading over the internet. As a rough guide for the length of sound file to use while loading videos, make the audio last about one sixth the duration of the video (1 sec per 6 sec); experience will give you a better rule. 5. Sending videos to Kiwisoft When this was written Kiwisoft only accepted videos sent over the internet. Check out our current requirements for sending us your digital video and any payment at the Kiwisoft site at http://www.kiwisoft.co.nz. If you don't have internet access yourself, get a friend to check out our current requirements. 6. Additional tips on Making Videos It is wise to offer an html link to play the video showing the video size rather than dumping it on viewers if it is longer than a 4 second video. An example of such a link is (using a 1.7 million byte file): Play my long video (1.7Mbytes) Make quite sure that you do not put on your internet homepage video and audio files owned by other people or which violate laws in your country. We do NOT convert frames in the video to GIF or JPEG still images for you. We recommend that you get a product such as MainActor/2 from http://www.mainconcept.de" for video clip editing and selecting and saving still images to use with the movie. Other similar products are available from your local dealer but may be more expensive. If you plan on having a lot of videos, you will need to have a large disk on your system and pay for a lot of storage at your Internet Service Provider. Disk requirements for digital video vary a lot. A good rule of thumb for your initial effort is to assume that you will require 100,000 bytes per second of video. In fact, storage requirements vary from about 30,000 per second of video to 150,000 as long as you use some sort of compression. Without compression video might require as much as 900,000 bytes per second for 15 frames per second or 1,800,000 per second for 30 frames per second. It's amazing how fast digital videos will fill a 1 Gigabyte disk. Kiwisoft format videos typically require less space than the original compressed format video. However, you may want to keep your original video on VCR tape for the time that the internet performance, including modem speed, increases to the point that everyone can transmit much higher resolution videos or longer videos in reasonable amounts of time. ************************************************************************ VIII.POSSIBLE USES FOR THE VIDEO DISPLAYER ************************************************************************ Kiwisoft Video Displayer offers a variety of new possibilities for widespread web viewing without any unusual preconditions on the viewer's computer system. Individuals or companies can freely use the Video Displayer for: - Personal video statements to the world - Personal video archive - News video clips for everyone - Demonstrations for all - Training video clips - Sales and advertising videos Personal video statements include things like showing videos of your stamp collection or model train. They also include things like a live declaration of corporate principles by the Chairman of the Board. Personal video archives allow you to build up a library of converted material which you can play for your friends and self on your own personal computer or local network or even on the internet. The advantage of your own personal computer or a local network is that you can have much longer videos without paying the high price of slow internet modem transmission. News clips can be as simple as informative clips for relatives (see the Steve video at kiwisoft.co.nz) or as formal as a video showing an excerpt of an interview with a politician or an event like the launch of a new shuttle mission. They can also include excerpts of sports events like basketball or football nationally or in your local school. Demonstrations are a common method of showing people how to do things like assembling chairs, operating equipment, training a dog, or changing a tire. Training video clips may consist of demonstrations or provide examples. The corporate or educational local network is ideal for longer training clips since they will load quite quickly. Videos can be incorporated into the html pages in the network to provide a definitive visual statement. Sales and advertising offer extensive possibilities for videos. You can persuade with a video having sound in a way not possible with still images or animated GIF files. Recreational facilities can look and sound real with video. Real estate becomes nearly 3-dimensional. Videos themselves can be sold using sample video clips as advertising. You can almost taste the food being eaten in a video and the voice-over tells you what is required to get that food. ************************************************************************ IX. SUPPORT FROM KIWISOFT ************************************************************************ Kiwisoft is available on the internet at http://www.kiwisoft.co.nz. Don't use snail mail for obvious reasons. At the Kiwisoft site you will find the latest version of the Kiwisoft Video Displayer as well as the latest free video clips. You will also find the latest help on browser or system specific problems and limitations. Most important, you will find the latest information on how to send Kiwisoft over the internet your own digital video for conversion to Kiwisoft format and if necessary, pay for it. Finally, you will be able to email us at video@kiwisoft.co.nz with wish lists, problems, or solutions which you have found. We do NOT promise that we will respond to such email, but we WILL read it; our goal is to keep the problems and solutions summarized on the platform and system help page. Remember, that your best source of support is your local expert or dealer. ************************************************************************ X. TERMS AND CONDITIONS ************************************************************************ The Kiwisoft Video Displayer and associated files are Copyright 1997 Kiwisoft Programs Ltd. The compression and decompression algorithms are covered by Patent Application Number NZ314781. This software is provided FREE FOR COMMERCIAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE as long as the following conditions are adhered to: Copyright remains with Kiwisoft Programs Ltd, and as such the software and other files supplied, except for HTML files, are not to be decompiled or modified in any way. HTML files supplied may be modified. This software is only used with Kiwisoft digital video files which have been converted from other digital formats by Kiwisoft or its authorized agents and which have not been altered in any way. Redistribution of this software is permitted as long as the redistribution retains all files unchanged and includes the README.txt which contains a copy of this set of Terms and Conditions. This software is provided "as is" without expresssed or implied warranty except as required by law. In no event shall Kiwisoft Programs Ltd be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages (including, but not limited to, procurement of substitute goods or services; loss of use, data, or profits; or business interruption) however caused and on any theory of liability, whether in contract, strict liability, or tort (including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way out of the use of this software, even if advised of the possiblity of such damage. ************************************************************************ XI. LIMITATIONS ON VIDEO CONVERSION SERVICE ************************************************************************ Kiwisoft reserves the right to refuse to provide a conversion service for any reason. Particularly Kiwisoft will refuse to convert a video if Kiwisoft believes that that video may violate criminal or other laws in your own country or in New Zealand. Kiwisoft also will refuse to convert a video for you if Kiwisoft believes that you do not own the necessary rights to the video you have provided to Kiwisoft. Other reasons may arise and notification will be given as required to the individuals concerned.