The SGI320 comes installed with Video for Windows® (VFW) and QuickTime® software components and are Adobe Premiere certified for QuickTime editing.

What version of Premiere should I run on a SGI320?

Adobe Premiere 5.1a or later is recommended.

What version of the SGI HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) and PROM should I be using?

Under NT download the latest HAL from here. Windows 2000 users should be ok.

How do I know if I need to upgrade my SGI specific digital media modules?

Download the latest Digital Media packs for both NT and W2000 from SGI's support page.
If you have upgraded from NT to Windows 2000, remember to run the Software Supplementary Kit (SSK) to add support for the SGI320's video capabilities

Are there any SGI specific preset files available?

A group of preset files exists for the SGI320. You can download them from the Community > Freeware section or by following this link. Extract the presets into Premiere's settings folder (default path: C:\program files\adobe\premiere 5.1\settings.

How do I output SGI QuickTime CODEC movies to your NTSC/PAL monitor?

IMPORTANT: Enabling this setting will play any video clips using SGI QT Codecs to the NTSC/PAL monitor only; the VGA monitor will not update since the video is being redirected. Premiere's monitor and clip windows will only give still frame updates when the video is not playing and you toggle window focus.

Note: Quicktime 4.0 users will need to use the QT4 update found in the tools section.

How do I play files to video output in Video for Windows editing mode?

The step-by-step instructions are:

In Video for Windows editing mode, why doesn't the Print-to-Video command go to video output?

Adobe does not use ICM_DRAW messages on the Print-to-Video command. To play files to video output, play it from the program monitor window instead.

How do I output video to my monitor under VFW?

Video for Windows (VFW) does not specify a video output architecture like QuickTime does. However, a de facto standard for video output implementation has evolved where video output is done through video
decompression modules.

Windows recognizes some RGB formats as uncompressed and most other formats as compressed. VFW applications that play compressed AVI files to the computer screen call the video decompression modules to decompress the data to RGB. Since most PC video boards capture in compressed formats, they often implement their modules to send the data to the video output jack while decompressing.

SGI has several decompression modules for decompressing AVI files in Motion JPEG, Photo JPEG, and 16-bit UYVY formats. Currently, only the UYVY module plays back to video output.

Note that SGI's output component for QuickTime supports playing back AVI files as well as QuickTime MOV files, so if you need to play back JPEG AVI files to video output, you can do so using QuickTime applications.

What format should I use to capture uncompressed video to a QuickTime file?

For uncompressed real-time capture, we encourage you to capture in: SGI 2vuy, SGI ABGR, SGI BGRA or SGI RAW (grayscale only).

What format should I use to capture compressed video to a QuickTime file?

For compressed real-time capture, we encourage you to capture in the following formats: SGI™ Photo JPEG and SGI™ Motion JPEG. The JPEG compressors do not use any hardware acceleration and are CPU-intensive. Depending on the quality selected, two processors may be necessary. Quality settings greater than 85 will result in dropped frames! The SGI prefix in the formats listed does not imply that these formats are proprietary; it is inserted to indicate accelerated capture support for these formats. The format to capture video in can be specified through the QT video control panel.

When I capture in VFW mode the preview is jerky and slow.

VFW allows two modes for displaying to the computer screen: preview and overlay. For the SGI capture component, the preview mode reflects what is being captured, i.e., the same pixel formats, image size, etc., but it does not preview in real time. The overlay mode does display the video in real time, but it displays uncompressed 32-bit BGRA regardless of the capture settings. For example, if the user sets the pixel format to 8-bit Grayscale, then in preview mode the video display would be grayscale, but in overlay mode the display would still be in color.

Note: It appears that Premiere sometimes does not switch between modes very well and will crash when enabling Overlay. To fix just remove the prem50.prf file from the directory where Premiere is installed, and restart Premiere.

What capture sizes are supported under Video for Windows?

The supported capture sizes are listed below:

For NTSC, the capture region starts at line 23 and ends at line 263 for Field 1. For Field 2, it starts at line 285 and ends at line 525. For PAL, the capture region starts at line 23 and ends at line 311 for Field 1, and for Field 2, it starts at line 336 and ends at line 624. For sizes less than the full active region, the video is down-scaled per field, then interleaved. We are currently working on a way to support capturing 486 and 487 lines for NTSC.

The capture component currently does not support arbitrary capture sizes. If you need to change the size of the captured video, use a video editing application to edit the captured file.

What capture formats are supported under QuickTime on the 320 and 540?

The JPEG and DV are SGI optimized software modules installed on all base model configurations.

What capture formats are supported under Video for Windows on the 320 and 540?

The supported capture formats are:

The term 'realtime' refers to the consistent capture of full-frame video to disk (see uncompressed video for more info). JPEG formats are compressed using software CODECs; their performance is much more dependent on other running processes on the system. 16-bit UYVY files can be played back to video output (see video playback page for more info).

ISSUES WITH ADOBE PREMIERE

In QuickTime editing mode, if I move the Premiere window around while previewing video input, the video input picture does not follow the video capture subwindow.

This appears to be the way it functions in the 5.1 release of Adobe Premiere.

In QuickTime editing mode, if I capture a movie clip, then close the movie capture window, the next time that I try to adjust the QuickTime video capture settings, Premiere crashes.

This appears to be the way it functions in the 3.0.2 release of QuickTime, and is expected to be addressed in a future QuickTime release.

When attempting to output SGI QuickTime CODEC movies to my NTSC/PAL monitor Premiere crashes.

Your output channel could be set to the incorrect output standard. If you want to use PAL as the output timing or switch between NTSC and PAL, you need to first check the timing in the SGI QuickTime video output control panel (sgiqtvout.exe in c:\winnt\system32) before restart Premiere. In the SGI QuickTime video output control panel, there is a check box to turn on the Square-pixel size to non-square pixel size conversion. If this box is checked, the capture size In Premiere needs to be in square size, i.e., 640x480.

In Video for Windows (VFW) capture mode, with the movie capture window open, when I change the capture dimensions in the VFW configuration dialogs the preview window does not change size immediately. Why?

This appears to be the way it functions in the 5.1 release of Adobe Premiere. Premiere needs to change the size of the preview window. However, any captures to disk will have the correct (new) settings; it
is just that the preview is not updated.

In Video for Windows (VFW) capture mode, when I try to capture 640x480 size images or larger, and during the capture compress them using the Radius® Cinepak® compressor, Premiere crashes or the capture fails and pops up an error dialog saying "Warning: Some frames were dropped or none were captured. The video source may not be connected, or your capture h/w may have an IRQ or other conflict."

This appears to be issue with the way Premiere functions in the 5.1 release. Premiere can only capture Cinepak at less than 640x480 resolutions. As a workaround, use vidcap32 to do the same capture, then
import the resulting file into Premiere.

In QuickTime editing mode, sometimes when I bring up the video capture settings at the same time that the movie capture window is open, the Premiere application stops responding to input.

This appears to be the way it functions in the 3.0.2 release of QuickTime, and is fixed in the 4.0 version of QuickTime release.

As a workaround: close the capture window, change your capture settings (Project/Settings/Capture) then reopen the movie capture window. No window or dialog box should overlap the movie capture window.

Why does Premiere sometimes misbehave or crash when I switch between QuickTime and Video for Windows editing modes?

It appears that Premiere sometimes does not switch between modes very well. Just remove the prem50.prf file from the directory where Premiere is installed, and restart Premiere.

Export->Print to Video didn't render correctly the first time. The output on the screen was colored still even though black and white filter was used.

Workaround: Try again and it will work.

In VFW mode, Compressor setting won't be honored at all.

Workaround: User has to select the compressor through VFW video settings dialog and click on the ok button. Clicking on the ok button is critical otherwise no compressor will be used for capturing. You have to do that every time you restart Premiere even though you didn't change the compressor setting.

In QuickTime mode, video Preview window can't overlap with transition window, navigator window, or video settings dialogs.

Workaround: This is fixed in QuickTime 4.0, upgrade to eliminate this issue.

In QuickTime mode, Clip window loop playback fails IF speed < 0, e.g., -200%. Clicking on the play
button won't generate any effect.

Workaround: Use Source Monitor window instead.

In QuickTime mode, both Manual Rec. and Time Lapse options under File->Capture->Stop Motion,
crash Premiere right away.

Workaround: Use Video for Windows mode.

The folowing are open Premiere bugs without fixes or workarounds and are listed here only to inform the user of current product limitations.