This document describes what most of the settings in WinDVD Tweaker do and gives

some extra information about some of the sound formats and video filtering meth
ods.
****General Setup****
*Registry Location*
This is used to identify where the WinDVD registry entries are located. These ar
e used by the program to store information.
The default area of "Software\InterVideo\WinDVD" works for most versions of the
program but some versions use a different area. Usually it is like this "Softwar
e\InterVideo\?????".
You can chech where the location of the settings are by clicking the start butto
n.
Then click on run. type "regedit" in here with out the inverted commas. Press En
ter.
Now click the plus sign next to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE". Now go to "software" and t
hen "InterVideo". You may see some areas like common and registration but just l
ook for ones with plus signs next to them. Now you can change the settings in Wi
nDVD Tweaker and click on apply then. Try out the settings then.
The tweaker will now apply your settings to this area and also get its informati
on from this section also.
Usually the entries can be found at "Software\InterVideo\" and the next part can
be found by going to the info section of WinDVD Tweaker and look at the end of
the install path. This can be it sometimes.
*DVD-ROM*
*Drive*
You can change which drive on your computer that WinDVD will look for a DVD on.
Usually "Auto Detect" will work fine but if it still doesnt recognise your DVD's
then try changing it to the letter of your drive.
*AutoPlay*
If this is enabled, when WinDVD is opened it will automatically play a DVD if on
e is found without the need to press play.
*DMA Check At Startup*
When this is enabled WinDVD checks to see if DMA is enabled on your drive. DMA (
Direct Memory Access) allows the drives on your PC to transfer data around your
PC without the need to access the CPU each time. This can speed up your drives a
lot and it can be enabled by right clicking on MY Computer on your desktop.
Go to the device manager (In Windows 98 just click on the "Device Manager" tab,
In Windows 2000 click on the "Hardware" tab and then on "Device Manager".
Now go to (In Windows98 go to "DVD/CD Rom Devices" and double click on your driv
e and click on DMA if it is not checked. You may also go to "Disk Drives and ena
ble DMA on your Hard Disk if it is not already selected. In Windows 2000 go to "
IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" and go into "Advanced SEttings" and then the "IDE Cha
nnel" sections (should be two)and change the transfer modes to "DMA if available
" if it is not already selected.) Restart the PC.
*Language*
Here you may change the default language if you know the name of the DLL file th
at. EG. English is the default. RCENU.dll is the english file in the WinDVD fole
r and if you type RCENU as the language in WinDVD Tweaker then WinDVD uses RCENU
.dll as the language file. Click on the "Default" button to restore English (RCE
NU). Click apply to save this setting.
*Skins*
*Directory*
This is where WinDVD looks for the Skins folder which contains all the pictures
and files to give you a nice player.
You may change it if you like but the default is usually correct. WinDVD will gi
ve an error on startup if it doesnt find the skins folder in the specified direc
tory. The default button restores C:\Programfiles\Intervideo\WinDVD as the path
but different versions may have a different path. Just leave it the way it is to
avoid problems unless you know what you are doing.
*Current*
This displays the name of the skin in use by WinDVD. Future versions of WinDVD T
weaker will include the ability to select different skins and build your own. Fo
r now right click on the player within WinDVD to see the different skins.
Click the Default button to restore the default skin to use which is "WinDVD Ex
".
*View*
*On Screen Display*
Prints commands on the screen when used. eg: play
Can sometimes get annoying.
*Toolbar*
Shows the toolbar in WinDVD window when WinDVD is not maximized
The toolbar contains play buttons and the usual controls but the actual player i
tself looks way better so I say turn it off.
*Topmost*
Make WinDVD always on top of other programs. (sometimes doesn't work)
*StatusBar*
Shows status bar in WinDVD window when WinDVD is not maximized. It shows things
like how long the program is running but again the player shows this too so I re
ccommend turning it off.
*Hide Performance Warning*
Clicking on this disables the warning that WinDVD gives. It just says that playb
ack performance is dependant on the speed of your PC.
Disable it for comfort.
*Display Menu*
Displays a menu button in WinDVDs window. (usually the button does nothing)
*Player*
View the WinDVD player when the program is opened! I say you turn it on.

****SOUND SETUP****
This is a description of the different words used when describing audio.
Dolby - Dolby is a company who have developed the ability to encode sound on a C
D\DVD\other which can be decoded and sent to a certain number of speakers giving
awsome sound. There are different of Dolby formats including Dolby Digital2.1 a
nd Dolby Digital 5.1.
DTS - DTS is another company who did the same thing Dolby did but when they enco
de the sound onto CD\DVD\other they do so without using compression (lowers size
of files). This enables DTS sound to keep more of the original sound than Dolby
Digital does.
Some versions of WinDVD dont support DTS mode and you wont hear any sound if you
select DTS from a menu in a DVD if this is the case.
LFE - Low Frequency Encoding is information encoded with some dolby\dts DVD's wh
ich sends low frequency sounds to your AMP\Subwoofer to give more Bass(Deep soun
ds) which sound nice. Even if you dont have an AMP\subwoofer you should enable t
his within WinDVD Tweaker to enable maximum pleasure when listening to movies wi
th LFE encoded on them.
5.1 - 5.1 refers to a type of audio output which can give 5 different sounds to
five different speakers to give true surround sound. The .1 refers to the LFE\Su
b\Amp channel.

*****AUDIO MODES*****
2 Speaker\MONO - When you select 2 Speaker\Mono mode audio output you will hear
the same sound coming from the two front speakers and no sound from the back two
\front middle if any. WinDVD will get two seperate sound channels from the DVD (
which there usually is) and mix them so you hear one sound from both speakers.
2 Speaker\Stereo - When you select 2 Speaker\Stereo mode audio output you will h
ear two different audio channels coming from the front left and from the front r
ight speakers and no sound from any other speakers if any exist.
2 Speaker\Dolby Surround Compatible - When you select this mode WinDVD will use
Dolby Surround techniques to give you two seperate audio channels from the front
left and front right speakers and no sound from any other speakers if any exist
.
2 Speaker\3D Audio - When you select this mode WinDVD will give two seperate aud
io channels from the front left and front right speakers and no sound from any o
ther speakers if any exist while the audio may not be normal stereo. WinDVD will
use certain techniques to move the audio from one channel to another to give al
l sorts of nice effects even though they are not true to the original sound.
4 Speaker mode - When you select this mode WinDVD will give 4 seperate audio cha
nnels to each corner speaker and none to the middle front if one exists. It will
use 5.1 channel sound if available on the DVD and use all six channels but will
mix the front middle channel into the left and right speakers so you will still
hear these sounds also.
6 Speaker mode(5.1 Channel) - When you select this mode WinDVD will give 5 seper
ate audio channels to all five speakers and a seperate LFE channel to the AMP\su
bwoofer. This is true surround as no mixing of channels is required and provides
the best sound experience.
S/PDIF mode - This mode makes WinDVD output the sound from the DVD directly to a
S/PDIF port if available. This port is on most new sound cards and is connected
to the Amp(Amplifier) which then splits the sound into its five channels. This
is the best way to get 5.1 surround sound as WinDVD does not do any calculations
in terms of sound and this mode may make WinDVD perform faster than some of the
other modes. You need a S/PDIF port and compatible speaker system though.
Headphones - Select this if you have Dolby Headphones to get surround sound from
them.
*Amplification*
This allows you to select either Normal(Reccommended) or Amplified(louder). Sele
ct amplified if your speakers sound low even on max volume to give an extra boos
t.

****VIDEO SETUP****
*Hardware Mode Options*
Use these if you are using hardware mode (Hardware Motion Compensation)
*NVIDIA Mode*
If you own an nvidia graphics card select it in here to get some extra video pla
yback speed.
*DxVA and VMR* (From Microsoft) VMR only takes effect in Windows XP
DirectX VA for Hardware Video Acceleration
Decoding a video stream with pure software places a huge demand on the
processor, affecting overall system performance. Hardware that supports
video acceleration shifts the load from the processor to the display
chips on the graphics adapter, greatly increasing the capacity of the PC
to render high-quality video and high-performance graphics.
Microsoft DirectX VA provides a standard interface for applications and
device drivers to interact with the hardware acceleration of video
decoding, including alpha blending for DVD subpicture support.
The DirectX VA specification, released as part of DirectX 8.0, provides
important advantages over vendor-specific solutions:
The DirectX VA interface provides cross-vendor compatibility between
software applications and advanced graphics acceleration capabilities.
Graphics hardware drivers that support DirectX VA provide generic access
to the acceleration capabilities of their hardware.
Hardware can be tested with generic drivers on standard systems, rather
than requiring separate drivers and testing for each system
configuration.
The DirectX VA interface extracts the most basic, computationally
intensive portions of the MPEG-2 specification and supports their
acceleration in hardware. DirectX VA can also support other key video
codecs (ITU-T Recommendations H.263 and H.261; MPEG-1 and MPEG-4).
The establishment of this common interface is expected to increase the
capability of computing systems to support video, increase the demand
for software applications that provide this capability, and increase the
demand for high-performance graphics capabilities.
DirectShow Video Mixing Renderer
The Microsoft DirectShowR Video Mixing Renderer (VMR) represents the
next generation in video rendering on the Windows platform, replacing
the Overlay Mixer component in previous Windows versions. DirectShow VMR
is the default renderer for Windows XP.
The earlier graphics chip architecture has separate processing for video
overlays on the back-end, but VMR moves it to the front-end and the 3D
pipe. Interoperability is a real capability for a PC that includes
support for DirectX VA and VMR integrated in chipsets, drivers, and
decoders.
DirectShow VMR combines the rendering and surface allocation
functionality of several DirectShow filters into a single renderer for
all scenarios. This new filter is designed for the current and future
generation of adapters.
Software applications using DirectShow VMR can take advantage of these
new features:
Real mixing of multiple video streams, using the alpha-blending
capabilities of Direct3DR-capable devices.
Media playback support, including source color keying, overlay surface
management, macrovision, frame-stepping, and improved multiple-monitor
support.
True windowless rendering. It is no longer necessary to make the video
playback window a child of the application's window in order to contain
the video playback. The VMR's new windowless rendering mode allows
applications to easily host video playback within any window without
having to forward window messages to the renderer for renderer-specific
processing.
Support for high-quality video playback concurrently on multiple
windows.
A new renderless playback mode, where applications can supply their own
allocator component to get access to the decoded video image before it
is displayed on the screen.
The ability for applications to easily alpha-blend their own static
image data-such as channel logos or user-interface components-with the
video in a smooth, flicker-free way.
The ability to add a third-party compositing component to implement
effects and transitions between multiple video streams entering the VMR.
Backward compatibility with existing applications.
Support for the Microsoft DirectX VA specification.
The VMR uses the graphics processing capabilities of the system's
graphics adapter exclusively; it does not perform any blending or
rendering of video using the host processor, which would greatly impact
the frame rate and quality of the video being displayed.
The Video Port Manager, now a separate component, manages video capture
separately from rendering and coordinates with VMR for preview of
captured data. Separating capture from rendering allows video port
streams to be alpha-blended and time-shifting applications to capture
data in PC storage for delayed playback.

*De-Interlace Mode*
Use this to select how WinDVD filters the picture. This is very important to the
image quality.
I reccommend using Weave for movies and Bob for lower quality special feature se
ctions of DVDs.
Weave will give much better quality in movies but give horizontal lines in lower
quality sections.
Bob will give bad quality video for movies but nice quality in low quality areas
.
*Hardware Motion Compensation*
Use this to enable the use of your graphics card to speed up your video speed.
This will reduce CPU usage and improve your video playback speed if your video c
ard supports it.
You cannot take screenshots in newer versions of WinDVD when this is enabled.
*Software Mode Options*
Use these if you are not using Hardware motion compensation.
*Custom Quality Options*
*Smooth Horizontal Scaling*
Smoothens the image when the WinDVD window is scaled horizontally
*Smooth Vertical Scaling*
Smoothens the image when the WinDVD window is scaled vertically
*Software Bob (De-interlacing)*
Enable software de-interlacing which smoothens the image.
*More Quality Options*
Use this bar to select the quality versus speed bar. If you encounter very slow
playback try more speed but if not select highes quality.
*Other*
*Yellow/Blue:*
Color hue. More to the left gives more yellow and more to the right gives more b
lue color.
*Green/Red:*
Color saturation. More to the left is more green and more to the right gives mor
e red.
*Brightness*
You know what this does.
*Startup Fullscreen*
WinDVD Starts up Fullscreen (what a surprise)
*Hardware BOB*
Enables hardware bob de-interlacing which may give faster video playback but may
cause slight flickering. May crash WinDVD also.
*Disable Display of Quality Settings*
Disables the ability to change quality settings within WinDVDs interface.
*Lock aspect Ratio*
Makes WinDVD keep the size of the movie (eg. widescreen) when in fullscreen mode
.
*TV Overscan*
Enables a TV Overscan. (Dunno anymore)
*Closed Caption Foreground*
Dunno yet
*Closed Caption Background*
Dunno either
****INFORMATION****
*File Versions*
This gives the versions of the files that WinDVD uses most.
*Serial Code*
Gives the serial code for WinDVD
*Install Path*
Where WinDVD was installed to.
****BACKUP****
Clicking on backup backs up the current settings of the tweaker.
You may restore these settings at any time by clicking on restore.
After clicking on restore you must apply the settings by clicking on apply