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December 12, 1996
These Release Notes include important information about your new video hardware, software (Software Essentials and Video Development Environment), and documentation from Parallax Graphics. This information supercedes the README file on your CD. The Release Notes include:
NOTE: If you use Netscape, read Bug/Anomaly/Restriction# 7.
NOTE: The version of Parallax Graphics Software Essentials or Video Development Environment for Solaris 2.4/OpenWindows 3.4 on CD-ROM Release 2.0 is the same as the previous (CD-ROM Release 1.0). If you already have that version installed on your system, there is no need to re-install it from CD-ROM. CD-ROM 2.0 gives you the option to upgrade to another Parallax Graphics-supported operating system/windowing system whenever you want to. If you have any questions, please contact Parallax Graphics technical support at 408-727-2220 (California, USA), 703-715-3017 (Virginia, USA), or e-mail tsupport@parallax.com.
Bugs, Anomalies, or Restrictions
We have identified the following bugs, anomalies, or restrictions:
Pre-Installation
1. Required Sun Patches (Audio,etc.) The Jumbo Kernel Patch fixes a problem with SBus memory mapping which results in tearing of the desktop image. The SPARC 5 Audio Patch fixes a problem with audio. For your video card to work correctly, you must install the recommended Sun patches for Solaris 2.4. Contact your Sun sales representative and ask for the following:
* Sun Jumbo Kernel Patch 101945
* Sun SPARC 5 Audio Patch 102125
2. Video Cards without Compression, Solaris 1.x Upgrade If you have a Parallax video card without compression (XVideo -24SV-xxx or MultiVideo) running on Solaris 1.x (SunOS 4.1.x) you will need to update the contents of the non-volatile RAM (NVRAM) on that card before installing the Parallax Solaris 2.x software. You need to execute the script multivideo_fix, which is in the directory ./parallax/diag/nvram_patches. To update the NVRAM, in console mode on Solaris 2.x, change directories to /opt/parallax/diag/nvram_patches and type: ./multivideo_fix
3. SPARC 20 with SX Framebuffer If you have a SPARC 20 with an SX framebuffer, contact Parallax Graphics technical support for special instructions on how to install your video card or Click here for instructions.4. Multi-Headed with 2 Parallax Cards Not Supported
Do not put more than 1 Parallax Graphics video card in a workstation with
this release of Parallax software, because this will cause the system to fail.
5. Weitek's POWERuP Chip Not Supported Weitek's POWERuP CPU chip is not currently supported by Parallax Graphics video products on Sun SPARCstation 2 and IPX workstations.
General
6. Do Not Try Compressing with Non-Compression Video Cards
If you have XVideo without compression or MultiVideo and try to use hardware compression (if you try to capture a MovieTool movie or VideoTool JPEG or JFIF still image) you will hang the system. To recover, turn the power off and then on. Please do not select these options.
7. Netscape and Pull-Down Menus On some systems, if you are using the Netscape application and you rapidly select top-level pull-down menus, this may cause the server to crash.
8.Shared Memory Segment Problems
Our widget does not correctly release shared memory segments and is not aware of how many shared memory segments are created or in use. When a shared memory widget is destroyed, it is not freed or destroyed correctly. Subsequently when you exceed the limit of shared memory segments (six) the system crashes.
9. 81 MHz and Above SPARC 5, SPARC 10, and SPARC 20
High speed (81 MHz and Above) SPARC 5s, 10s, and 20s with XVideo-SVC cards are sometimes crashing during compression. To recover, turn the power off and then on.
10. Starting Openwin Without Options
Starting OpenWindows by typing just "openwin" without any options causes a watchdog reset and an operating system crash. This can be avoided by using the "-dev" option and specifying a device when launching OpenWindows.
11. JPEG Data Corruption
Some JPEG images captured by XVideo or PowerVideo have x bytes of garbage data at the end of the frame, causing the lower right corner of the frame to look odd. This problem is increasingly frequent and obvious as the compression and Q factor are increased (image quality decreased). These JPEG images can be displayed by Parallax hardware but can't be read correctly by software decoders (such as "xv" and "ImageMagick display") which will give error/warning messages. This bug has been fixed in Parallax's release 1.0 for Solaris 2.5.
12. Multithreading Not Supported
Multithreading (the distribution of tasks to multiple processors on a single workstation) is not supported in this Parallax release or in previous releases.
13. Graphics Over Video (and GOV Program) Graphics over Video is not properly supported in this release. Our sample program GOV does not run correctly and causes the server to exit. We recommend that you do not use this sample program.
14. Xor Problems If you are using Xor, you may encounter some of the following problems: mouse droppings, portions of screen blacked out after refresh, and/or erasing not working in a graphics context.
15. Highlighting Text Blacks It Out In Parallax's Solaris 2.3 and 2.4 releases, using a ddxPLXtv2.so.1a patch solved the Xor graphics context problem, but creates a worse problem. The new bug prevents highlighting text. When a user selects text with the mouse, the text is blacked out instead of highlighted.
16. Mouse Dropping on 8-Bit Server If you are using the 8-bit server, you may get mouse droppings.
17. Stippling Not Working: Inactive Buttons Look Active
Stippling is not working correctly in this release. Inactive buttons look the same as active buttons instead of greyed out (stippled). Other stippling is also not working.
18. Digitizer Remains On after Exiting Test Programs
When you exit test Programs such as xlib_test, the digitizer remains on. The digitizer may also remain on if you exit VideoTool or MovieTool through a means other than the menu bar.
19. Console Runs White Text on Black
When exiting the Parallax OpenWindows server, the background of the console is not restored to white; instead, the console is set to "white text on black background" mode.
20. Video Cannot Be Placed into DirectColor Visuals
The server code in this release will not allow video to be placed into DirectColor videos, only 24-bit TrueColor and 8-bit PseudoColor visuals.
21. Video 24-Bit Only We have modified several programs to make all video windows 24-bit TrueColor windows. Previous versions of these programs placed video (i.e. 24-bit data) into 8-bit PseudoColor windows.
22. C++ Compiler Support
We are not 100% compliant with C++ compilers. This problem will be fixed in our Solaris 2.5 release. For full C++ compliance, add the following lines to XpPLlxProtos.h:
23. Color Blotches after XView Alerts
XView Alerts sometimes create "technicolor" blotches when they appear on top of TrueColor windows such as video windows. To fix, refresh the screen.
24. Video Flicker when Video Windows Overlap Obscuring a video window with another window causes video to flicker. This also happens on low-resolution output for XVideo-VIO or -RGB.
25. Shared Memory Runs Slowly with Some Programs
Shared memory is not working correctly with some programs. jpegContinuousTest runs slower with shared memory than without shared memory. The same result occurs when using jpegTimingTest with jpegPlaybackTest. These programs use the jpeg widget.
26. Can't Change the Color of the Cursor
The color of the cursor can't be changed. Black is the only supported color.
27. Support for 640 x 480 Display
640 x 480 display formats are not supported by the server.
28. Shortened Delay for DoTimeOut Error The time limit before a call returns is too long and the error message DoTimeOut Error will appear on your console. You can ignore this message.
29. Backing Store Refreshes Do Not Repaint Properly When you are using backing-store, refreshes do not repaint properly when jpeg or video is unmapped.
30. GXxor Does Not Work with Text GXxor does not work with text.
MovieTool
31. Decompressing Compressed Images in MovieTool, Uniflix When you first open MovieTool or Paradise Software's Uniflix, you must compress an image (any image or movie) first before you are able to decompress and display images or movies. This applies to displaying stored compressed images and movies, as well as live compressed images and movies coming in over the network.
32. Monitoring Audio in MovieTool MovieTool: When you open the audio control panel, the audio Monitor On/Off tells you Monitor is on, but actually it is off. To monitor the audio, you will need to toggle the Monitor On/Off buttons (turn it off and then on).
33. Offset Wrong on Playback of Movie When playing back a previously compressed movie, the offset looks wrong. With each successive decompression, the decompression is placed lower and to the right. For example, one decompression created a 1/2-pixel wide line on top of the video.
34. SPARC 5: Corrupted Frames in Movies On some SPARC-5's, MovieTool encounters problems recording movies and will show corrupted images. To fix this problem, disable MovieTool's use of shared memory by launching MovieTool and do one of the following: 1. Type the following at the command line MovieTool -xrm '*useSharedMemory:False' 2. Type the following in your .Xdefaults file: MovieTool.useSharedMemory:False.
35. MovieTool: Live Video Freezes Live video window freezes during movie playback: When playing back an image the live video window will freeze at the beginning of the operation. Clicking on the window will resume live video display.
36. Any_Window Menu Button Not Working The Any_Window menu button (to allow non-video windows to be compressed) in the MovieTool Input menu is not working.
37. MovieTool Sample Rate Errors When you start MovieTool with a specified sample rate, MovieTool does not reflect the appropriate frame rate when it comes up, and when you start MovieTool with a sample rate of 8000 and try to record a movie, your attempts to record a movie will fail with a "Recording was stopped due to a problem recording audio for frame x" error.
38. Selecting Full, Quarter, or Small Size When using MovieTool, selecting Full_Size, Quarter_Size, or Small_Size resizes both the live video input window an open Movie playback window. This resize should not have affected the Movie window.
MovieTool and VideoTool
39. "Can't Open" VideoTool, MovieTool, and other Motif Programs Some applications are based on the Xt Intrinsics toolkit; these include the Motif-based MovieTool and VideoTool applications, and some Xt-based example programs. If you do not have your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment set to include a lib directory containing Xt (i.e., "libXt.so.x"), you will encounter an error like this when trying to run Xt-based programs: libXt.so.4: can't open file: errno=2 To fix this problem, add the following to the appropriate startup file (this assumes your Xt library is in /usr/lib/X11; your installation may differ.): setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/lib/X11:/usr/openwin/lib (see your Software Installation Guide for details).
40. MovieTool Movies and VideoTool JPEG Still Images Look Bad If you open a Parallax JPEG format still image or MovieTool movie that was captured under Solaris 2.5, HP-UX, or IBM AIX and it looks bad (low contrast, color too dim, and blocky), then you need to get the images converted with fixMovieQ. Solaris 2.4 and earlier releases of our Sun software use an incorrect JPEG compression Q table, which is fixed in Solaris 2.5, HP-UX, and IBM AIX. To display the images at high quality, you need to get new-Q-table-movies/images converted into old-Q-table-movies/images with fixMovieQ. (fixMovieQ also converts old-Q-table-movies/images to new-Q-table-movies/images for display under Solaris 2.5, HP-UX, or IBM AIX.) For information on how to use fixMovieQ, see your Multimedia User's Guide (Solaris 2.x) Appendix C. On your CD-ROM, fixMovieQ is available under Solaris 2.5. If you or a friend have a Solaris 2.5 (or 2.4) system, you can use fixMovieQ to convert the images. If not, contact Parallax Graphics technical support for a version of fixMovieQ for your operating system.
41. MovieTool after VideoTool: Odd Behavior Running MovieTool after running VideoTool may cause MovieTool records to "misbehave." If you see odd behavior, exit and restart the windowing server.
42. Greyed-Out JPEG Images On some of the faster machines (i.e Sparc 10 and Sparc 20) occasionally windows displaying JPEG images are greyed out. If this happens do a compression (save an image) and the problem will correct itself.
VideoTool
43. No Support for RGB Output VideoTool does not support output of RGB video to VCR or other external devices for XVideo-RGB users.
44. VideoTool Output, Select_Window Not Working For XVideo-VIO/RGB users, VideoTool's Output/Select_Window feature is not working. 45. Extraneous Messages Saving a TIFF format still image in VideoTool causes an extraneous message to appear in the terminal window. 46. Resizing Video Window Resizing a VideoTool window does not always resize the video properly: occasionally a white bar appears at the bottom of the window. The work-around is to place the left mouse button on right bottom video window corner and move it upwards.
47. 2 Live Video Windows: Part of One May Appear in the Other When two live video windows are open simultaneously, occasionally a portion of one video will appear in the other video window.
Video Development Environment
48. XSetPlaneMask Not Working with Text XSetPlaneMask (a tool for displaying more than one image in the same place, overlapping) does not work with text operations.
49. XCopyPlane Not Working Correctly XCopyPlane does not work correctly. If you give it a source that is not 1-bit, the machine hangs.
50. XPlxScaleCopyArea Not Working XPlxScaleCopyArea does not work.
51. XPlxPutShmCImage Does Not Center Image for Non-Zero Destination XPlxPutShmCImage does not properly center the image when the destination parameters are not zero and destination width and height are larger than the source. The work-around is to center the image prior to using the call.
52. XPlxPutCImage Ignores Scale (Crop, and Squeeze) The XPlxPutCImage function ignores the scale instructions telling it whether to crop or squeeze a displayed image.
53. jpeg_timing_test and jpeg_playback_test: Wrong Format jpeg_timing_test and jpeg_playback_test do not use the standard MovieTool (JPEG movie file specification) format, which they should use.
54. xv_set, xv_config, and xv_pconfig Not Working xv_set, xv_config, and xv_pconfig do not work.
55. JFIFOutputFile to Same File Twice JPEG widget: You can't save a JFIFOutputFile to the same file name more than once.
56. GetTrueColorVisual Not Working GetTrueColorVisual() is not portable for programs that use multiple Displays where one Display has a TrueColor Framebuffer and the other Display does not.
57. XPlxCImage Structure Error The XPlxCImage structure contains an element called "info" which is defined as a (char *) in XpPlxExt.h. It is actually a pointer to a XShmSegmentInfo structure.
Tested Hardware
This hardware and software has been tested on the following systems from the Sun SPARCstation line of workstations:
* SPARC 1 * SPARC IPX, IPC * SPARC 2 * SPARC 5 * SPARC 10 * SPARC 20
If you have questions about using your Parallax Graphics video card with another kind of Sun SPARCstation or display, please contact our technical support engineers (see contact information below).
Fixes or Enhancements We have incorporated the following improvements over the previous release of Solaris 2.4/OpenWindows 3.4: 1. All 6 Operating System/Windowing System Combinations This CD-ROM release gives you all the software available for Sun/Solaris systems, so that you can choose the operating system/windowing system you want and upgrade when you want to. This CD-ROM contains the following combinations of operating system/windowing systems: * Solaris 2.5 (SunOS 5.5)/OpenWindows 3.5 (Parallax Version 1.0) * Solaris 2.4 (SunOS 5.4)/OpenWindows 3.4 (Parallax Version 1.1) * Solaris 2.3 (SunOS 5.3)/OpenWindows 3.3 (Parallax Version 1.1) * Solaris 1.x (SunOS 4.1.x)/Openwindows 3.0 (Parallax Version 3.07) * Solaris 1.x (SunOS 4.1.x)/MIT X11R5 (Parallax Version 1.2) * Solaris 1.x (SunOS 4.1.x)/MIT X11R5 (Parallax Version 1.1) Return to Top
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