Applied Computer Systems

Viewing or Showing real-time video applications

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Summary
When Viewing or Showing to a SoftLINK Client and running an application that displays real-time video, the video is not displayed.

Details
You cannot effectively use SoftLINK to view the output of a real-time video application. This is due to the connection’s inability to transfer the video information fast enough or to SoftLINK’s ability to capture the graphics.

SoftLINK can take several seconds to display a single frame change at the Client, depending on the connection and the amount of change to the Clients screen. A real-time graphics application may change the image in a frame 20 times per second. Even at half that rate with the fastest connections, the Client will change the image 10 times before the Control can display the first frame. As a result, the Control will display a blank area.

Other applications may not use the standard Windows graphics routines to display their output because these routines are too slow. Instead, these applications use their own routines. SoftLINK cannot capture the video output from these applications and will display a blank area.

Because real-time applications make such intense demands on the Clients processor, it can become nearly impossible to control the Client. If this occurs, you will need to stop the application to regain reasonable control over the Client.

The following categories of applications are subject to the limitations just discussed:

Computerized movie files
Computerized movie files such as *.mov, *.avi, *.qt, etc., may work if they are small and have a low frames per second count. In most cases, viewing them remotely will result in dropped frames and reduced color. The larger the movie window size, the more frames will be skipped. If you need to Show a Movie Clip at a client the best workaround is transfer the movie clip to the Client and run this clip locally, or use PCIVideo to play the movie clip at the Client and synchronize it with the Control.

TV tuners or other live video, such as from a video input feed from a camera, VCR, etc. SoftLINK usually cannot display the output of TV tuners or other types of video equipment. TV and video signals are usually encoded, decoded and displayed outside of the normal functioning of your computer’s video card through a special chipset. In many cases, the computer may have a separate controller card specifically for the purpose of processing and displaying specialized video. Whether the video is handled by the computer’s video card or a separate, proprietary card, SoftLINK will display a blank Area.

DVD movies
Because DVD movies also bypass the normal video cards driver or use a separate controller card, SoftLINK will display only a blank window.

Computer Games
SoftLINK is not designed for and does not support playing games remotely. Relatively static games like Solitaire will be displayed correctly, but real-time action games will not work. These require precise, real-time responses from the user, usually keyboard or pointer input, which is impossible over a remote control connection.

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