If you frequently visit web sites on the Internet, like ESPN's Sportszone, or you have a collection of CDs with video on them, you have no doubt wanted to use an Amiga compatible viewer program. Up til now, most programs like QT/CyberQT for graphic card owners), CyberAVI, and the new MooVID have been able to play some of these files for you, but either did not support all the compression codecs or lacked a nice GUI control.

This is where MaVi-Player steps in. MaVi-Player is a multiformat playback program developed for Pro-Dev's MaVi API System. MaVi-Player can handle most of the popular multimedia formats found out on the net including Quicktime, AVI, IFFAnim, GifAnim, aiff, and wav files. In particular, MaVi-Player handles Quicktime and AVI files using the Intel Indeo 3.2 Codec. Apparently Quicktime and AVI files use compression codecs for both the audio and video portion of the file (sometimes more than one type of compression for each portion). Many Amiga players did not support this 3.2 version of the Indeo codec.

MaVi stands for Multimedia Audio Video Interface which uses a Windows-like "Registry" program to control MaVi's functionality. The Registry provides system wide preferences, (de)install tracking, small application databases, file-types (classes), system-hardware informations, identification and protection information. This special kind of database gives more flexibility for the user and developer than the usual ENV: or ENVARC: settings according to Pro-Dev. MaVi uses the MUI GUI interface allowing other Amiga programmers to incorporate it and the MaVi APIs into their own programs if they wish.

MaVi-Player is the program that is bundled with the MaVi System Demo available off Aminet, or Pro-Dev's Web Site. To install, you simply download the file, extract the archive, and run the installation script. For $45 you can register MaVi over the net, and receive the keyfile to fully enable (as well as send some bug fixes) the demo copy. This registration process took only one day after my credit card was approved. Much easier than some of the nightmares Americans have encountered in registering shareware from Germany.

MaVi is not for stock Amigas. Besides requiring CyberGraphic's RTG system (or Picasso96), you need to have a graphics card, Workbench 3.0, MUI, 8 megs of ram, and a 68030 running at 50 megahertz. MaVi also requires some space on your hard drive, around 2 megs of space not including all the AVI or Quicktime files you may have collected.

The interface is simple, clearly laid out with gadgets for playing/pausing the file, timer, sliding frame advance, and a separate window for volume control and balance. You have your choice between gadgets that are Amiga-ish, Window-ish, and futuristic. MaVi has menu options to scale the size of the window on playback, as well as set the screenmode (default is on the Workbench).

Testing the program, I fed it several QuickTime and AVI files using various forms of compression codecs. MaVi had no trouble playing most of them. Only one QuickTime using Indeo's most recent codec could not play. It is unlikely that MaVi will add it, or any other new codec, unless they receive more registrations according to Pro-Dev. MaVi did well playing files off my hard drive, ram disk, and 12x CD Rom. Most impressive was that MaVi was coded to handle the PCs non standard playback rate which usually causes other Amiga players to skip frames or unsyncronize sound playback.

One word of caution is that MaVi does tend to crash on some configurations. On my machine, using Picasso 96, MaVi did not like playing back files on the Workbench in greater than 256 colors. However, on its own screen, MaVi was able to playback in 16 and 24 bit modes. Testing MaVi on Paul's CyberVision PPC graphics card produced more frequent crashing, possibly due to his new version of CyberGraphics 4.0.

For those who frequently playback QuickTime or AVI files, and have fairly strong Amigas, I would recommend MaVi as the most polished playback program. If do not have a graphics card, then I would recommend sticking with QT and such. I think MaVi would do much better in the Amiga market if their price was lower. Unfortunately, not many other developers have been using the MaVi system in their programs to warrant the expense.

MooVID seems to be a very interesting competitor to MaVi. While just being a playback program and not a "system", MooVID features AGA support, the latest codec support, much cheaper price ($10), and is mostly coded in assembly language. MooVID will also feature a nice GUI interface, and special support for Picasso IV's PIP (video in a window) display. Demo versions of all these players, as well as the full versions of QT/CyberQT, are available on Aminet.