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Text originally published in portuguese 28/12/2004

[Jeff] Kindly translated to English by Giovanni Dioro (Thanks again!)

This text is part of my review of Philips DVP642K/78 (Portuguese)

You might know by now that the beta versions of GSpot 2.5 are capable of showing whether or not an AVI file was encoded with either QPEL or GMC (making the file incompatible with the DVP642).  However if you have tried using GSpot to verify more than just a handful of files, then you must have found it very tedious verifying each file one by one, because GSpot is still lacking a couple of features, namely:

• The ability to search a directory or even the entire hard drive for avi files;
• The ability to filter and exhibit only those files containing GMC or QPEL;

Although these functions haven't been added, I came up with a method where you can verify every AVI file on  your entire Hard Drive and find out which ones  have GMC or QPEL, fairly quickly and without much fuss   :)

The process is quite simple. The step by step process here might look a little complicated, but you will see that it really isn't.

You will need the  2.52 b01 version of GSpot. Different versions might not have what we need.

First, we need to set up the feature for the exportation of GSpot results to a file folder by going to OPTIONS -->EXPORT (if you have a different screen than the one below,  then you have the wrong version of GSpot):

1. Tick "Enable Exporting";
2. It is also necessary to tick the "Generic default for readable NFO". The other two options give us files that are incompatible with what we want to do;
   
3. Select the final option and give a name to the archive where you want GSpot to export the information regarding the films.
   

GSpot is now ready. Leave it open while we search for films.

The trick is to use the Windows Search command from the Start menu in order to get a list of all or of some of your AVI files.  Open the search dialogue and enter *.AVI in the search field.  You can search your entire hard drive or a specific folder where your films are saved:

Now that you have a list of all your films, select them all.  You can do this by typing CTRL+A on the keyboard or by clicking on Edit-->Select All.

With your found files, click and drag them into the GSpot window.

GSpot will show you that it obtained a list of a given number of files (in our example, there are 65 files):

Start the GSpot process.  You can use the menu (File-->Batch-->Process All Files) or you can simply use the F5 function key:

GSpot will process all of the AVI's on the list, and you will be able to visualize the process as it is working.  When it has finished, open the text file (that we previously set up) in notepad or wordpad.  For each film, it should have section like the following:

FILE_NAME                      Muse - Apocalypse please live.avi
FILE_NAME_WITH_PATH            E:\Filmes\Muse - Apocalypse please live.avi
FILE_SIZE                      43,571,200
CONT_BASETYPE                  AVI(.AVI)
CONT_SUBTYPE                   OpenDML (AVI v2.0), 
CONT_INTERLEAVE_TIME           40
CONT_INTERLEAVE_PRELOAD        470
CONT_INTERLEAVE_ALIGN          Split
CONT_TOTAL_BITRATE             0
CONT_BYTES_MISSING             0
CONT_AUDIO_STREAM_COUNT        1
VIDEO_CODEC_TYPE               DX50/divx
VIDEO_CODEC_NAME               DivX 5.0
VIDEO_CODEC_STATUS             Codec(s) are Installed
VIDEO_DURATION                 00:04:41
VIDEO_FRAME_COUNT              7037
VIDEO_QF                       0.176
VIDEO_SIZE_X                   560
VIDEO_SIZE_Y                   448
VIDEO_DISPLAY_SIZE_X           
VIDEO_DISPLAY_SIZE_Y           
VIDEO_ASPECT_DECIMAL           
VIDEO_ASPECT_FRAC              
VIDEO_PICS_PER_SEC             25.000
VIDEO_FRAMES_PER_SEC           25.000
VIDEO_FIELDS_PER_SEC           
VIDEO_BITRATE                  1105
VIDEO_MPEG4                    MPEG-4
VIDEO_MPEG4_BVOP               
VIDEO_MPEG4_NVOP               
VIDEO_MPEG4_QPEL               
VIDEO_MPEG4_GMC                
VIDEO_H264                     
VIDEO_SAR                      
VIDEO_DAR                      1.250
VIDEO_MPEG2                    
VIDEO_MPEG2_I_L                
VIDEO_MPEG2_PROG               
VIDEO_MPEG2_TFF                
VIDEO_MPEG2_BFF        

The film in the example above doesn't have QPEL or GMC.

You can take a look at the text file looking for the specific film you want, but to cut to the chase,  use the "Find" command (CTRL+F) in Notepad or Wordpad. For example, to find a film encoded with QPEL, search for " qpel".  Yes, and you need the space before the word "qpel" otherwise the search will stop everytime it comes across the term, "VIDEO_MPEG4_QPEL" (once per each film). By putting the space before the word, you will only find the films that really have QPEL.

In the example below, I found immediately a film with both QPEL and GMC:

If you maximize the size of the window of Wordpad/Notepad you will easily be able to see the name and path of the film without having to scroll up or down.  And then you can make a note or copy and paste to another text file, and then proceed to the following by clicking on Find Again