TAKSI manual v0.1                                               March 10, 2004
==============================================================================


0. About:
---------
Taksi is a screenshot/video-capture program for 3D applications (games, and 
etc.) Currently, the only Direct X 8 applications are supported. Support for 
DirectX 9 and OpenGL will be implemented in the future.  Soon, that is.
Taksi is free software.


1. Current state:
-----------------
ALPHA. DirectX 8 support complete. (Or so it seems. :-)


2. Capture specifications:
--------------------------
Screenshot format: 24 bit BMP files.
Video: uncompressed AVI-files (no audio).


3. Games tested with:
---------------------
Pro Evolution Soccer 3, F1 2001, FIFA 2003, 
WarCraft III (in-game movies don't work).


4. Usage:
---------

STEP 1. Run taksi.exe
STEP 2. Run a DirectX 8 game
        (The order of these two steps is not important for taksi. It should be
        able to hook on the game in either case.)

STEP 3. Look at left top corner of the screen. 
        If you see a green rectangle in there, then Taksi was able
        to sucessfully hook on the game.


5. Default keys:
----------------

 F5: Turn visual indicator ON/OFF.
 F6: Toggle system-wide hook mode. When ON (indicator turns blue), allows 
     for mapping into multiple applications, but may have a strong negative
     effect on the overall performance of the system. Recommended state: OFF.
 F7: Small screenshot (WIDTH/2 x HEIGHT/2).
 F8: Regular screenshot (WIDTH x HEIGHT).
F12: Video capture ON/OFF (Writes an uncompressed AVI-file).
     (Dimensions of the video are WIDTH/2 x HEIGHT/2.)


6. IMPORTANT DISK SPACE CONSIDERATIONS:
---------------------------------------
Taksi writes uncompressed AVI files. Basically, this means you need a lot
of free disk space. (Once captured, the AVI-files can be compressed into
much smaller files, using the tools like an excellent free software
program, called VirtualDub by Avery Lee.) However, at the time of
capture, for performance reasons, no compression is done, which means that
video files grow large very fast.

There is no time limit in the video capture mode, so the only constraint
is the available disk space. Keep this in mind, when setting the directory
for you captured videos.


7. Configuration:
-----------------
Taksi uses configuration file, called "taksi.cfg". It is optional, so the 
program can operate without it, using built-in default settings. 
The configuration file is managed automatically by Taksi (it is read
on start-up, and updated when "Save And Apply" button is clicked.).
However, it can be edited manually as well.

The following options exist:

1) Capture directory: 
This is the directory, where your screenshots and video will be stored. 
IMPORTANT: This directory must exist before any capture is attempted.

2) Target frame rate:
Desired frame rate of the captured video. So-called "Adaptive" algorithm
uses this setting. When Adaptive algorithm is used, Taksi will try to 
capture the video that will run at specified frame rate, and appear to 
be of the same speed as the actual game. 
NOTE: This doesn't always work well. It seems to work fine for applications
with high frame rate, but often poorly for low frame rate apps. This
Adaptive algorithm is still work-in-progress, so hopefully, i'll be able
to improve it.
If it fails to deliver decent videos, try using "Custom settings", which
are described below.

3) Key mappings:
Define keys that trigger the actions: screen shot capture, video capture,
indicator appear/disappear, global hook mode.

4) Custom settings:
This is the alternative to Adaptive mode.
Custom settings come in groups, with each group having a unique id. 
There are 3 settings in a group: pattern, frame rate, and frame weight.
Pattern allows you to select which application(s) should be handled by
this custom settings group. When taksi.dll is mapped into an application,
it checks if any part of applications's full executable filename matches
the pattern of any group. Usually, you can just specify the name of
the game's main executable file, but sometimes you may wish to be more
or less specific. Frame rate is the frame rate of captured video.
Frame Weight specifies how much each game frame should contribute to
captured video frame. 
Examples of weight setting:
1.0  - every frame of the game will be captured in the video. 
4.0  - every frame of the game will be duplicated 4 times in the 
       captured video. (You rarely would wanna use something like 
	   that though). 
0.33 - approximately every 3rd frame of the game is captured in the video.
0.4  - 2 out of 5 frames are captured.

Keep in mind that custom settings may deliver very weird results of
either very slow or very fast videos. You may need to experiment with 
the settings. However, i found out that for some applications, good
custom settings can deliver much better (and smaller) videos than the ones
captured in Adaptive mode.


8. Credits:
-----------
Taksi is written by Anton Jouline (Juce)


==============================================================================
