None of our test computers played any IVI file, whether compressed inhouse or supplied by Intel, without at least one or two seconds of drop frames before video began playing smoothly. Moreover, bi-directional prediction increases IVI' s already lengthy compression time by close to 30 percent. Here's how it works. During compression, IVI divides each frame into four layers, each describing different views of the entire frame. The first layer contains gross colors and details, the next additional detail, the third still more with the last layer containing the final level of intricacy.
All layers are necessary to perfectly recreate the original image.
But when playing back on a less than optimal workstation, IVI can decompress fewer layers of each frame, rather than simply dropping frames like other codecs. This preserves the motion, albeit at some loss of detail. Display rates testing scalability option. Pentium 60 equipped with Matrox Millennium with DCI-enabled scaling option. Pentium 90 has DCI but no hardware scaling.