DOS ain't dead

> > If possible, one other feature request: Will it be possible to have an
> > option to play stereo audio files or movies with mono audio which has
> been
> > mixed from L+R? This is for one-speaker systems. Realtime mixing left
> and
> > right channels into a single mono channel is a valuable feature to have
>
> Feature already exist, the sound output is always set into DUGLPLAY.CFG by:
> [SoundSampling],[SoundStereo] and [Sound16Bits]. Any selected audio/video
> file will be resampled/played with this output.
I see. Thanks for clarifying. So if I set [SoundStereo] to 0 (disabled), the mixer will mix both channels of a stereo stream into a mono output at 50% L+R? I'll test it.

14 June 2026: 1.0 Alpha6
- Now use FFMPEG 5.1.8 with pentium-MMX CPU enabled including assembly optimizations.
- Add support of Aspect Ratio with built-in list that could be overwritten by config file.
- Add fast video decoding (could be switched by config file), to improve decoding speed of old Hardware (Thanks ThorKa!)
- Add Aspect Ratio widget, with capability to switch next one with Mouse Click
- F11 keyboard button now switch between Blitting video frame to full View or blitting according to current Aspect Ratio
- F12 Keyboard button now switch Aspect Ratio to next one on the List.
- Fix Not working VSync on GUI Mode.
- Severals other fixes and speed improvement.


download DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha6

DUGL Player GITHUB repo

> 14 June 2026: 1.0 Alpha6
> - Now use FFMPEG 5.1.8 with pentium-MMX CPU enabled including assembly
> optimizations.
> - Add support of Aspect Ratio with built-in list that could be
> overwritten by config file.
> - Add fast video decoding (could be switched by config file), to
> improve decoding speed of old Hardware (Thanks ThorKa!)
> - Add Aspect Ratio widget, with capability to switch next one with
> Mouse Click
> - F11 keyboard button now switch between Blitting video frame to full
> View or blitting according to current Aspect Ratio
> - F12 Keyboard button now switch Aspect Ratio to next one on the List.
> - Fix Not working VSync on GUI Mode.
> - Severals other fixes and speed improvement.
Thanks for this new release and your continued work on the project. Aspect ratio feature feature works well. I am unclear how to set which AR I prefer in the config file, however. I see the AR options described there, but unsure how to "set" it in that config file.

Speed is improved from alpha 5 release about 10% on my system. Enabling sound slows the video speed somewhat (about 15-20%, but I'm using VSBHDA v. 1.9 on an Intel IHD PCI built in card to emulate SB16).

One technical question: Do you know if it's possible to switch from LFB writeback combining to using bankswitched mode on DUGL player? My system does not allow writeback cache combining by changing the MTRRs (for example with RayeR's MTRRLFBE utility), but does support bankswitched cache write combining (As tested with the XVESA 2.0 utility).

Using bankswitched writecombining instead of LFB will massively improve speed for me, by factor of 10x or more.

> Thanks for this new release and your continued work on the project. Aspect
> ratio feature feature works well. I am unclear how to set which AR I prefer
> in the config file, however. I see the AR options described there, but
> unsure how to "set" it in that config file.
>

Thanks for testing
on the DUGLPLAY.CFG we have two fields linked to AR:
- [AspectRatioList] : describing the list of possible AR the DUGL Player will allow to select/use
- [DefaultAspectRatio]: which is the index of default Aspect Ratio used, for example here if you need "16:9:HD Video" as default one, you need to set it to 2

[AspectRatioList]     ; Possible Aspect Ratios List [w:1..99]:[h:1..99]:[Name], ...
1:1:Square Grid,4:3:Standard Monitor,16:9:HD Video,3:2:Classic DLSR,9:16:Vertical Video,21:9:Ultrawide Monitor
[DefaultAspectRatio]
2


> Speed is improved from alpha 5 release about 10% on my system. Enabling
> sound slows the video speed somewhat (about 15-20%, but I'm using VSBHDA v.
> 1.9 on an Intel IHD PCI built in card to emulate SB16).

15-20% slow down is too much, you can reduce that by setting sampleRate to lower frequency, or selecting mono. Sound Driver could be further optimized by using MMX for up/downsampling. but this is currently a low priority todo.

>
> One technical question: Do you know if it's possible to switch from LFB
> writeback combining to using bankswitched mode on DUGL player? My system
> does not allow writeback cache combining by changing the MTRRs (for example
> with RayeR's MTRRLFBE utility), but does support bankswitched cache write
> combining (As tested with the XVESA 2.0 utility).
>
> Using bankswitched writecombining instead of LFB will massively improve
> speed for me, by factor of 10x or more.

DUGL Library currently do not support bankswitched mode, but this could be implemented in futur. all rendering will happen inside a FLAT memory Surf as usually, then I need to implement the function that do copy to bankswitched VRAM.

> on the DUGLPLAY.CFG we have two fields linked to AR:
> - [AspectRatioList] : describing the list of possible AR the DUGL Player
> will allow to select/use
> - [DefaultAspectRatio]: which is the index of default Aspect Ratio used,
> for example here if you need "16:9:HD Video" as default one, you need to
> set it to 2
>
> [AspectRatioList]     ; Possible Aspect Ratios List
> [w:1..99]:[h:1..99]:[Name], ...
> 1:1:Square Grid,4:3:Standard Monitor,16:9:HD Video,3:2:Classic
> DLSR,9:16:Vertical Video,21:9:Ultrawide Monitor
> [DefaultAspectRatio]
> 2
OK, thanks for the clarification. I was unsure what [w:1..99] and [h:1..99] meant, but now I see there are three AR options to be set with [DefaultAspectRatio], so I can choose 1,2,or 3 at my leisure depending correct AR of the video or film material viewed in DUGL Player.

> 15-20% slow down is too much, you can reduce that by setting sampleRate to
> lower frequency, or selecting mono. Sound Driver could be further optimized
> by using MMX for up/downsampling. but this is currently a low priority
> todo.

At 640x480 at 1.5 Ghz I got about 28 fps with sound enabled, about 33 fps without any sound. At 3.4 Ghz, speeds increase to 70 fps without sound and 65 fps with sound. (This is without MTRRs set for LFB writecombining, which my Dell laptop with i5-8250 laptop can't set in DOS -- immediate hard system freeze when I try, perhaps due to USB boot or other embedded BIOS code which loads on top of DOS in bare metal).

> DUGL Library currently do not support bankswitched mode, but this could be
> implemented in futur. all rendering will happen inside a FLAT memory Surf
> as usually, then I need to implement the function that do copy to
> bankswitched VRAM.

Thanks for considering bankswitched mode in future. Flat memory model for direct bankswitched access will be almost like vidix in UNIX, on old 32-bit video cards like 3dfx Voodoo 3).

>
> At 640x480 at 1.5 Ghz I got about 28 fps with sound enabled, about 33 fps
> without any sound. At 3.4 Ghz, speeds increase to 70 fps without sound and
> 65 fps with sound. (This is without MTRRs set for LFB writecombining, which
> my Dell laptop with i5-8250 laptop can't set in DOS -- immediate hard
> system freeze when I try, perhaps due to USB boot or other embedded BIOS
> code which loads on top of DOS in bare metal).
>

Did you have FDAPM installed ? 70fps is too low for an I5-8250.
with last alpha 6, a dpmi_yield call (energy saving) is always performed (need to be configured in CFG file).
This dropped fps from 6000 to about 500fps on my ryzen 7700x.