Software CineMaster is one of best Software-only DVD Player on the market today. It is the most configurable, it can be set to multi-region quite easily, it has the lowest CPU consumption and it supports ATI's Hardware Motion Compensation and iDCT.

In fact, ATI dumped Zoran's SoftDVD in favor of CineMaster's software solution because CineMaster offered a much better decoding engine.

And here the problems start. There are a multitude of CineMaster versions. Some are complete packages (Decoding Engine+Player), some are partial packages (Player only) and some are Licensed packages (ATI DVD Player 3.1).

You would think that one package would suffice to get the best out of Software CineMaster, but this is not always the case. In reality, to get the most updated Software CineMaster Player/Engine. You in fact need to combine several components.

Ontop of this, a lot the Cinemaster settings are hidden from the user and must be enabled through DVD Genie.

1. Make sure you have the most up-to-date decoding engine (at least v2.3.6158).
2. Try getting both the older 1.5.xxxx player and the newer 2.0.xxxx player, as the 1.9 and 2.0 are not fully stable on all systems and you may want a fall-back position. And frankly, I haven't really figured out what's new in these player versions.
3. Get the latest version of DVD Genie.

Certain distributions of Software Cinemaster come with a control panel applet. DVD Genie has long incorporated all of the features supported by this control panel (and more). And you should note that this control panel tends to interfere with Regional support.

After either installing the player, or extracting the player files into a separate directory, copy/install the engine files directly into your windows system directory (e.g. c:\windows\system\).

Once installed, run the player ONCE, then quit, and run DVD Genie. Now try using the DVD Genie Cinemaster Preset button to set it for your card. Make sure to read any notes that may pop-up.


DVD Genie - Card Notes:

If you have an NVIDIA TNT or GeForce based card, you may need to manually set the DVD Genie "Surface Flip Mode" to "DDFLIP_EVEN - Interleaved (RivaTNT)" mode. You may also need to disable the "Ignore downscale caps" check box.

If you have a 3dfx Voodoo3 card, depending on the Cinemaster engine you are using, you may need to set the "Surface Flip Mode" to "Voodoo 3" or to "Overlay (Riva128/Matrox) *Default*" if that doesn't work correctly.