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| pathfinder |
| Posted: Aug 20 2002, 02:57 PM |
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Hi, guys! Looks like you know almost all about Brooktree and Philips irons. I wonder did you ever hear about Belkin's VideoBusII? Don't want to crack it, but wonder what chip it got inside...
Ok, I started with the iron, because I suspect the little message "Unsupported format", which appears when you close the "Format" dialogue in Capture mode of VD, is somehow related to the chip (I just didn't see anyone with Brooktree and Philips chips to complain about this issue). By the way, same message appears if you try 'Custom format' This message is thrown when you select 352X288 in the Format dialogue with any color format (for a PAL capture). Looks like I can make VD capture in 320X240 without any problem, but it's still frustrating to waist those few precious lines - unaffordable for the scarce for data VHS source.
Other programs like iuVCR (www.iulab.com) also seem to have this problem with the 352X288 (they just don’t curse when you select it). However, I still believe it’s possible to capture 352X288 (as promised by the VideoBusII manual), since after long trial and error I somehow get MGI VideoWave to record in 352X288 (with massive loss of frames though…). By the way, VD curses about the format, but accepts the setting, but crushes if you try to set crop boundaries or start capture.
Also did anyone have a problem of compressing 352X288 with huffyuv? It varies from program to program – VD didn’t let me do it no matter what color format I chose (I420, YUY2 or RGB24 @ 352X288), MGI VideoWave agreed to do it once when I just created and configured a new video profile. It even recorded one clip, but when I tried to capture with it again or create another profile it did let me compress at all… and put the windows default yuy decoder (Nogatech if I remember it right?) |
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| ChristianHJW |
| Posted: Aug 20 2002, 03:05 PM |
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Advanced Member
Group: Moderators
Posts: 1768
Member No.: 2
Joined: 7-July 02
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cheers,
is it possible your capture card is for NTSC ( USA standard ) only ?
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Support matroska as container and Gstreamer as the only truely open, x-platform multimedia platform .... |
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| pathfinder |
| Posted: Aug 20 2002, 04:56 PM |
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Wow! Couldn't imagine this thing will work so fast - I posted the original note an hour ago or so. Thanks you noted it.
No, that's the issue - there are no separate versions of Belkin's VideoBussII for US and non US countries. It's said to be all in one - PAL, NTSC and SECUM. Plus, if it was an NTSC card (actually it's a USB plug-in device), I wouldn't get the color right out of PAL signal, would I? I mean 320X240 works just fine and reliably. I can actually view all of these standard signals - just can't capture PAL (and haven't tried to play with SECAM yet)
I wonder does anyone know, how to pinpoint the problem? Perhaps a testing utility, which can say all the modes the card supports for sure? Has anyone had a problem with 352X288 capture of a PAL signal? Could the problem just lie somewhere in the guts of the Windows? |
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| Chris |
| Posted: Aug 21 2002, 08:20 AM |
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After a few minutes researching, it seems the capture chip on the capture device in question is the "Nogatech USBvision NT1004 chip", so generic drivers (like those avaliable for the BT848/878) are out of the question.
As a general rule of thumb, capturing video from a USB device, espically if it's not USB 2.0, is probably not going to yield some great results, as the bandwidth is theortically 12mbps, so perhaps that would explain the frame loss when capturing. As for the capture resolution, the only time I encountered something like this was using the default drivers that came with my Windows installation (for my ATI card). Grabbing the latest drivers from the webpage helped me out, so thats the only recommendation I can give right now perhaps.
Best of luck! |
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| pathfinder |
 Posted: Aug 24 2002, 01:52 PM |
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Hi guys!
Thanks a lot for your advice, especially to Chris for researching the chip model.
I've studied the manufacturer's reference on Nogatech USBvision NT1004 chip and it turns out that the problem must actually lie not in their driver but in the WVF WDM wrapper. Zoran/Nogatech ships a WDM driver wich decompresses the USB trafic from their proprietary format into I420, YUY2 or RGB. They provide a Direct Show filter that could be used to capture from the device and also say that it could be used with VFW application through the windows standard VFW wrapper.
In fact, the error appears after VD calls the VFW macro capDlgVideoFormat wich opens the Video Format dialogue and VD's code doen't process user actions in the dialogue - I assume some system VFW component processes it (the wrapper?).
I am sure that the problem can't be in the Nogatech's WDM driver (wich is wrapped by VFW), since it works fine in WDM applications (e.g. iuVCR).
Hey, guys, please correct me if the assumptions and conclusions are wrong, but I am starting to beleave that for me VFW must die (and so VD capture mode), since the wrapper fatally sucks.
By the way, do any of you know if MGI VideoWave III SE or 4, or Sonic Foundry Video Capture also work through the wrapper? I can capture the 352X288 size in them (though MGI has glitches in configuration dialogues). If they succesfully work through the wrapper, then the problem is curable...
Thanks again for any help
P.S.
By the way, an interesting feature of the USB VideoBus chip is that it lossly compresses the image from its cach to transfer it through the USB wire and then it is uncompressed "using less then 25% of CPU power" (I don't know though what CPU frequency they meant, my 850Mhz PIII doesn't use more than 50% for the whole capture process, including haffyuy). They say that it's actually faster than reading the same data in raw format. Also they only use 7,5 Mbps out of the total 12 Mps of the USB bandwidth for the video stream. Isn't it cool?!!! The 7,5 Mbs setting could be lowered with steps of 0,5 Mbs is the processing computer can't catch up with the USB trafic (actually, before reading their reference I couldn't guess why they included this feature). |
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| pathfinder |
| Posted: Aug 28 2002, 07:13 AM |
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If anyone is still viewing this...
Forgot to mention that after the Video Format or Custom Video Format dialogue is closed with the "error 418: Unsupported video format" when trying to set anything other then 320X240, openning the Video Format dialogue again will show the failed framesize selected in the frame size combobox. But an attempt to capture with this setting will result in either "Out of memory for video buffers" (or something close to it) or "No frames captured...[etc]"
some other experiments (if you know about VfW macro functions):
Calling capSetVideoFormat macro with any size other then 320X240 (after connecting the Microsoft WDM Image Capture (Win32) - Version: 5.0.2195.3649 to a newly created capture window) will return the error 2 wich translates to 418 (in Vfw.h).
Any idea what else in the configuration of the driver/pin-connection could be tried? |
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| rbird |
| Posted: Sep 26 2002, 01:42 PM |
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Sorry to bump up this old thread, but I actually have something to contribute for my first post here. 
I'm wondering what operating system you're using? I have a USB capture device also (the Dazzle DVC-80) and I have noticed when using my WinMe laptop that I get the same message as you. The limitation is 320x240. However, I can easily capture at 352x240 (NTSC VCD res) on my older desktop machine running Win98 (not SE). I'm wondering if it has something to do with WDM vs. old-style drivers.
Of course, I get no audio capture when I use my desktop machine, so I end up using the laptop anyway. Go figure.
Bob |
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| jhannon |
| Posted: Sep 30 2002, 05:11 AM |
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Hi,
I also have the same problem using the VideoBus II on Windows XP home. I can't capture anything higher than 320x240. Any help would be appreciated.
JH. |
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