Little setting problems with VirtualVCR

[Greycat]

VirtualVCR is now the only choice of free capture software I have that works under WinXP and also has that dinamically audio resample method to avoid audio sync issues. I'd really prefer to stay using VirtualDub-Sync's great capture mode (under Win98), but now my new mobo doesn't support Win98 (i.e. no drivers) and that WDM to VFW wrapper simply doesn't work for me. Pity.

VirtualVCR is nice, but I'd like to know if people who use it are having some little setting problems like these ones: after adjusting all the necessary settings to make a good capture, I want to save them (those setting are Ok because the subsequent captures I made with them are perfect, both video and audio). But if I hit the buttom "Save current settings", the next time I run VirtualVCR an weird error "Set Audio Format: Cannot Find Audio IAMStream Config Interface:0" pops up. After that, I can make video captures, but with no audio. Only way to correct it is deleting its INI file and then restart the program -- and save the settings using only the buttom "Save to file". Did anyone have this same problem and if so, why?

I'm also getting the error "Cannot set video format: wrong video type:0" everytime I load the settings from the .vcr files, which causes the preview window not to work. I can solve this performing always this sequence: Setting>Devices>Video Capture Pin>Prop>Ok>Ok (then the preview window works and I can capture). If there is a way to avoid this annoying thing everytime I run the program, it would be very welcomed!

[themaster1]

Virtual vcr is for wdm drivers mainly although it works with some of the VFW (my old pinnacle dc10 plus used to work with it witha couple of tricks).What kind of drivers do you have?

I owned 2 capture cards with WDM and i never experienced these issues as far as i can remember.

[Greycat]

I'm using only WDM drivers (AFAIK), since I'm using only WinXP now and yes, my capture card is WDM-based. So WDM drivers seem to be no guilt.
As I said, video+audio captures can be done, but if I decide to save the settings with the buttom "Save current settings", I'll get that audio-format-error the next time I run VirtualVCR, unless I delete its INI file before (a longer INI file is created when we hit that buttom). Forcing VirtualVCR to recreate a standard INI file eliminates the problem. I'm just want to now why is this happening, is that only with me and is there a way to avoid it?

[dphirschler]

No problems with Virtual VCR here. I typically load one of two different profiles, one for capturing PAL, the other for NTSC. But I did have to tweak it way back when I first set it up.


Darryl

[Videogamer555]

Software is good in funcitonality, but that's it. It's bad in the one area that would ruin ANY software if this were lacking. What is that one area? One word:
SAVABILITY

It is incapable of saving its settings. The ini file is worthless, as it only saves the position of the window. There's SUPPOSEDLY a way to save a "profile" so you can retrieve your settings later, but I can't find it, and unless I'm overlooking something, it appears the author has done the dumbest thing any software author can do, which is "write about the existence of the feature in the online help, only to not include that feature in the software".


If the only choices in the world were this free software with tons of features but no way to save settings, or a $10,000 piece of commercial software that could save its settings, but only had only 1% of the features of the free software, I'd spend the $10,000 on that commercial software.

I don't need a huge feature count. I just need a program that can save its settings, so that I don't have to spend an hour every time I start the program finetuning its settings. And quite frankly I don't care how much the software cost, if it can save its settings, it's worth it.

The only reason I got this free program was because I assumed it was a free program that was equivalent to what is normally commercial software. If I knew that the author of the software was dumb enough to leave out any way of saving settings, I wouldn't have even bothered taking my time to download this crap. I thought this was THE software, where the guy, for free, for the sake of providing video-fans with free software that would be able to replace commercial software feature-for-feature, took his time, out of an entirely selfless act to write a program that was as good as any commercial software, and kept it as freeware.

But he didn't. Instead he wrote a crapload of software that can't even save it's settings.

This is the LAST TIME that I trust ANYTHING labeled "freeware". From now on if I want software I'm only gonna spend money on WELL KNOWN COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE, which has received RAVE REVIEWS from its users.

As far as I can tell, "freeware" is a nice way of saying "crapware".

[LightWeightProducer]

virtualvcr is really really really old. Run it on a system from its era (capture hardware and OS) and the save settings work. It has difficulty with more modern situations due to the way it names capture devices in the ini file. Basically stop living under your 20th century bridge.

[hech54]

While experimenting with alternatives to WinTV7 for capturing with my Haupauge USB Live2, I tried most of the freeware ones including VirtualVCR. The only one I'm still using is DScaler.

[hech54]

As far as I can tell, "freeware" is a nice way of saying "crapware".

Oh and by the way....your harsh review of this FREE software that was last updated 10 years ago is just plain childish and vindictive. We look forward to your own free capturing software(VideoGamerVCR) so we can give it the review it deserves.

[sb44]

Something I found out about Virtual VCR that I need a solution for. Under video settings, you can set a custom frame rate. I assumed that meant a custom capture frame rate. However, it does not seem to affect the capture rate, only the playback rate. I'd like to use Virtual VCR as a security camera, to capture frames about 5 frames per second or even less. It seems odd the Virtual VCR frame rate determines playback rate, not capture rate, since most video players allow you to modify the playback rate anyway.

Has anyone found a way to control the capture rate to create smaller video files?

-SB

[themaster1]

try VLC it has a capture mode and you can encode in h264 (smaller files/ good qual.)

[sb44]

Thanks, I'll look into VLC -- hopefully it can set the capture frame rate.