Synchronous Recording & Viewing From TV Card

FourPart · Member Joined: 04 Dec 2008 Location: United Kingdom

I'm quite probably in the wrong forum here, but I hope there's someone here who might be able to help nonetheless.

Firstly I would like to point out that this problem has not always been the case, but I'm not sure quite what happened to bring about the change in the first place. Furthermore, it's not an exceptional problem - moe of a minor annoyance.

I have a LeadTek WinFast TV Card running on the WinFast PVR software for viewing programs live & for capturing to MPG.

In itself I have no problems here. The problem arises if, while I have WinFast PVR running to record a program & I mute the sound on it & try to watch a previously saved MPG file (or any other video file for that matter), while WinFast is still running irrespective of whatever media player I'm running the image appears as if it has been scrambled (no problem with sound), while the image on WinFast remains fine.

However, if the programs are opened in reverse (i.e. If I am already watching an MPG file when the WinFast program opens up, say on a scheduled program), then the reverse is true - the image on the media player remains clear, while that on WinFast appears scrambled.

The really curious thing is that none of this affects the quality of how WinFast records - I can be watching an MPG file while the WinFast screen appears scrambled, but when I come to play the supposedly scambled file back, there's not a trace of scrambling.

I have a NVidea GeForce 6200 Graphics Card, but as I said previously, I have had the systems running simultaneously on the same equipment before with no problems.

I have tried setting WinFast to record in different formats, as well as trying all sorts of various media players, such as Windows Media Player, WinAmp, JetAudio & Real Player, all with no success.

Does anyone have any idea what I may be overlooking?

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

The recording software and media player are using the graphics card's video overlay feature to display video. Only one program can use video overlay at a time. The second program should fall back to Windows GDI (the same interface non-video programs use) to display the video. This is only a display issues and would not effect the recorded video.

Since this is happening with several media players I suspect a driver update will fix the problem. Try installing the latest WHQL certified drivers for your graphics card.

FourPart · Member Joined: 04 Dec 2008 Location: United Kingdom

Thanks for that - it did the trick nicely.

Curiously, the Graphics Card is a fairly new one, but when I installed it, it wouldn't accept the Driver Disc as it said that for my OS it was Plug & Play. However, after downloading the Driver & installing it manually, the problem has been sorted.