Output to DV instead of dual screen, import to another PC

[caseylite]

Hi all, and thanks for reading this. I've searched for over a year for a solution to this, so please bear with my description:

I have a computer (WinXP) that runs a video presentation package outputting full-screen video to monitor 2 (analog RGB). This is PC-1.

I have another computer (also WinXP) that has video software allowing me to perform live switching between DV firewire sources. I have several DV cameras connected, and it switches/mixes them beautifully. This is PC-2.

I want the output of PC-1's second display to be available to PC-2 as a DV input. Then I can mix PC-1's output along with all the other DV inputs.

For now, I am using a s-video out of PC-1 routed into a USB capture device to convert it back to a digital input on PC-2. The quality is lousy.

I've looked at the Enosoft DV Processor software, and I think that may be a key to solving this whole mess but I think I'm still missing the piece of getting the dual-screen output of PC-1 into DV. I've tried using Windows Media Encoder on PC-1 with a screencap as the input, but it is horribly slow and laggy.

I think the magic bullet would be a device driver that tells Windows it has a second display and takes whatever video is sent to that display and sends it out as a DV signal. The Enosoft NetDV might be a way to get the signal between the PC's as well.

To make things more fun, this is for live presentations so signal processing time can be an issue.

Any help is appreciated. I'm a pretty techie guy (day job is as a developer) so I hope to keep up with you guys.

Thanks again,

~Casey

[JimboS]

One word (actually2) VIDEO CARD.............

[JohnnyMalaria]

The Net DV function is designed to do exactly what you are after. i.e., take a DV source coming from a camcorder on one PC and send it via a network to another PC as a raw DV stream. The second PC sees the incoming DV from the network as a virtual DV device which means a number of applications can use it as if it were a physical DV device.

Schematically:

PC-1 = DV camcorder ---> FireWire ---> DV processor ---> Net DV Transmitter

PC-2 = Net DV Receiver ---> DV processor or other software

Note, both the transmitter and receiver are DirectShow filters that appear as DV devices. You can use them with other DirectShow software such as GraphEdit.

Getting the Net DV to function is a bit clunky but if you follow the sequence of events given in the main help file, you should be okay. If you run into problems, just ask.

As far as presentation software goes, there is a DirectShow filter available that takes the screen contents and can be used as a DirectShow video source. With GraphEdit, you can build a graph that takes the screen, encodes it as DV and then uses the Net DV transmitter. I can't recall the name of the filter, though.

[edDV]

But PC-1 DV would be delayed several frames, no?

[JohnnyMalaria]

About one frame.

The common delay found with DV devices and Windows apps is when the device is for output. The MSDV driver has a fixed buffer of about 15 frames for output.

If you take a live input and render it to the computer's display, there's no perceivable delay. When you send it to another device, however, there's about .25 seconds delay (same if you send an existing file). This is only true for the MSDV driver, not virtual DV drivers such as our Virtual DV and Net DV.