Need help with strange lines in iuVCR

[fellaw]

Please have look at this:



This is my preview in iuVCR with Smart Tee enabled.

Where do these lines come from?

They also appear on the captured video.
They don't apper with Smart Tee disabled and increase when I'm using RGB24 instead of YUV2. But I want to see what I'm capturing.

The creator of iuVCR said it might be IRQ/DMA conflicts or too less power. Well, 60% during capturing with Smart Tee enabled doesn't seem too less power, does it? Furthermore, I can safely exclude IRQ/DMA conflicts because the capture card has it's own IRQ. I've installed latest drivers/bios.

Who can help me?

[therick]

Two words-VIA chipset. I am having the same problem with my K7VZA-I get around 38 MB/sec to my ATA100 capture drive, drop no frames, and get those lines. I get them with Huffy and PicVideo. Will post some pictures-just lemme get the ol' web server up....

[therick]

here are some pictures of what I have seen:

from Laserdisc with YUY2 Huffy (640x480):



from DVD with YUY2 Huffy (D1):



from DVD with YUY2 PicVideo at 19 (D1):



from DVD with YUY2 PicVideo at 17 (D1):



I have contributed to other posts with VIA chipset owners that are having the same problems. I have been working for days to fix this with no luck

[fellaw]

Yeah, I'm not alone!

But why? I don't have a 686B southbridge, so no PCI latency problems. I don't know if I'd have those lines on Win98, I'll test that and come back. Would be very annoying to switch to Win98 every time I want to capture. I don't think is a codec issue, because they also appear when I'm not capturing.

But why no lines with Smart Tee disabled?

[fellaw]

back from the front

Here are the results:
No lines at all in Win98.

I've tested to programs:
AVI_IO for VfW and graphedit for WDM, as iuVCR didn't work.
I managed to setup a graph with the Smart Tee filter, and I had no lines.
The same graph in WinXP, and I had those lines. So it must be something within Win2K/XP! I switched the qcap.dll from WinXP with the one from Win98, same effect. Maybe there are some registry entries regarding this Smart Tee, I'll check that later.

[therick]

ok-I got mine using VirtualVCR with no preview (could you explain this SmartTee?). I am not really down with going back to 98, so I will try to get IUVCR and see if I can capture with no lines. I do not need to see what I am capping

[fellaw]

That Smart Tee Filter is a DirectShow filter. It splitts the capture signal thus enabling you to capture and preview at the same time with >288 lines. It uses the CPU very much, but if iuVCR is at 60% all the time, it can't be too less CPU power, can it?. Seems like VirtualVCR also uses the Smart Tee, but with no option to disable it.

[therick]

ok, I tried an old version of iuVCR I had laying around and it was total crap...lines everywhere (with no SmartTee):



what version of iuVCR are you using? The newest? One of the earlier 4 versions?

[fellaw]

I'm using the latest stable, 4.00.230
It's far more worse for you than for me.

[fellaw]

have you tried capping non-interlaced material? I zapped to an old movie by coincidence. It was non-interlaced, and there were no lines!

[SHS]

fellaw if your NTSC user and this also apply to some PAL user you can't do it at high then ???x240 rez no matter what motherboard you have you be stick with half display 240 you never be able to go full 480 with perview mode on.
Try setup Perview mode to 320x240 if that dosen't work then you need just turn it off in order to capture.
Split the signel and hook up a Reg TV that way you can see what going on.
Or your other option is Hardware encoder like the Dazzle DVC2 , WinTV-PVR 250, Provideo PV256, etc, etc that has RAW for this with out eatting up both the Disk speed and PCI BUS.

[fellaw]

I'm a PAL user. I can preview during capture with lines >288. e.g. 640x480, thanks to Smart Tee. But I have those annyoing lines in my picture not appearing with Smart Tee disabled. It's a Win2K/XP issue, because within Win98 the same capture graph doesn't produce such lines.

[therick]

ok, I uninstalled the PCI latency patch just to see the difference:

with SmartTee in VirtualVCR:



with no SmartTee in VirtualVCR:



Needless to say I just reinstalled the patch.

Would anyone with a VIA chipset care to chime in if they have been able to get full D1 to work with WDM drivers?

[fellaw]

I still don't get it. I don't have a southbridge affected by latency issues, nor do I have a sblive or latency drivers installed. I'm getting absolutely no lines without the Smart Tee. But why do you have lines even with Smart Tee disabled? That's very odd, isn't it?

[therick]

well, I am gonna try PowerVCR...see what kind of mpg I can capture.

This sucks

[fellaw]

I've allocated the filter and dll which causes those lines. It's the filer named "Avi Compressor" in the DirectShow dll quartz.dll
Unfortunately, this file and filter is essential for viewing and capturing avis. So m$ has to do a bugfix. I'll mail them tomorrow.

[therick]

alright, good cause my Duron was dropping frames with PowerVCR at highest quality...and it didn't even look good.

I dropped down to 640x480 with VirtualVCR and no lines, so give that a try and see if it works for you...

[fellaw]

I tried something. It made the lines suddenly appearing without smart tee, after I registered the quartz.dll again with regsvr32, disappear:

search for the file divx_c32.ax from the divx 3.11 codec, if you haven't got it already.
copy it to your systemdir(windir/system @ win98/me, windir/system32 @ win2k/xp)
run regsvr32 /u quartz.dll
run regsvr32 quartz.dll
run regsvr32 /u divx_c32.ax
run regsvr32 divx_c32.ax
run regedit and do a search for
{70E102B0-5556-11CE-97C0-00AA0055595A}
delete all appeareances of that key after backing them up via file-->export.
if that works for you, great. if not, simply import the files you backed up.
If you want, I'll try to explain what I think what's happening to a filter called video renderer.

[therick]

yes, I will try that. and if you could-I would like to hear the answer. I have a computer science degree, so you don't have to dumb it down that much...although I am more of a UNIX/Linux man for development...

[fellaw]

OK. I don't have such a degree
If you register only the quartz.dll, DirectShow uses a filter named "Video Renderer" to output the video onto the screen.
If you register the divx_c32.ax, a second filter with the same name, but a different CLSID appears in the filterlist in GraphEdit. This one can connect directly to the output pin of the capture device, without the avi decompressor. So the buggy filter isn't used! But DirectShow uses the first mentioned video renderer as default, which causes the use of the "AVI Decompressor", even with a better video renderer installed. You got to delete all references in the registry to that renderer if you want DirectShow to use the other one.
It worked for me. If I connect the Smart Tee with my capture device and let GraphEdit render one of the output pins, this dumb "Avi Decompressor" is used again. So I've got to find a workaround for that, too.

[therick]

alright...I think I get it. Before I tried your registry edits I actually switched to another card and iuVCR and changed my colorspace to RGB24 and no more lines...strange.



Beautiful...did an hour test just to see and on a slow scan I see no lines what so ever!!!

[fellaw]

Which card?

[therick]

went from a Haupaggue WinTV to a Pinnacle PCTV Rave.

[jman]

How are you guys getting those screenshots from your PC?

or are you taking a digital pic of your TV?

[fellaw]

That's as easy as pie:

Capture your Video to AVI, choose any codec you like. Then open it in VirtualDub, klick Edit-->Copy Source Frame to clipboard. Paste that into an image editing program, e.g. Paint. Save it as jpg or png or whatever you want. There you are!