Please help this must be simple ?

[kith]

Sorry for posting here as well as Capture help but I've had absolutely no replies

Firstly I have no experience of vid capture so this is all very new to me and I've trawled everywhere for help
I have just upgraded my PC and chose the Gainward Ti4200 650XP 128mb Golden Shower or whatever it is

All I want to do is plug my samsung VCR into the PC and grab video footage.
How ?
I have got the patch cable that comes with the card and just bought a SCART to SVIDEO cable so it's hooked up - but no matter what I use, win coder, adobe premiere 6.5, virtual dub I get no picture.
Am I doing it right ?
What settings if I have it hooked up okay ?
What scart socket AV1 or 2 or does it make no difference ?

Please please help as if I have wrong cable i have to take it back for a refund.

Many thanks in advance, stupid boy KITH

[fmctm1sw]

I'm unfamiliar with anything you mentioned but Virtualdub. BUT, I didn't see you mention anything about the SOURCE selection in vdub. Make sure you select the proper source for what connection you are using an the card. Forget the scart cable for now and just try a plain old RCA cable and select "composite" under souce and try to narrow this down.

[kith]

RCA cable ?
I only have SCRT as an out option on my video.
Or red / white phono out but that's audio.
I have yellow phono on front of VCR but that's an input.

[fmctm1sw]

All I want to do is plug my samsung VCR into the PC and grab video footage.
How ?

In order to do this, you must have some form of video input on your capture card. What kind(s) do you have?

I have got the patch cable that comes with the card and just bought a SCART to SVIDEO cable so it's hooked up - but no matter what I use, win coder, adobe premiere 6.5, virtual dub I get no picture.

I am unfamiliar with what a "scart" cable is.

[kith]

SCART ?
Is the 2 inch wide rectangular cable with one corner angled that are on the rear of nearly all video and TV sets.

[TeeeRex]

Kith,

RCA is just a standard phono plug (the round plug with a pin in the middle) to phono plug - your SCART cable IS required as unless you have phono outputs on your VCR then you cannot connect a RCA to it.

How many phono plugs does your scart lead have - if it only has three (two audio, one video) then make it they are video and audio OUT. If they are IN, then the scart lead is the wrong one (you could record TO your VCR but that's not what you want to do... If you have both sets, then great - use the Video OUT ones !

AV1,AV2 - doesn't matter as they both should work on composite OUT, but you may find that only one uses S-Video (as suggested try and get composite working first).

Once you have the correct scart 'ends' - plug the phono socket (usually YELLOW) into a TV with Video IN socket - if you get a picture, then this is fine and not your problem so you need to look at the PC card and/or software.

Hope this helps...

[kith]

Thanks for those details mate, however being a bit in the sticks the only local place was a branch of Comet who are limited on cables. However I was assured and seem to have got the right cable, thing is it has no phono sockets at all.
It's a SCART to SVIDEO
I have a patch cable that came with the graphics card that converts SVIDEO to the back of the graphics card. But when I try to sample (4 seperate software programs tried) I get blank screen.
I have tried all the formats eg. PAL B .... NTSC .... etc.. but same thing each time. The patch lead has more than 1 connection end but according to Gainward texh support (who are struggling to help) I have it plugged into the righ socket (yellow svideo)
If I can't get any joy soon I am gonna have to return the cable and try for the phono style ends.
The lead I have though is for high quality video capture, all copper woth gold connectors !

[TeeeRex]

Interesting ... I would suggest you return the cable. There are many more things that can go wrong with a S-Video connection (does your VCR support it for starters...) - composite is pretty much guaranteed to work. Agreed quality is 'slightly' lower than S-Video but as your source is only VCR anyway - you arn't going to notice the difference. Ignore the Comet staff, from my experience I'm surprised you got a SCART cable at all... Buy a SCART to Phono socket lead - but make sure it has VIDEO OUT on it somewhere ... If you get this working and definetly want S-Video, then at least you know it's not your PC/Software/Capture card that has the problem.

[kith]

Thanks for the info.
The cable whip from my Graphics Card has 2 x Svideo and 2 x phono.
Yello wand black (black in , yellow out) is it possible to get a cable from SCART (video) to one phono ?
Also I only have scart out on the video, no yellow phono out.
So does the cable I need have to have scart + white and red phono for audio, but all in to one phono for the graphics card end ?

[TeeeRex]

An S-Video connector should be a DIN connector with TWO pins inside it - as you have two - I assume one is for input and one output - that's fine.

Yellow and Black phono's hmmm - if it follows the standard then yellow is for video and either white,red or black for audio - which means its Mono (and you only have one possible connector) - that can't be right!

I'm gonna have a look for your card on the web - this is weird - perhaps they have a setup doc which I could look at ...

be back soon ....

[TeeeRex]

What the ...


Quote from their web site -

Gainward's XP-Feature for Video-In and Video-Out
Gainward's award-winning XP feature, also know as "VIVO", provides two video-in connectors and two video-out connectors (both composite video and s-video for PAL and NTSC) for smooth video recording and video editing including accelerated DVD playback with enhanced motion compensation in hardware.

Great - now understand what the inputs are for BUT HOW DO YOU CAPTURE THE AUDIO ?!

(still doesn't explain why it didn't work - one set (s-video + composite) of leads is for video (only) in and the other set is for Video out.

Obviously you're call - but I would take back the card - get a dedicated GForce 4 and buy a seperate analogue capture card . I think the primary purpose of the 'VIVO' is so you can play games on a TV (fine) but they have missed the plot on capturing - why would anybody want to capture just video with no sound !!

??

[energy80s]

You feed the sound directly into your sound card. To access it for recoding purposes, double click on the little loudspeaker icon in the task bar, that brings up your sound cards mixer. This defaults to the playback position, so go to the file option for recording (this varies depending on just which sound card you have) and select the line input - assuming that's where you've plugged in the sound from your vcr. This will allow you to capture sound along with pictures from your capture card.

[kith]

Thanks for all this - so I need a cable from SCART to phono in (video) as the svideo isn't working - and a cable from red/white phono to line in (mini jack) to capture sound.
I'd love a seperate capture card but budget, cheapness of gainward card for multi use and the fact I haven't a pci slot free means this is my best option !

[Kieran Zund]

There is some company that makes a thing you can plug into a USB port to capture with. Might be an option in the future: http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11092110&m=488&cat=521&scat=1751 but I'm not sure how well they perform. And I'm sure you could buy it directly from the manufacturer, or look on pricewatch.com for something similar. Hope this helps.

[Thorn]

I have just upgraded my PC and chose the Gainward Ti4200 650XP 128mb Golden Shower or whatever it is

You sick f***

I have the same golden sample card so I know the capture function works... but you might want to try reinstalling the drivers or installing the geforece4 reference drivers. I solved a reboot problem by uninstalling the gainward drivers, installing the reference drivers, then reversing that to go back to the gainward drivers.

I didn't see you mention that you had gone into the video source options and selected s-video under the Select a video source option (at least that's how virtualdub says it). The driver can default to tuner or composite so you might need to set it everytime you reboot.

[TeeeRex]

Recording the audio from your sound card did cross my mind - however, good luck with trying to syncronising it to the video ....

I hope it all works out for you ....

[energy80s]

That's the way virtually ALL capture cards work!!!!!!! It's the way my ATI AIW works!!!!! Don't be fooled by a sound input on your card, if you have to connect a lead between it and your sound card to hear anything, then it's the SOUND CARD that is actually grabbing the audio!

[TeeeRex]

My DV500 has it all onboard - hence the comment.