Drivers for AverTV Stereo...Avermedia's vs BTwincap

[BrainStorm69]

I have an AverTV Stereo card with the BT chip. I was wondering whether changing from the Avermedia drivers to the btwincap drivers will make any difference in the quality of my caps. Anyone have some experience they'd like to share?

[klovely78]

I got the AverTV stereo card about 8 months ago and I am still trying tweak my system for the perfect capture. I tried for a week straight to get the btwincap drivers installed correctly, then just gave up. So now I am just sticking with what came with the card.

So far, what I found produces a pretty good capture with the AverTV card is Power VCR II. But DON'T use the file trimmer to merge the files it produces. Use TMPGenc to merge them. I couldn't figure out for the longest time why my captures were getting bad frames and the audio was out of sync...until I tried merging my captures with TMPGenc and saw that it did it flawless job at merging them.

If you got any other tips for good captures...by all means please let me know.

[MK_ULTRA]

I have an avermedia card and until I installed the btwincap drivers I was less than thrilled with my captures. I was ready to take it back but decided to try the btwincap drivers as a last chance and man what a difference. I don't exactly know what it changed but my caps went from so-so to awesome. Virtualdub wouldn't let me cap above anything over * x 240 with the aver drivers, and not to many other capturing software would even recognize the card before the driver update. I can now cap at 720x480 with little or no frame loss in virtualdub and the same with mainconcept mpeg encoder with no frame loss ever! Alot of people seem to think the avermedia cards are crap but I wouldn't trade mine for nuthin!!

I'd just suggest trying the drivers out, you can always go back if you don't like the results. I'm using xp pro and they were painless to install and use but I tried em in 2k and had nuthin but problems so use at your own risk!!

[Gazorgan]

When I installed teh BTWINcap drivers I was force into PAL only resolutions. I went back to OEM drivers and have had no issues since.

[BrainStorm69]

Sounds like there is no concensus of opinion...hehe...guess I'll just have to try it myself! Thanks for the input guys!

[TurboRunner]

Hi,
I've got an avermedia ezcapture card has no tvtuner or builton sound but has the bt878 chipset and have tried the latest btwincap drivers and had trouble capturing at 720x576pal could only capture at 720x480 or 352x288
This was in both Win98se and Winxp using virtualdub, VirtualVCR and AVI_Io

any ideas why i couldnt capture at full pal i did notice that using this small capture utility that might of come with the btwincap drivers was able to capture at full pal but i need a capture program that can segment the capture file to eleminate the 2gb avi limit size.

Thanks

TurboRunner

[lordsmurf]

I got an AVerMedia card for free. Got the AVer drivers to work. The BTwincap (and another two non-AVer drivers) refused to install.

A few weeks later, the AVer card was put into a drawer, and I replaced it with another ATI AIW card. End of problems.

[TurboRunner]

I got an AVerMedia card for free. Got the AVer drivers to work. The BTwincap (and another two non-AVer drivers) refused to install.

A few weeks later, the AVer card was put into a drawer, and I replaced it with another ATI AIW card. End of problems.

To get the btwincap drivers installed you can read the instructions on the official btwincap drivers site under Custom Card Support.

Heres the instructions from the btwincap site.

1. Install the Drivers that came with the card.
2. Now execute the btspy utility(you can download it from the btwincap site) follow all the steps the program says to do.

Do not close it untill it finishes when its finished it will display the profile of your card. You may have to change some settings that dont match what your card has then save the profile in a safe place as you will need it when you install the btwincap drivers.

3. Run the driver installer: When asked for the card model, select "Custom card" (the last one), select the TV tuner model your card is using (If you don't know the TV tuner model, you will have to try several until you find one of them that lets you switch TV channels). Also, if your card is able to tune Radio, you should check the "TV tuner can natively tune Radio" box.

4 Now press "Next": The Custom card definition screen will appear.

5 The easiest way to fill the requested values is by just pressing the "Import" button, and select now the profile generated with the BtSpy utility. All the required values will be imported. Else, you will have to manually fill them using the created report and the tooltips each field displays.

6 Press the "Next" button and continue installation.

7 If the profile generated with BtSpy is right (95% of cases), then the driver should be able to handle your board without trouble.

8 Don't forget to keep a copy of the profile, as every time you install the driver, it will be needed.

Thanks


TurboRunner

[gll99]

I had a Avermedia card for a long time (bt878) (win98se and xp) but unfortunately started getting a hiss on one channel (look like a hardware problem but that's another story).
Just like MK_ULTRA the main benefit that I found was that I had a greater range of resolutions available to me. When I used the official Avermedia drivers I would often get messages that the card could not capture at certain resolutions but all that cleared up when I used the btwincap drivers.

About 10 months ago after testing some other drivers in xp, I too had problems reinstalling the btwincap drivers even when I did it manually. I had downloaded a new version from the site but it would never find the tuner even when I used the default phillips. I had an older version of the installer on cd from about 2 years ago and used that to reinstall and it worked perfectly. I think the newer version has some problem installing the avermedia mono/ stereo cards.
The card I have now is generic and also based on the same bt878 chipset it uses the same settings as the avermedia card and works great with the btwincap drivers

[TurboRunner]

What do you reckon is better for video quality the avermedia drivers which i think is vfw or the btwincap drivers which i think is wdm?

just curious as i find it easier to capture with the avermedia drivers but if capturing with the btwincap drivers delivers better video quality then i might try harder to get the btwincap drivers to work properly.

Thanks


TurboRunner

[vhelp]

I've had many experiences w/ various analog capture cards, ranging from
ATI-TV Wonder to Osprey-210.. some more examples:

* ati-tv wonder
* ati-rage fury pro
* osprey-210
* wintv go
* i/o magic's
* dc10+
* and many more

These steps are for VFW driver issues, NOT wdm !! If you using an W2K
or XP os, and having problems, it likely your problem !! vdub/avi_io are
VFW only capture apps.

First, you unstall your capture card drivers, then..

* Reboot and hit cancel when windombs want to install drivers.. then..
continue reading on..

In my experience (as I was saying) it was always the left over drivers that
caused most problems w/ cap cards working properly. You know.., like
when you have problems w/ a given driver installation, and you re-install
(bad mistake) w/out first un-installing them completely that means,
deleting any refrence left over in the .reg file. You know how uninstalls
will leave remnants or hints in the .reg file. Anyways.., I've found a utility
that I use all the time in my installations of capture cards and their
respective drivers..
.
.
Search for for a utilit "hcwclear.exe" on Hauppauges website. This app can
be used for any analog capture card driver. What I do is I run it through
ALL the options, be it [x] or (o) and clear them all. Mind you, you'll
receive error messages in the last 2 or 3 items, but just continue down the
line ie, clear one option, close app, re-run app, and clearn 2nd item, and
do the same w/ ALL the options until you have no more options to
clear.
.
.
Then, once you've cleared, (and re-booted) you re-install the drivers you want to try next.

Should those fail, just follow the steps all over again, and try another set of
drivers, till one works for you.

On my win98gold, I can install any driver I want and get it working perfectly
every time, and for ANY capture card, only cause I know how to properly
uninstall and re-install drivers w/in a given sequence. well, it works for me :P

-vhelp