Provideo PV256 problems

[norm]

I hear a few people have had problems getting the PV256 going on some machines.
I am compiling a list of problems with the PV256 so I can post a review of the product.
Can anyone share their experiences with the product.
Also those having problems might like to check out the drivers for the Aviosys version they have gone to alot of trouble to make the drivers compatible with many machines.

[fourthquark]

No problems installing my PV256 in an ABIT BH6 / Celeron 300A@450 system. I do have some questions however.

1. Can the PV256 act as a decoder for playing DVDs?

2. According to the documentation, when you start a capture by clicking the little videocam button, it should ask you to specify a directory and file name (standard Windows "save as&quot. When I do a capture woth my installation, I don't get a "save as" dialog box - it simply saves the file on the C: drive with name "capture". Anyone else have this problem? Am I missing a program setting somewhere?

3. Has anyone tried any "aftermarket" capture programs like PowerVCR with this card? Are any of these aftermarket programs capable of using the PV256 hardware MPEG encoder. The driver is supposedly WDM compliant so it should be possible.

4. Is there any way to do capture raw YUV video with tis card (i.e., non-MPEG)?

I'm pretty new at this. Thanks for any info anyone can provide.

[norm]

The drivers for the PV256 have not been written to playback DVD's but possibly in later versions they may include that software.
Regarding the "save as" file for capture- it depends on what version of application you are using. In Version 1.3 you just right click the application and a dialog box appears so you can select the name and location of the files.
The PV256 won't connect to the WDM drivers. As of version 1.3 it still doesn't work, maybe in later drivers they may fix this problem.
As the Pv256 uses a Philips SAA7146 multimedia bridge it is possible the PV256 could capture yuv but again the drivers have not been written to allow this to happen. Maybe in future versions of software.
Hope that info helps ???

[fourthquark]

Thanks very much Norm, your answers are very helpful. Seems these cards are a bit of a rare bird. Do you know of any enthusiast sites that specialize in Provideo in general or PV256 in particular (along lines of http://www.matroxusers.com but maybe not so ambitious)? Or maybe we could get together and establish such a site to share information and experiences. It would be nice to get a group together to ask colectively Provideo to add these features to future driver releases.

How are your captures when you play them back? So far I am a bit disappointed. I just got the card and have only done several captures from TV with a lousy signal (off-air antenna). My DVD-MPEG2 captures are choppy on playback. I thought the hardware decoder would give smooth playback. My VCD MPEG1 captures are not choppy but look to be low quality (a bit blurry) on my screen.

My only basis for comparison is Matrox Rainbow Runner G-Series which I previuosly had in my machine. It made extremely high quality captures even at 320x240, but of course they are MJPEG and data rate is almost 1MB/sec.

Still learning. Maybe I have to fiddle with settings to get better captures.

[norm]

The PV256 is a bit rare at this time as it has just been released but it's popularity should increase although it really depends on capatability. The Pv256 won't work on every motherboard. Provideo have only written the drivers to suit a fairly narrow group of motherboards.
An enthusiasts site would be a good idea. We'll have to talk more about that.
There are a couple of aspects of the configuration that are important when trying to capture Mpeg2.
Firstly you need to reserve 64k of DMA buffer and also having a DMA applied to the Hard drives.
If your not sure how to do all that email me and I will explain the finer details. Explaining all the details might be a bit long for the forums.
If everything is set up correctly the performance in Mpeg1 and 2 is excellent.
Let me know what type of video card you have ( PCI - AGP )
Cheers ..

[fourthquark]

Thank you Norm. Before I did the captures, I had set the DMA buffer to 64 and enabled DMA as per installation instructions in the manual. Perhaps the playback choppiness was due to dropped fames resulting from the fact that the video was automatically saved to my C drive, which is UDMA 5400rpm and very full and cluttered. I tried changing the save path to my D drive (7200rpm) by right-clicking on the main TV screen as you suggested above and I found the dialog box where you can change the setting for where it saves. However, when I uncheck the "Automatic" or "Default" box (can't remember exactly what it's called), the area where you can enter the save path and file name stays greyed out (I see greyed out text that says C:\capture but I can't change it). I have v1.3 software application. Is this a bug or is there another setting somewhere?

I presently have an ATI Radeon VE AGP video card. At some point I will be switching to Matrox G450 or G550.

[fourthquark]

I have figured out the "Save As" problem mentioned in my previous post.
In the dialog box called "Capture Time Limit & Filename & AV Split", if you uncheck the "Use Custom FileName" box, you will get the "Save As" dialog box when you click the Record button.
If you leave the box checked, you can specify the default save path & file name by pressing the Browse button. The application installs with this preset as C:\Capture. Then when you click Record, the video is saved to the default path/name.
Unfortunately none of this is documented in th emanual.

[norm]

If your still having problems when recording to the D drive then there is another problem somewhere.
I am presuming the PV256 will be sharing an interupt with another device.
You might need to change the PCI slot so it will be sharing with another device. If it's possible have the PV256 on it's own interupt.
I have found that the PV256 does not like sharing with my SB Live on int 10 but is reasonably happy with the Matrox on int 11 or even the raid controller on int 15.
But best of all is int 12 by itself.
If you still are having problems with Mpeg2 capture play the captured file back in windows media player and see if it is any different to the playback in the PV256. I'm not sure if it recorded badly or just played back badly.
Give it a try and let me know
Cheers for now ..

[fourthquark]

Saved to my D drive and playback choppiness is gone. There is still a lot of shimmer in the image, but I think that is due to the poor TV signal (off-air tuning via rabbit-ear antenna).

Tried playing saved video files with WMP6.4 but it would only play my MPEG1 (VCD) saved video. With MPEG2 (both DVD and SVCD) saved video it tries to download decompressor but then says it can't locate correct decompressor and starts playing sound only. Moot point anyway since D-drive saves seem to have solved choppiness problem.

My PV256 is installed in second PCI slot relative to AGP slot and it is presently on IRQ10 sharing with 2 "IRQ steering..." and my D-Link ethernet adapter. How did you get yours to 12? Forced in BIOS? My IRQ12 is presently used by "PS/2 Compatible Mouse Port". Will this be a problem?

And what do you mean by "reasonably happy" and "best of all"? Better video capture perfomance or just more stable?

Thanks again!

[norm]

Good to hear the D drive solved the problem.
The picture quality will be a bit poor on a lousy signal with any capture card as the Mpeg compressor doesn't know how to ignore noise and interference. I'm sure if you put a good signal in especially from video tape or DVD then the picture quality should be excellent.
Have you got a PV256C ( without tuner ) or PV256T ( with tuner ).
The difference between reasonably happy and best of all is when sharing an interupt there can be some instability in the program like sometimes freezing or even application errors. But with an unshared interupt the card work first time every time with no problems.
I guess the ethernet adapter drivers have been written properly and are not causing any problems. You are lucky.
Many others have had real problems when sharing interupts, the worst being the machine reboots when the stop button is pressed after recording.
I freed up int 12 by replacing the ps2 mouse with a USB version and disabling the ps2 mouse in the bios.
If you know someone that has some dazzle software install the dvd express software and you will get the Mpeg2 plugin for WMP. I have found it is the best ( on my system anyway )
Cheers for now

[fourthquark]

I have the PV256T.

Hmmm... interesting comments regarding shared IRQ vs unshared IRQ for PV256. I have experienced several random GPFs with the application so maybe that is the reason. Also, when I open video files in rapid succession, there is a hesitation and the video display area (greyed out) is slightly offset before the image kicks in and it settles down.

I tried a USB mouse but soon discovered that the mouse did not work in safe, mode I plugged it back into the PS2 port using the adapter. And in any case my BIOS does not have the option of disabling the PS2 port so I don't gain an IRQ out of going to a USB mouse. I have heard some motherboards have a switch in BIOS that allows the mouse to work in safe mode, but mine does not.

I don't know anyone with dazzle software. Do you know of any other software titles that provide an MPEG2 plugin? Also, I am under the assumption that, if I play recorded MPEG back through the PV256 application, the file gets processed by the PV256 hardware decoder, vs. processed through software decoder if played through WMP. Is this correct? Reason I ask is that my CPU is not very powerful (Celeron 300A@450).

Please bear with me on this next point if it seems a bit incoherent - I am new at this and have never used video editing or transcoding applications. What i would like to know is whether it is possible fo a transcoding application to use the PV256 hardware encoder/decoder when transcoding video files. For example, I read about people capturing video in HufYUV (with other capture card) and using transcoding software (e.g., tmpgenc) to encode to VCD or SVCD or DVD. How about something like Adobe Premiere or MediaStudio Pro - can they use the PV256 hardware to do capturing, editing or transcoding? I think I am maybe alluding to things you can do with Matrox RT2000/2500 or Canopus Raptor. I guess the bottom line is I do not understand the difference between something like the PV256 and something like Matrox RT2000/2500 or Canopus Raptor.

[norm]

It is true that the GPFs more commonly occur when sharing an interupt but the fact the drivers appear to be written for a narrow group of motherboards and video cards also create these problems.
AVIOSYS in taiwan also produce a PV256 equivalent and when you install their software you are asked to select which motherboard chipset and what video card you are using. The install program then patches the application to suit your machine. I have tryed those drivers on the PV256 and could not get it to connect properly. I've been a bit busy so I haven't got back to modifying the program for it to work with the PV256. I only wanted to see if their drivers eliminated some of the compatibility problems with the PV256.
Are you sure there isn't a disable PS2 mouse in the BIOS???
There are a few programs that will provide an Mpeg2 plugin for WMP- Elecard, Ligos, cinemaster etc. The cinemaster comes with the DVD player software, The Ligos comes with Ulead videostudio and Mediastudio or by itself and Elecard comes with their DVD player software.
Anything playing through WMP will use your CPU to decode not the PV256. Of course if someone was smart enough to write the drivers to suit then it would be great.
The Pv256 is a capture card only it doesn't provide any real time transcoding or effects unlike a dazzle DVC2 or any of the products using the C-cube DVxplore or DVxpress which the RT2000 uses. Those cards can provide editing and special effects in real time without recompressing the file.
So if you capture a file in the PV256 and you decide to edit that file and add effects then the file has to be recompressed using a software encoder. If you just cut and paste files together then there is no need to recompress as long as the files are the same resoluion and bit rate.
We'd all like an RT2000 but we don't all have the money to pay for it.
At this time the PV256 will have to use its own application for capturing. The Pv256 is really designed to make a VCD, SVCD compliant file to record straight to a CD. Which is what I use mine for. And it does a dam good job. In particular the VCD encoding is much crisper than the products using C-cubes Dvxplore chipset. But the MPEG2 capture performance is equal to the others.
I think I answered those questions - If i didn't ask me again - I'm just off to work
Cheers for now ..

[SHS]

norm yes interupt sharing can be a bad thing but it should work any motherboard so long they turn of ACPI and manuel setup the motherboard the rigth way.
Interupt sharing is ok with USB and 10/100 NIC been there low PCI bandwith device and few sound card that don't use any hardware acceleration.
One thing I like point out you can do interupt sharing this some time by put the capture in the very first PCI slot and sharing the interupt with AGP video card been the two are on diff bridge chipset know as North and South bridge chipset this works very well 95% of time but that just depent on the video drivers or card your using.

One thing I would like to say is don't buy in Intel P4 setup OVER RATE CARP it will be your nigthmare from hell hehe better stick with AMD or Intel P3 hehe beside you real don't need anything over 1.0GiG anyway due to the fact there just to min bottneck on the motherboard system memory speed is BIG down side even with DDR the CPU is waiting on the rest of the system to pass data along.

fourthquark don't worry USB mouse not working in safe mode that Win9x OS thing but soon you go to Win2000 or even WinXP that will not be a problem any more.
As for your IRQ 12 not disable it self you must be still using PS/2 Keyboard other then that it should turn it self off or maybe have to do it in the noff in the bios or haven't setup the bios rigth if you do have both USB Mouse and Keyboard.
And switch in BIOS that allows for USB Keyboard not a USB mouse.

So norm the video quality not that hot from the S-Video source?.

[norm]

SHS- Some Video capture cards don't have a problem sharing interupts. My MegVC2 will happily share any interupt but C-Cube know how to write drivers properly and also it doesn't use Microsoft direct show which the PV256 does.
I have tried all sorts of things to get the PV256 to work in some machines and it just won't. Some combinations are better than others. The PV256 works great on INT12 in my Abit BX133 raid and not too bad on INT11 with the Matrox.
Regarding INT12 - If you don't use a PS2 mouse and there is no disable of the PS2 mouse port the PV256 won't install itself on INT12 even if it is free. ( not on my motherboard anyway. ) even if I tell windows to ignore the BIOS Table and set up itself, it still won't do it untill I disable the port in the BIOS ( Maybe it's just my motherboard )
I hope the PS2 keyboard doesn't have any relationship with INT12 as it has it's own interupt on INT 1.
I can't say I have tried the S-Video source much- not aware of any problems though.
Cheers ..

[fourthquark]

Norm, you nmention above that Aviosys makes a card that is like the PV256T. Is it an exact clone? Reason I ask is that I would like to have the ability to pre-schedule TV recordings, and the PV256T application v.1.3 cannot do this (as far as I can see). I was thinking that, if there are other cards that are clones of PV256T, if they have application software that allows user to set up a TV recording schedule, maybe I could get the software that comes with the clone card and use it with my PV256T. What are your thoughts on this? From reading this forum I believe I have seen other Taiwan manufacturers mentioned that make a similar (clone?) card. Firstly, do you know if these cards are clones, and secondly, do you think application software designed for a clone card would work with PV256T? One of the reasons I bought the PV256T was to record TV shows and burn to CD, so I am disappointed the PV256T application does not have ability to pre-schedule TV recording. PVR function would be nice too but not as critical as ability to pre-schedule TV recording.

Incidentally, despite the warnings in the manual and Provideo FAQ to turn off Power Management, my card work fine with ACPI enabled (at least for watching TV). It goes into and comes out of Standby mode no problem, and TV program display returns on screen.

[norm]

Regarding the TV scheduler - It was Provideo's intention to include a TV scheduler and it may still be but Provideo are spending all their time on getting the Software for the PV356 USB version going. So I would expect that once the PV356 is released (suppose to be in October) they may spend some more time on the application for the PV256.
The current application for the AVIOSYS card does NOT have a TV scheduler. They may add this function in the next version.
It would appear that the AVIOSYS and Provideo versions are electrically the same just with different board layouts. So it might be a waiting game to see which company adds the TV scheduler first although there might have to be a few mods to the AVIOSYS program to work correctly with the PV256.
There are to date 3 manufacturers that I am aware of that manufacture the SM2210-SAA7146 cards. Provideo, AVIOSYS, CBVT. Each of those companies sell their cards with other companies names on it. So there are about 10 companies out there with that product. Only one company besides provideo have released their application on the net. In time all of those companies will post their drivers and application.
The product that CBVT manufacture most likely won't work with the PV256 as it has a couple of different parts on the PCB.
After saying all of that, The scheduler for the PV256 is already in the application ( I looked at the code ) but has been disabled or more correctly is not called by the EXE program. I can only imagine that there was a problem with it so it has been disabled.
I'm sure it will be included in V1.4 I'm just not sure when that will be.
cheers

[fourthquark]

I sent an email to Provideo asking about TV scheduler. I just received the following reply:

"Thanks for your e-mail. We are going to release our latest driver and application version 1.40 in our web site next week. It can support record schedule and still capture function directly. Also, it can work with Ulead VideoStudio 5.0 DVD plug in software."

[parends]

I have recently purchased 3 PV256T cards. Next to the buggy drivers and software (v.1.3) I encountered one strange problem: The PV256 card captures VCD MPEG (PAL) at a video bitrate of 1148800 bits/sec instead of the standard 1150000 bits/sec. When cutting these captured files into smaller parts (using TMPGenc f.e.) a small audio de-sync occurs. This gets worse towards the end of a video file. I've tried a lot of different MPEG cutting tools and finaly found one which works OK; VCD Cutter. Provideo cannot provide me with a solution except waiting for the new drivers/software. I also tried capturing with the Aviosys software which seems to work OK (except the video bitrate is now 1152000....) Has anyone encountered these same problems while cutting VCD MPEG?

[fourthquark]

Norm, this is slightly OT - you mentioned above that you looked at the PV256T application code - what tool(s) do you use to do this with? I am interested in starting to look at things at the code level. I would also appreciate reference to any sites that might provide more information on this subject (de-compiling dis-assembly, or whatever it is called). If you prefer you can email this info to me at fourthquark@hotmail.com. Thanks.

[norm]

parends - I had noticed the VCD files were often 1148800 and also slightly different to that but I didn't find any problems when I trimmed the file in Cineplayer editor. I burned the files and they played OK in my DVD player.
I actually though the problem was caused by me hacking the drivers and having different application versions to the drivers, but obviously not.
I'll checked the new drivers next week and see if that fixes that problem and all the other ones.

Fourthquark - Good to hear the TV scheduler is in the next version. I'll email you the info you requested.

[SHS]

min 1100000 to max 1152000

[tleeuwen]

fourthquark - If you need the source code for the app, you can simply download it from the Provideo site. It is in VC++.

I also own an PV256T card. After I installed it on Win2K, the system locks-up when rebooting or shutting down. My MB has an 815 chipset. Does anyone have a solution for this problem.

[fourthquark]

As I stated above, I am quite new to digital video. I have learned a lot by following the postings on this forum but there is still one thing that is not clear to me. It relates to a question I asked earlier in this thread regarding ability of PV256T to use its hardware encode/decode chip to do things like transcoding from DVD to VCD or SVCD, and "real-time editing". Norm answered that the PV256 cannot do this, but cards like Matrox RT2000 and Dazzle DVC2 can.

Now, the PV256T has a hardware encode/decode chip. It uses hardware encoding/decoding for video capture and presumably for mpeg video playback. So why can't it use the same hardware encode/decode chip for doing transcoding or real-time editing? Is it a driver issue? Is it hardware? If it is hardware, I would appreciate if someone could tell me what aspect of hardware differences would prevent PV256 from doing thing the RT2000 or DVC2 can do. Is it speed and/or bandwidth capacity of the respective chips? I am obviously missing a major concept here, and I would be very thankful if someone could explain this to me. Always enjoy learning something new...

[SHS]

fourthquark far I know the Dazzle DVC2 can't do transcoding.
The spec on the StreamMachine MPEG chip are saying it can do transcoding but I think it only AVI must lee like dosen't have software and driver support for it at this time.
As for real-time editing no MPEG card can do this but they can do real-time rendering do be fool by it.

[norm]

Fourthquark - The DVC2 is based on a c-cube DVxplore encoder decoder. It has 2 MPEG2 decoder engines built in.
Which means you can edit 2 mpeg2 streams together without the need to recompress as it hardware renders the stream. The only transcoding the DVxplore can do is DV to Mpeg2 in real time.
An RT2000 is based on a c-cube DVxpress encoder decoder. It has the ability to not only edit 2 mpeg2 steams but also DV and mpeg2 in real time or any combination of..
Both these products can do special effects in real time.
The RT2000 uses the graphics card in comes with to render other effects in real time and then passes that back to the RT2000 for mixing.
The streammachine only has one decoder built in so it can't render 2 streams together.
The problem of transcoding is not the video information it is a combination of video and audio that causes the problem.
All these mpeg encoder decoder devices, software encode the audio, only the video in encoder in hardware. So the problem has always been muliplexing the two together at exactly the right time. It bad enough getting the timing right when capturing but asking the device to transcode adds just a few other problems.
Some capture cards lock the video and audio samples together and add or drop frames or blocks of audio in order to keep the multiplexing correct as possible. These adds or drops depend on the speed of the CPU. So not every machine does a good job at capturing perfect audio and video sync.
The next generation of chips will have an Mpeg audio encoder built in to the card so lip sync problems should be a thing of the past.
Streammachines new product the SM2288 does just that.
We should see that product entering the market next year.
Hope that explains some of your questions.
Cheers..

[ylong]

Hi norm and other PV256 owners,
I am tring to find a good TV capture card for VCD(MPEG1) and I tried ATI TVWonder and Hauppauge WinTV PVR. None offers the quality I want. skittelsen mentioned PV231 and you guys are using PV256. Could I ask you guys some Q please?
1.How do you think about the MPEG1 quality from PV256/231?
2.If I want buy it, where should I go?
3.Will PV256 be compatable with my Micron Millennia P2 450MHz machine?
4.Is there any other similiar cards with hardware MPEG encoding?

Thanks a lot.

[norm]

The PV231 and PV256 VCD quality is excellent. They are very similar in quality though the PV231 might be a little better but it doesn't do SVCD and DVD like the PV256.
If you live in the USA or Canada then you will have to purchase the PV256 direct from Provideo in Taiwan.
The question of compatibitlity is a difficult one. The PV231 will run on any machine but the PV256 is a bit picky. You might like to tell us what video and sound card you have and also what other cards youv've got in the machine.
There are many cards out there that do hardware encoding, it depend how much money you wish to spend.

[ylong]

Thank you so much, norm.
I just want to cature satellite TV to VCD so PV256 (with mpeg2) is a little bit overkill to me now. I have a Micron Millennia P2 450MHz machine with RIVA 128 video card and ESS sound card. I believe those cards were integrated into the motherboard.
Could you please recommend me a card that does hardware MPEG1 encoding in high quality? Anything around $200. If I can get high quality, I don't care to pay more.
I tried ATI TV Wonder that recorded hissy noise after 10 minutes of running. Hauppauge claims its WinTV PVR is hardare encoding but when I tried it, it ate most of my CUP time (just like ATI) with poor quality.
As to MPEG2, I may wait until PV256 gets more mature and compatible to more hardwares.
Someone recommends me Dazzle's DVC. How do you think?
Also, does PV231 support Win2K?
Thanks.

[ylong]

Hi norm,
My question are still the same but just want bring it to your attention. Thanks.

[geniv]

if Mpeg1 is all u need go for the SNAZZI, I use it for my VCD encoding and it's pretty good video quality. it's kind of "old" hardware so I think u can get it relatively cheap on ebay or somewhere.

don't know if it's actually audio encoded in hardware (never read the spec) but I NEVER once had any A/V sync issue. I think the minimun requirement is a P 200mhz