Capture with ASUS card and WDM capture driver (??)

[Triffid]

I've been successfully capturing for a long time now using virtual dub and the vfw capture driver from ASUS (i have a V7700 deluxe card). However it seems that ASUS are no longer supplying the vfw driver with their new display drivers, so I decided (once again) to try to get wdm to work.

Here are some problems I am having. Hopefully they are familiar to someone, and you can give me a way to fix them.

I'm capturing PAL, anysize, in .avi format

I have the vfwwdm mapper/wrapper installed. I am running Win 98SE on a PIII 1GHz Intel 815ep chipset system. The wdm drive is the Nvidia 1.11 capture driver.

CAPTURING WITH ULEAD VideoStudio4

1. Sometimes it just doesn't display/capture anything.
2. Whan it 'works' it displays OK, but the capture file has a BIG white rectangle across the centre (taking up about half of the capture)
3. The only 'compression' format I am offered in UYUV..I have heaps of other codecs, but they are not recognised by the WDM driver

CAPTURING with Virtualdub

1. I can't !! It hangs, then I have to kill virtualdub, and I still can't do much cause there is something hanging in the system, and I need to push the reset button!

Any ideas, suggestions, sympathies.....(of course my default is to stay with the old display driver, but I feel like I'm missing out)

[mate]

My VirtualDub also hangs (in Windows XP) if I have both WDM and VfW driver installed. Uninstall VfW driver.

If you want to use PAL, you might have to "hack" the WDM driver a bit. Open the file nvcap.inf, find the line
HKEY,VideoSource,NTSC (or something like that)
change NTSC to PAL and save. Install the driver.

This should work fine.

[Triffid]

Thanks mate

I have already changed the wdm to PAL as suggested, but I had not tried removing vfw drivers. I'll give it a go and see what happens. Do you have any opinion on which driver captures with the best quality? I guess I will see for myself soon, but it's good to have a second opinion.

Aslo, have you ever seen the 'big white rectangle' problem with wdm??

Thanks again

[mate]

I can't remeber whether I tried the WDM driver under Win 98/Me, but I believe that is the best one. The VfW driver seems more flickering to me.

In XP I haven't had the VfW working in VDub, so I've always used the WDM. But now I have problems with the WDM (http://forum.vcdhelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=220913#220913) and used VfW in Asus Live yesterday. And it feel its more flickering and less smooth in XP too.

Also, from what I remeber you couldn't change the TV-tuner from within VirtualDub with VfW. That's possible with WDM in XP.

I do not recognize the "big white rectangle".

[Triffid]

So, as MATE suggest, I tried removing the vfw driver and YES, virtualbub no longer locks on the wdm driver, I can see the video coming in and even select device settings etc. So a BIG THANKS, for that!!!!

BUT, I tried to capture and lost LOTs and LOTS and LOTs of frames....in fact the effective capture rate was down around 15fps (I was trying to capture 25 fps) and it didn't matter what resolution I used. Tonight I will probably try going back to the nvidia 1.08 drivers (I'm using 1.11) to see if that helps, or reinstall all the drivers from scratch in case something got corrupted along the way, but if anyone has any experience with this, or knows what will fix it, please let me know.

[mate]

I hade the same problem before installing the nVidia WDM hacked to PAL as stated above. I think that will solve your last problems.

I haven't solved mine though...
Can you confirm the composite input is also working with the WDM-driver?
I'm almost convinced I have to have my card replaced...

[Triffid]

I'll check it tonight, and let you know for sure.

I did do the 'PAL' edit, but I rushed the testing a little, so maybe I screwed something up, any way, I'll double check at get back to you.

(As I haven't sucessfully captured yet, I don't tknow if Virtualdub also gets the White Rectangle problem, but I have read elsewhere that this may be realted to the 1.11 drivers, so I'll check this too, and write something about it.)

[Triffid]

OK, so I spent a few hours on this last night, and this is the result:

wdm 1.11 causes the white rectangle
wdm 1.08 works for capture: both for S-video and composite in (bad luck 'mate')

I am now dropping frames at a rate of about 1 in 1000 (at 720x576 25pfs), but I notice that almost immediately, virtualdub reports a drop in the frame rate to 24.99something and the offset numbers start moving (this used to happen much more slowly with vfw and didn't start until about 3000 frames were captured). It could be that I need to retune my video and audio buffer settings...so I'll try that tonight.

However, it was not smooth sailing with wdm 1.08.....it tool over an hour of uninstalling and reinstalling to get it to go, and I'm not sure that it is stable now. There were several edits I needed to do to the nvcap.inf file and it seemed that if I did anything that didn't work (and caused virtualdub to lock up) I needed to completely uninstall and start over to get it back again. Anyway, the things I did in the .inf were:

Change the fomat to 'PAL'
Remove the AIO tuner entry (coz I don't have one)
set the default input to 'SVHS'

I also set the chip to 'SAA7113' to try to overcome other problems, but it made no difference, so I guess the auto detection works OK...I plan to try modifying some registers just to make sure though!

When I made other modifications (eg 'YUV422' instead of 'CCIRwhatever', or 'HIGH_BANDWITH' insted of 'default') it caused Virtualdub to lock up (just like when the vfw driver was still installed).

I have also noticed that there is some overlay problem. I can view the overlay when I enter Virtualdub capture the first time, but once I have changed to preview mode, cahnging back to Overlay results in a blank display....maybe there is some incompatibility with the display driver (ASUS 21.83 less the vfw capture driver) so I plan to get the 27.42 drivers and give them a try.

As always, any suggestion are more than welcome, and I hope this information is of use to someone else, too.

UPDATE:

Installed the ASUS 27.42 display drivers and now overlay works consistently using the wdm 1.08 capture drivers (ie I can swap between overlay and preview and back without getting a black screen).

Still get the white rectangle with the 1.11 capture drivers (ANYONE GOT A SOLUTION FOR THIS???), and I'm still not holding 25fps. Also, I've noticed that the CPU usage is up to 52% for straight UYVY and 93% for huffuy (compared to below 30% for the vfw driver!!!!!), maybe I need to turn my OCing and cranked up RAM on again!

So far, fun aside, apart from the extra 16 pixels horizontal resolution, I've found NO advantages in going wdm....but hopefully that will change.

[mate]

Where did you find that 27.42 driver?
I have tried the 21.xx and some 28.xx found on the german ftp, but I had problems with both.

[Triffid]

Here, on the German site:

ftp://ftp.asuscom.de/pub/ASUSCOM/TREIBER/VGA/V7x00/

Where did you find the 28.xx ??

[mate]

Sorry, I confused the version numbers with nVidia detonator. I have Asus 27.42 and nVidia 28.32.