I'm running Windows XP. I just picked up the I/O Magic PC-PVR tv/capture card tonight, but I haven't installed it yet. I did download the WinXP drivers from the IOMagic website, however before I install everything, I'd like to know from an experienced XP user if these are the best drivers to use with this card. I've also heard about some 'generic' drivers that can capture at a higher resolution, but I don't know the details. I'd like to find the best combination of drivers and capture program to be able to capture at the highest quality I can. Haven't decided between MPG2 or AVI capture, depends on how well the MPG2 looks (came with PowerVCR II). I just want to know the best drivers upfront, so I don't have to worry about installing the wrong one and then try to uninstall them later. Thanks!![]()
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Well, I don't have WinXP, but I run the card under Win98se. If you haven't checked the forums at the I/O Magic site, take a look there - several posts regarding the card under WinXP.
I changed from the drivers that came with the card to the 3rd party driver available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/btwincap - these drivers allow more resolutions, avi capturing, and more. In Win98, it was easy to change to the new drivers, and they are supposed to work with WinXP too. I don't think it would be too difficult to change back to the originals.
Some of the things you may be interested in are changing the available resolutions in PowerVCRII - and in Win98, this can be done by editing the registry. There's also an available freeware program that will do the same thing - it was available at www.skunkwerkz.com, but the author had to remove his website (copyright problem with skunkwerkz). Check the address and his new e-mail is listed. Not sure if it works with WinXP, but if you'd like to try the program, I can send you a copy.
By the way, I get good results with PowerVCRII, but it depends on the power of your machine. I have an AMD Athlon 1800XP and 256meg of ram, and it works smoothly. I also installed another card in my kid's computer, which only has a PIII 500mhz, and he can only capture mpeg-1 at VCD resolutions, or frames start dropping.
Overall, a great value for $40!
Cheers, --TonyK -
Tonyk, THANKS for the great info! This was exactly what I was looking for!!
I should ask too, is there anything you are giving up by not using IOMagics native drivers? I assume not, but thought I'd ask. -
I don't think the original I/OMagic drivers have any benefits - the "Sourceforge" drivers allow the card to be used with VirtualDub, a nice bonus, in addition to everything it could do with the I/O Magic drivers. Of course if you capture with VDub, you'll need lots more disk space, so I've only been using PowerVCRII for MPEG 1 & 2.
The only minor negative is that it seems to take a little longer to initialize the card with the Sourceforge drivers - the original drivers were a little quicker to start the display - but that's really a very minor point, and it could even be my imagination...
Cheers, --TonyK
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