Who uses Win2K for all their capturing needs?

[Valnar]

I currently make VCD's with Win98se and use AVI_IO, Virtualdub, TMPGENC, etc... I have a PCTV Pro BT878 board. All works well, but I'm itching to move to Win2K so I can work with large files on DVD's, but without losing my (x)VCD creation abilities.

Does anyone here do all their work in Win2K? Any gotchas?
Robert

[deltaboy]

VALNAR, i currently use win2k. everything to my knowledge is compatible in a 2000 box. its only because i have a dual system going, thats why i use 2k.

i see only one advantage with win2k, tho. the capability of having a file over 4GB (requiring an NTFS file system). this way you can have uncompressed AVIs.

no loss. best possible source. "garbage in, garbage out".

[mgruber]

Bundled WDM drivers are buggy and incompatible. Besides some TV systems of South America that are very similar to NTSC will not tune correctly.
Also they are impressively slow. I found some drivers that are still in "DEBUG" version, that creates tons of "debug registry entries" during card usage.
All problems were fixed using the Universal BT8xx WDM driver:
- Download it from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/btwincap/btwdmdrvinstaller4.6.0.zip
NOTE: You can also search for "BT848" in http://sourceforge.net if you want ot seek for newer releases.
- Extract it anywhere and run the EXE file. Don't forget to read the README text, because it has lots of useful info.
- Then when using VirtualDub, you must turn "Preview" mode on, because "Overlay" mode of HiRes frames is not suported by hardware. So it's possible, like in ATI AIW to capture both fields of the frame.

NOTE: This driver is a God's Gift and far the best one I've tested. You can even turn FM tuning on using non-FM cards.

[Valnar]

Mgruber,
I have the universal BT8x8 drivers from here:
http://www.iulab.com/index.shtm?bt8x8/about

Are these the same ones as you mentioned?

[ebaldino]

Valnar,

I use Win2K with the "usual suspect" applications, with an ATI AIW 128. It took me a while to get everything working like I expected it to, but it wasn´t really the OS´s fault, it was more my learning to tweak the applications. I can dual boot to W98 and everything works there too, but I haven´t done so in a looong time. W2K is great: big files and A LOT more stable.

rgds
EBaldino

[mgruber]

No. I also tested the "iu" Universal drivers, but they failed with my country TV system (PAL-M). Besides the tuner configuration is not so straightforward and assumes some regional HW configurations.
The driver I mentioned is "Open Source" and for those who have C++ packages installed, allows to be recompiled for specific processor models.
It is based on a single binary file, while most others installs 3 binaries. Also the size of the binaries are very small and this typically means "optimized" and "well written".
Also, if you have any incompatibility, you are able to send comments and suggestions to the author in the sourceforge.net, because this project is still under development.