capturing video using dazzle dvc 130

[rrats]

Some time ago, somebody gave me Dazzle DVC 130 card, which is seemingly better than EASYCAP. However it has some issues. Compuitability issues to be exact. It doesn't support Windows 10 at all, and it only works on 32-bit windows 7 as well as WinXP32. I have never managed to make it work on windows 7, meaning that only other option left is Windows xp. And even there I had more compuitability issues. That is only one piece of software supporting it. And that one software gives out output that's not so good. One option gives out blended video, other gives compressed weave and the third one gives out video with half fields.


According to that software, it either give out weaved MPRG-2, or blended DVIX,MJPEG,DVIX5 and MPEG-1.

Is there any other software that supports these?

[Moralez]

I don't know what computability issues you have but there are drivers out there for the various Windows versions you mentioned.

https://rocketdrivers.com/manufacturers/pinnacle/audio-cards/dazzle-dvc130

[dellsam34]

Don't download from suspecious third party websites, you could be downloading a trojan, Here is the official download page:
http://cdn.pinnaclesys.com/SupportFiles/Hardware_Installer/readmeHW10.htm

[rrats]

Don't download from suspecious third party websites, you could be downloading a trojan, Here is the official download page:
http://cdn.pinnaclesys.com/SupportFiles/Hardware_Installer/readmeHW10.htm

That's exactly where o downloaded drivers from

Again, my issue is that they only work on one program, on windows xp

[dellsam34]

They should work under Windows 7 using AmarecTV or Vdub.

[jwillis84]

The DVC130 is not a simple Video Capture device, it is a partial hardware video compression device. Its based around the WISChip GO7007SB.



[Attachment 60142 - Click to enlarge]

There were originally three base models, DVC100, DVC130, DVC170

DVC100 - Empia based
DVC130 - WIS Chip GO7007SB based
DVC170 - WIS Chip GO7007SB based


The reason was Micronas / TDK acquired the technology and declined to continue manufacturing the chips.. pre-Vista/Windows 7 64 bit, so there were never any 64 bit drivers which supported the DVC130.

Later they revised the models to all be based on Empia chips, the model numbers were similar to the original model numbers, but the later models did not include a hardware video compression chip.. so they were supported by the Empia driver when 64 bit versions came about.

DVC100 - Empia based
DVC103 - Empia based
DVC107 - Empia based

The hardware option was very important when computers were much slower, it allowed video capture over USB2.0 when the computer might have choked by reducing the data rate and volume of the data being transferred.

Later faster computers, with faster hard drives and SSDs were sensitive, but not as much as older computers.

Since the video was not compressed many felt this was higher quality, and that software compression was sufficient.

The WISChip G7007SB performed some of the first steps in MPEG1, MPEG2 and DV video compression.. mainly the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) which basically "De-noised" or filtered the video in preparation for later software crunching steps to be performed on the computer.


NOTE: There is not a TBC (time base corrector) feature in the design and no where in the WISChip. This is very important because when capturing from a Camcorder with a TBC built-in, or when capturing from a Tuner as a Broadcast signal.. the video signal is far cleaner and "correct".. than when coming from most consumer VCRs. VCRs and the tapes they play corrupt and mangle the video signal in unique ways that a time base corrector can accomodate. (Some) time base correctors also have a video frame, field or line (buffer) to compensate for dropouts and bad frames which can abort or prevent capturing a good video signal. NEC was once of the first to design a DV with a TBC all in one chip.. and continued to include the TBC in subsequent chips.. making those designs far superior for capturing VCR tape playback. NEC chips graduated to MPEG2 and MPEG4 in later years but unfortunately were not advertised as having this feature.


It (does) have a pseudo HSYNC, VSYNC feature which is not described well.. designed to maintain audio and video sync.. possibly (a guess) dropping audio samples if a frame is dropped to maintain the synchronization. The designs using the WISChip were well regarded for the time for capturing Animation and Anime.. and led to Avery Lee of VirtualDub fame building in support for the WISChip designs from Plextor ConvertX PVRs.


Its not a bad model, the DVC130 and DVC170 were especially well regarded for use on old Mac OSX computers using the Pinnacle / Elgato / EyeTV software video capture suites. After OSX 10.6.8 however things started a steep decline in iMovie and FinalCut pro and video capture was pushed to dedicated video capture hardware on the Mac platform.. and out of the operating system.


really over the last decade or more.. video capture has been relegated to mostly Game Capture and streaming using the UVC and UVA standards which barely support NTSC standard def video.. AverMedia is still making stand alone NTSC SD capture boxes.. but they dump their results to h.264 and onto a microSD / TF flash chip, or over the network to a Windows or Mac file share .. as opposed to plugging into the PC or Mac over a Firewire, USB or Thunderbolt port.

[dellsam34]

Thanks Jwillis for that hardware breakdown, Indeed most of the problem are player related, Capturing from a crappy mom and dad VCR using composite video will most likely not end well especially with an easycap.

[jwillis84]

Third party.. VirtualDub 1.9.11 does not work with the DVC-130 I verified this.

The Last version of "Pinnacle Instant DVD Recorder 2.6.1.127" is still available for download here

It installs on Win XP, Vista, Win7 on 32 and 64 bit versions.

It will support the DVC-130 on 32 bit versions of Windows XP, Vista and Win7 because the hardware only has a 32 bit device driver available.

It does require entering your email address to complete the download, but the page is so old I doubt its monitored any longer.

The software does require a Serial Number for Instant DVD Recorder but will activate even if there is no Internet Connection. The download is described as a Software "Update" but is in fact a complete installer. The Serial Number from an older version of Instant DVD Recorder will be accepted for activation. Older versions did not support Vista and Win7 and even on WinXP were buggy or difficult to install.

The software is rather simple and will "pretend" a DVD burner is a folder and capture the video to that folder as a DVD-video .VOB file along with several DVD-video support files for Title and Menu information.

I was able to play the .VOB file directly just opening it in VLC.

I very seriously doubt the software would work properly on Win8.1 or Win10.

I was also able to use GraphEdit to create a Filtergraph to Preview the Audio and Video from the device.. its a long ways from a standard DirectShow configuration and would confuse most programs and users.

The DVC-130 device driver has "no" ability to deliver uncompressed video from the device to the computer over USB.. all of the choices are hardware compressed versions of video.. some quite unusual.

In their day the DVC-100 was the lowest cost capture device, the DVC-130 cost more, the DVC-170 was the most expensive.. hardware compressed video was considered precious. The roles are somewhat reversed today as people now prefer uncompressed video and to tinker with editing and software compression options before saving the final version of the video file for archival storage.

Its a double edged sword capturing uncompressed video since with all those options comes many decisions and a great deal of your time.. back in the day it was considered more valuable to accept all the defaults and simply capture the end product and be done with it.

[BartZLederman]

I have found that my old Dazzle DVC 100 (a similar device) will work on Windows 10 and VirtualDub. However, as odd as it may seem, the monitor has to be connected to an Intel video adapter.

I mostly still use Windows 7 for a variety of reasons, but my one Windows 10 PC has on-board Intel Graphics and an add-in Nvidia card. If VirtualDub is run on a monitor that is attached to an Nvidia card, BAD things happen. The display goes haywire, to put it mildly. Apparently, this is a known problem (to the developer). By enabling both the Nvidia card and the Intel adapter and by running the VirtualDub display on a second monitor attached to the Intel adapter, I've been able to capture video through the Dazzle with no significant problems.

[rrats]

Third party.. VirtualDub 1.9.11 does not work with the DVC-130 I verified this.

The Last version of "Pinnacle Instant DVD Recorder 2.6.1.127" is still available for download here

Thank you

[jwillis84]

The DVC-100 is based around nearly the oldest Empia chip.

Empia started as a USB bridge chip (only) preceeded only by the Crescent chip made in China.. which showed up in the Turtle Beach Imported Video Advantage for USB device. To build it out as an uncompressed video capture solution many other chips had to be added to the far side of the bridge.

By the time of the DVC-100 only an external Audio (97) capture chip had to be included.. other USB capture dongles just didn't bother to capture audio and directed the user to use their sound card input to capture the audio separately.

Later generations of Empia gradually onboarded functions like capturing audio, decoding the NTSC/PAL input signal into the one chip, until they could do everything with one chip. This brought costs down and allowed making the capture device very tiny.. even fitting into a mostly cable only capture dongle.

The downside was of course.. do everything in one chip, it tends to heat up, and you have no options for changing out the video decoder chip, or audio capture chips for something else.. like a better video decoder, or a better audio capture chip.. all classes of capture device become the same.

Dazzle moved away from distinguishing their DVC-100 (then DVC-100 Rev 1, or DVC-101), DVC-103, DVC-107 by hardware design.. to the software capture bundle included with the same capture device. Since they were all the same hardware inside, they began changing up their colored shells but their one device driver services all their hardware types made support much easier.

Only the DVC-100, DVC-130 and DVC-170 were different.. and the DVC-130 and DVC-170 were the same hardware inside, but had different capture software bundled.

It was sort of clever selling the same hardware for different prices and only changing the hardware when absolutely necessary... the colored tortoise shells allowed the customer to assume higher valued components inside.. that were the same.

The advantage is the DVC-101 (again really the DVC-100 Rev 1) was uncompressed video capture and lasted long enough that they wrote a new Windows 64 bit device driver for it. The pendulum had already swung by the time of Windows 7 x64 and people were starting to look for uncompressed video.. and the DVC-101 lasted for sale well into 2017.

As far as I know only the Luminate, Hauppauge and AverMedia products still had hardware compression chips by the end of the 2010 decade. And today in the dawn of the 2020's only AverMedia still has h.264 and h.265 hardware compression available in their hardware compression video capture solutions.

On the Mac side, VideoGlide is a USB 2.0 video capture software solution that did not use the QuickTime Video Digitizer method Apple designed.. somewhat like Microsoft.. Apple kept changing up the design of their software solution and only those software companies that ignored the operating system survived. Video Glide defacto became the 'DirectShow / DirectX' solution for OSX. Much as EyeTV became the Windows Media Center for OSX.

What this meant was the Dazzles based on the Empia chip were supported on the Mac side using Video Glide for quite some time, until Apple killed all 32 bit support in OSX 10.13 I believe. EchoFX makers of the Video Glide software only started shutting down sales in 2020.. and I bought a new license from them only recently.. they said their keys would continue to work long after they are gone and don't depend on any online servers to activate them.. so its well worth picking up a copy if you ever intend to use an Empia Dazzle on an old Mac.

Just remember the DVC-130 and DVC-170 are not Empia, they are WISChip GO7007SB chip based.

And remember they do not have a time base corrector in the design.

I did leave out the Blackmagic, Magewell, Ephi and Matrox or other Gaming / Streaming capture vendors in this Thesis.. there are higher end solutions starting well above $300 or much higher in cost.. and there were many others at the low end, Nvidia, ATI, Tevion, Startech, Elgato, ADS, Honestech / VidBox, I-O Data, Terratec, Creative Labs ect.. ect.. but those are other stories.. with many other design choices. (And we're only talkin about USB devices here)

[rrats]

again, tysm jwillis84. It finally produces interlaced output

[jwillis84]

Another Tip about "Pinnacle Instant DVD Recorder 2.6.1.127"

Double Clicking the Video window will maximize it within the larger overall application window, double clicking the Maximized will shrink it back to its original small window.

This can compensate some what for the "tiny" video Preview window if your trying to read something or target a specific scene before recording.

Its by design that the Preview window is small because the incoming video is compressed and has to be decoded in order to preview it.. back in those days.. decompressing a MPEG2 stream was considered "High Powered Computing" or a CPU intensive task. The video graphic chips did not have dedicated de-compressors.

So they had to restrict the MPEG decompression load in someway.

The Preview window is shrunk at the output stage of the device driver so its much smaller than the actual Capture window.. and the final video will be Full resolution.. within the Instant DVD Recorder program that is set by the three quality settings of the recording.

To produce the Preview window the CPU only has to work with the much smaller Preview MPEG data stream.

Its handled this same way in all of the Roxio Creator programs as well.

Windows Media Center had higher hardware requirements, and WMC for XP was sold separate from the main operating system so it could demand hardware compressions and deecompression as a condition of sale.. so that PVR software could run Full screen.

In general Non-Linear Editors of the time declined to support (large) MPEG streams for editing as the performance was so low.. as computers got faster this changed.. VideoRedo being a prime example. But also with some of the NLE Power houses.

The DVC130 and DVC170 are supported in Pinnacle Video Studio up to I believe the Present Day in version 24, but only on the 32 bit editions of the operating systems.. and contingent on the device driver being compatible with the operating system.

Oh!

The video is actually captured "Interlaced" within the .VOB file it is the player that your using that is providing the "De-Interlaced" picture.. "Interlaced" is Superior to "De-Interlaced" and was part of the DVD Profile specification. So overall not a bad deal.

They also used a fairly high quality Analog Device ADV chip on the Input.. I don't recall if it had their Adaptive Line Length feature or not.. it probably did.. though not a "real" or conventional dual horizontal and vertical Time Base Corrector, and not a Frame Synchronizer.. they did provide a very nice color separation function when decoding the video signal in preparation for the MPEG processor.. so the color appears to have a lot of depth.

For 2000-2005 the WISChip is not "bad" but by later standards it was better for Anime or Animation because it could have some rough or chunky filter edges.. and might not capture motion as cleanly as many later chips in 2005-2010 and 2010-2015. It was a wonder for its time.

[rrats]

very interesting

[rrats]

what is the fastest emulator out there. i want to be able to use this with my modern laptop and the orcale vm virtualbox is so bloody slow. i doubt there is another way to utilise this wo/ emulating