Realmagic DVR

[gf]

Greetings All,
I built a new computer for video only. Asus A7V333-raid, 40G WD 7200 drive, amd XP 1900, ATI AIW Radeon, Realmagic DVR Win2000 in standard computer install. In preview mode I get intermittent jerky video, not on recorded video. The captured video on playback doesn't show it. The captured video & playback video is a little to the right and I see the video's "edge". The dvd playback, none. Does anyone have this piece of s**** working on win2000?

Thanks
Steve

[SHS]

You have install two set of drivers for it to work
One for encoding the other for decoding plus you need application
http://www.sigmadesigns.com/support/download_dvr_win2000.htm
Why did you buy thing anyway? do know you can't hook put a reg Home DVD player to it which has macrovision detection.

[gf]

Yes I have all that. First the tech's at Realmagic said I must set up windows as a "Standard" computer in win2000. I then installed my AIW Radeon drivers they worked fine. But when I installed the Realmagic drivers I had intermittent blue screens and other problems. I re-installed the Via drivers, sound drivers, etc... Spent about 4 hours and I think it's stable but I still can't play dvd's through the card. I get MCI error's. Now when I had this board installed with windows ME I could play DVD's. The people at Realmagic can't figure it out. This board has been a problem for over 1 year.

Steve

[Known]

OK, first thing, this card is definitely not a piece of sh*t, you'd be *very* surprised at who uses the DVR for realtime encoding and the quality is second to none, way better than these half assed PVRs out there (Even if they do use partly the same encoding IC).
Secondly, we've used this card in a multitude of machines and the only negative issue I can find with it is that you've not got much of a chance when it's paired with a VIA chipset. Sad but true.
If you've got an old P233 machine, you'll have far better luck using it in that - this card uses basically no CPU power at all and if setup correctly it encodes anything beautifully, it's a superb card and can't be compared with anything in the 2-300 $ range, it simply blows them away as it was designed for semi-professional users.

You may try to disable ACPI to get it working in your machine or use another chipset as I said above.

For a test (Once you've got it working) Try encoding a DVD in TMPGEnc into a compliant VCD or SVCD format on the best settings, wait 2 weeks for it to encode restarting when your machine crashes, then take an S-Video to the input of your DVR card and record the same. The DVR is far better quality, encodes in realtime and is reliable without *any* sync problems, the audio is locked to the video stream.

That's why we use it. at an RRP of almost $1000 it's a tad on the expensive side but if you get use out of it then it's money well spent.
If you don't like it, I'll take it off your hands.

[gf]

The only reason that it's a piece is because everytime I talk to Realmagic people they tell me it's compatable with Via chipsets. I agree with you that the quality is GREAT, but when it's working. I recorded a section of Bad Co. from direct tv this weekend and the quality is DVD quality, but the blue death screens are between the drivers and windows 2000 pro I think. And they wouldn't get the money they do for this card if the video quality was bad or the card was junk. Did you ever get it installed with win 2000 pro? Or some other op system. The other computer I had was with a via chipset and windows me. I was able to play DVD's and did not have these problems, the only problems were watching preview or record mode it was intermittingly pause which wasn't seen on playback and audio record problems. I hope I didn't get you upset before because thats not my intent. I just want to capture some video and stop trying things with the software! :P

Steve

[SLK001]

I use the Realmagic DVR in a W2000P system with no problems whatsoever. But, I remember that I specifically AVOIDED the "VIA" chipset MBs, because they seem to have problems with ALL capture cards.

I don't know what is the Windows "Standard" that they are talking about, and I wouldn't even know how to get "in" it. Just make sure that you have the latest drivers for the card (circa June, 2001).

Caps from this card are absolutely superb (full D1 video at 9.5 Mbps).

[Known]

Excuse the brief reply, I'm on my way out somewhere.

Go to Device Manager, pick the 1st thing listed, should be right under your PCs name, rightclick, select Properties, Driver, Update Driver.
Click Update Driver, go through the usual rubbish to upgrade your PCs driver, then select "Standard PC"

If you have anymore Q's I'll bbl.

[Trik]

To get standard PC during a fresh install...

Turn ACPI off in bios (if your bios lets you)
Enable plug and play OS in the bios.
Save and exit bios.

Start the win2k install.
When it gets to where is says hit F6 to load specific drivers, hit F5 instead.
It'll continue the setup, but in a minute or so your get a menu you can scroll up an down on.
Standard PC is one of the selections.
Select it and continue the install.

[gf]

Well I talked to the people at Realmagic today and they said "it is compatible with Via chipset". Well who knows. I think I may have some conflict in this system but I don't know for sure. There is one slot that does not share an irq with any board, but when I use that slot it is jerky in preview and capture. And also the video is blocky in spots, and sometimes it re-boots. To all the people that responded "Thanks". What motherboards & cpu's did YOU use to get this card working?

Thanks
Steve

[Known]

Right now I've got mine running in an old Dell Celeron433 with Intel chipset, runs flawlessly. When I first tried it in my Gigabyte 7VRXP KT333 system it kept rebooting at random, I'm not sure why, it may have something to do with the fact that the VIA chipsets for the AMD are complete bollocks.

[Known]

Just for a laugh I put the DVR back into my main machine and installed Win98 and 2K without ACPI. Same rebooting and lockup problems as when I first tried it.
Try one thing for me if you can, set the encoder to MPEG1 and the bitrate to 1150, see if that crashes your machine - that's the only setting that seemed to be stable on this VIA setup, DVD or SVCD encoding killed my machine within seconds, especially when I move the mouse to stop recording.
Don't bother trying the PCI Latency patch either, it's a waste of time.

[SHS]

More like VIA chipset if you get a diff motherboard with a diff chipset like ALi or SiS or nVidia it will run just fine.
Just so you know the first WinTV-PVR model 880 has this problem some time but not as near bad the as REALmagic DVR board.
Yes I agree with Known, Don't bother trying the PCI Latency patch either, it's a waste of time.

[geniv]

I use to have the RealMagic DVR. the picture quality is pretty good. but I got the same problem as you with the "off centered" picture.

did a whole review of it in this page

http://www.geniv.com/MPEG.HTM

[SLK001]

What you guys have is a system resource conflict. The best way that I know of to fix something like this, is to crack open your box (computer, that is) remove ALL cards except the video and a CD DRIVER card, if it is required to access a CD drive. Make sure that all resources used by the other cards are released by your OS. Now install your DVR and load the drivers. The DVR does not "play nice" so if you still have conflicts, bring up the HARDWARE MANAGER and jot down the resources being used by the card. Hopefully, there will be a conflict reported, but since the card isn't presently being used, there may not be one reported. Now, armed with the offending resource (99% probability that it is a IRQ conflict), select VIEW BY RESOURCE to find out what else is using the IRQ. If you find something, manually select a different resource for this device. If this is not possible, try this with the DVR (but don't hold out much hope...). If still not possible, then you will have to get a different driver for the device (since your system is pretty much stripped, only the video card and the chipset drivers should be loaded). I suspect that the chipset drivers are also not "playing nice" and thus are fighting for the same resource as the DVR. When the two devices "bump heads" you most likely will get the "blue screen of death".

Once (okay, IF) you get everything to work in the stripped version, add the remaining P&P cards one at a time, and TEST the DVR's operation EACH time. If conflicts again arise, simply manually reassign the resource for that card. Once you have this done, be sure to WRITE THIS INFO DOWN, in case you ever have to reconstruct your system in the future.

Good luck.

One more thing. The "off center" screen is a simple adjustment in the DVR control panel.

[Known]

It's got nothing to do with a resource conflict, the card simply has problems with the VIA PCI controller either not being able to shift the needed data through it or the PCI bus has a timing issue with the card itself, if you look in the devices for the DVR you'll see it has its own PCI Bridge. This is what I presume is causing the problems with the VIA chipset specifically.

Anyhow I'm going to leave this one in my AMD machine until we've got to the bottom of the issue either with Sigma or with VIA, the other card is now in my Intel machine - it'd be handy to use this one in my main AMD machine.

[gf]

Greetings All

Sent some more info to Realmagic people on my problem. One message I am getting on my death screen's are. "kmode exception not handled" error "8046a7f5 base at 80400000" and that happens right after the win2000 pro logo comes up and before the desktop is displayed. Oh yea my card seems to crash the system when I am in dvd resolution. In mpeg1 it is a little jerky on the capture "brief freezes" in the preview mode but playback seems good. On my motherboard raid, usb, usb2, sound, IEE1394 is all built in the board so maybe I sould try to remove some drivers and see if I could get it to work? And I will post more info as it happens..

Steve

[Known]

After messing with different combinations of driver and app I tried this.
It still crashes my machine 3 minutes after record but has alleviated all other problems such as jerkiness, it won't solve the bootup blue screen in Win2K

edit:removed

Download that from my webspace and paste it into your System32 directory overwriting the old file, make a backup just incase it doesn't work. Seems to improve mine a lot and I can encode all resolutions.

Usual disclaimers apply, if it hoses your system it's your problem not mine.

Let me know how you get on.

[gf]

GREAT JOB Known
I installed it like you said and it seems to be working GREAT. I was watching video thru the card on my Sony and it seems to be great. Why doesn't Sigma have this driver on their site. Let ya know tomorrow how it went.

Steve.

[gf]

Greetings

I tried a capture last night, me and my wife was amased at the quality of this board. It recorded and played back fine. So for the heck of it, I rebooted and blue death screen. So I guess I'll try again tonight. Also I check if some other resources are messing up like memory.

Steve

[gf]

Hi Known

I was wondering on your system with the Via/Amd motherboard, what motherboard/chipset you have. The last time I talked with Realmagic people they said they DID NOT have the same chipset "kt333" as mine, but they said they had fixed it on other via chipsets/motherboards. But I told them I had an other computer "kt133" and it did NOT work with that one either. And that chipset was the first sock a chipset from via. Oh yea, Realmagic said they are working on the problem. I guess I'll contact them in a couple of weeks.

Steve

[Known]

Sorry about the late reply, I RMA'd my DVR to Realmagic and they're modifying it to work with my KT333 board. My System is:

Gigabyte GA-7VRXP
1024MB PC2700 Corsair
XP-1800 CPU
and all the other bollocks people like to write in their sig, as if anybody gives a rats arse what colour their IDE cables are.....

BTW - if anyone wants to sell their DVR let me know,
phonic@webtribe.net

Cheers.

[gf]

Hi Known
You what, RMA'ed your card? That means they have a fix? Did you call them and they said they had a fix? Please give me more info because I did not hear back from them.

Steve

[Known]

Steve,
I can't post too much info in here about what I mailed them with or what they mailed me back with, if you can get on EFNET channel #digital-forums I'll fill you in with the details.

[gf]

Hi Known
Yes if you can email me the info that would be great.
My home email is "podski@telocity.com"

Steve

[gf]

Hi Known

I cannot get on EFNET channel #digital-forums , please send me the info either how to get on or please email me the info.

Thanks
Steve