pinnacle PCTV pro on WinXP?

[petronin]

Hi, I'm trying to do simple capture on a WinXP machine using a borrowed Pinnacle PCTV Pro card. I installed all the latest drivers that are supposed to be compatible with XP. I am using Virtualdub, and I can see the video and hear the audio when I go to Capture AVI... But when I try to start capturing, it gives me the following error:

Error 424: Cannot open the video input device.

I know this is an ancient card, but it would be nice if I could use it for my simple needs. Any advice?

Thanks,
Mike

[Hong Kong Phooey]

The most likely explanation is due to the drivers. The version 5.x drivers for the PCTV pro are WDM drivers, which are necessary for XP. However VirtualDub requires older VFW drivers.
If you check other posts here you can search for a few alternatives.
1) An alternative capture program that works with WDM drivers, I believe virtualVCR is one free alternative.
2) Search for posts which list where you can find a VFW WDM "wrapper". That should allow you to use VirtualDub.
3) Look for http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/ & there's generic 3rd party drivers there which I believe will also allow you to use VirtualDub.
However you'll need to find other 3rd party programs to operate it as the pinnacle app's don't work with those drivers.

Hope this helps!

[petronin]

Yup, that fixed it. VitrualVCR workes. Thanks a lot.

Of course, now: I'm running into synch problems with the audio/video.
Any suggestions for that?

[Hong Kong Phooey]

Sorry for the delay in replying, hope you still have it ot use. Unfortunately, the V5.x WDM drivers have proved a real problem.
Thats why I pointed to option 3 before, although you'll lose use of the app's s/w.
You can give these two areas a try & see what other users have come up with. There seems to be a suggestion that depending on what capturing software used the sync issue problems can go away....

http://webboard.pinnaclesys.com/read_messages.asp?UpdateOrder=1&Start=0&AscDesc=asc&We...=&cntThread=50

And the general PCTV board

http://webboard.pinnaclesys.com/read_forums.asp?WebboardID=1&SectionID=80&lng=1