First capture attempt - VHS source fuzzy and monochrome

[Nick]

OK. Completely new to video capture.
Bought my first graphics card this week - I've always had systems with integrated platform mainboard and, as I don't play games on my PC, I've stuck with onboard graphics.

This week I got a Powercolor RADEON 9200 ViVo card with 256MB of DDR RAM, which has the ATI Rage Theater chip for capturing video. My mum wants her camcorder footage digitally mastered and I (stupidly) volunteered.

I connected my VCR, using a SCART > 6 RCA Phono lead to the auxillary audio inputs of the onboard soundcard and the composite video input of the video card. The only video output on either of my VCR's is a SCART socket - I don't have RCA Phono Composite Video Out.

I started on the guide on Doom9, and got to where you select "Capture AVI" from the file menu in VirtualDub. However, instead of the nice crisp colour image shown in the screenshot in the guide, I got this (http://nickspage.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/images/crapcap.JPG)

I assure you when played to the TV from the same VCRs the clip is in glorious technicolour!

Thoughts that sprung to mind were:
PAL/NTSC issues, the TV-out on the card is set to PAL I (correct for UK where I am) but no setting seems available for TV input.

Faulty cable - tested thoroughly with VCR and playstation. It ain't the lead!

Wrong driver - got latest drivers from ATi site. No change.

Incompatibility with vDub. Installed the bundled CyberLink Power Director. Harder to use but problems identical.

Leaving two strong possibilites.
1. Faulty hardware (please no!)
2. Poor documentation (no manual at all, not even pdf on the CD, :thanks: PowerColor!) leaves me too thick and clueless to set it up properly.

And this, I hope, is where you guys come in...
Any ideas on what may be wrong/what I may be doing wrong, would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
Nick

[Arachnotron]

Are you absolutely sure your VCR is not a s-VHS model? Because if so, only the Y of yhe Y/C signal would end up in the composite RCA with a scartadapter like that, and result in a black and white picture.

The other thing: I dont see anywhere in your story you switched the source to composite on the computer side. With some cards, if you feed composite to them when in s-video mode again you end up with B&W.

[Nick]

Hi Arachnotron

Thanks for your quick reply.
My VCR is not s-VHS, I am definitely sure of that.
I looked at the settings in vDub and the adapter settings are for composite video. S-Video just gives a blank capture window.

Time for more testing I think.
:confused:

[Arachnotron]

I just noticed your cap window says 15 fps. So you must have skipped some of the settings from the guide.

For PAL, start with 720x576, 25 frames per second.
set audio to 44 kHz stereo (or CD quality)
Also, you mention setting the TV-out of the card to PAL. The TV out controls the settings for display on a TV connected to your card. This has nothing to do with the settings for the composite in, which still migh be set to NTSC...

[Nick]

I appreciate I was not attempting to capture at the correct framerate in the screenshot I showed. I did originally try playing with this framerate and resoulution to no avail, this was a much later screenshot, after I aborted using the guide and started playing round with all the settings to see if I could find anything that would fix it.

I kinda figured the point you make about the TV-out setting being independent to the capture setting, since the TV-out is part of the graphics engine, whereas the capture is through the Rage Theater chip. The only problem is the card comes with no documentation, and the TV Out tab in the settings seems to be the only place one can set your country &/or TV system. It is set to UK, which makes PAL I the default setting. I can find no way of altering capture settings on the card except with the settings vDub allows you to change.

Thanks again for your continued assistance.
I'll keep trying.

[Arachnotron]

oops... that doom9 team member thingy wasn't there before.... :D

I don't think you can get to those settings from within vdub.

why not try virtualvcr first and avoid the vfw/wdm nightmare for now. Try tackling vdub after you have a standard wdm app running.

In virtualvcr, go to settings (hammer button), video tab, device settings button, video decoder tab and change to the uk flavour of pal.
And enable smart-tee on the view tab if that does not help.

If this works, either cap in virtualvcr or close it and hope the source settings survive the starting of vdub. (I'm not sure of this works. I 'think' vdub resets the capping settings to default when capping starts.

[edit] try this util to change the settings outside of vdub:
VideoWDMControl (http://www.asvzzz.com/download.htm)

[Nick]

Bless your heart!
That did the trick. That little app you linked to is 5k of pure magic!
Thanks a million
One happy Doom9 Team Member :D

Pity the app bundled with the card couldn't access that setting and no documentation with the card gave any indication of how I might set up the TV system for the capture chip! Thank heavens for Doom9 forums and its knowledgeable members.

Cheers
Nick

[Nick]

Last question
Promise :)

Is there any way to get Windows to retain this setting? Restarting my machine automatically resets to NTSC_M. If I have to use VideoWDMcontrol.exe every time to set the system to PAL_I then so be it.

But it would be nice if there were an easier way...

[Arachnotron]

This setting is probably buried somewhere deep in the registry, but since I don't own an ATI card I have no idea where. Perhaps some ATI owner knows that. Does the setting also reset to NTSC when you set it from MMC?

If you cannot find out somewhere else, you could try a keyboard scripter/macro util to automate the task for you from the startup folder.

Microsoft used to have a util for that called scriptit, but I think they gave up on it after windows NT. But there are other windows automation and macro tools like it.

http://www.autohotkey.com/download/
looks like it might do the trick

[Nick]

I gotta hand it to you. You're good!
Problem solved - thanks again!

Nick

[bb]

Nick, there must be something wrong with your color settings, too: your avatar seems to have a blue tint in his face :D :p

bb

[Nick]

Nah, that's normal.
The goggles and hood are a bit tight. Restricts the blood flow.
:D