TV2000XP Capture Problems

[gkar]

I have been having various issues since upgrading my mobo to DFI's LanParty NFII Ultra B board. Perhaps a slight history lesson would be best to help with understanding my predicament and I hope, but am not confident, that some knowledgeable person can assist in resolving this frustrating situation.

I have been unable since changing boards (from a Soltek) to capture using Windows XP SP1 (just tried SP2 out of desperation). None of the various company tech people can seem to help with my issue. Upon reinstalling the Leadtek Winfast TV2000XP tuner card I get a blank screen for live TV and capture modes. VirtualDubMod initially states <status 401-Microsoft WDM Image Capture (Windows32) (version no.)>, then hangs with the Microsoft program not responding box. Next time I open VDMod and try capture AVI it states to shut down any capture programme running (none are) status 418 and tries all available capture drivers without success

I have been forced to setup a dual boot using Win98SE on D: partition. This is partially successful. The capture using Winfast software appears to slow down then speed back to the normal framerates you would see viewing the live TV aspect of the tuner card's programme. This is also apparent on playback on the 98 OS and I am forced to boot into XP to edit. However, the resulting file plays faster video sequences very fast in small sequences, like Microsoft's mouse trails and in still the frame is extremely blurred. I have tried reinstalling the initial Ghost image just after basic OS configuration of chipset, video and other system drivers to no avail. See attached files below for clarification.Also, VDMod will not start capture -418, trys all drivers, cannot start any capture drivers.

Have attempted installation of BTWinCap drivers to no avail; they will not install properly -in either OS- and am forced to reload previous Ghost image as cannot remove the incorrectly installed drivers from device manager

I am sure there are driver conflicts at work here as I have also had major issues with trying to get serial and internal modem cards working (they install and are recognised by Win XP & they work fine in Win98SE) to the mobo supplier's horror (the board's importer sent the Ultra B board when I had ordered the original one with two serial ports).



PC config:

DFI Lan Party NFII Ultra B mobo
2x256mb PQI 2700DDR memory
Lite On 411s DVD writer
Asus E616 DVD-Rom
Western Digital 80GB HDD partitioned into 4 logic frives
Maxtor 40GB HDD partitioned into 3 logic drives
WIN XP Home with SP1&2
Win98SE
Leadtek Winfast TV2000XP TV Tuner card
Gigabyte ATI Radeon R9000 Pro video card
Hyena 350watt PSU
Canon Parallel printer & scanner
DirectX 9.0b
Updated drivers & firmware

Any & all repsonses and thoughts appreciated

[vhelp]

hi gkar,

I too have the Winfast TV2000 XP "Expert" card. It's a great card, though
I have lots of others too :) Anyways.

I know what you mean, w/ your headackes.
For some strange reason, my card will not work properly w/ an internal
Modem, OR, my internal modem will not work properly - - will crash my
pc (or drive me crazy)

I found that I had to keep moving things around inside my I/O slits..
swaping one card after another. Took a couple of hours to finally get
my capture card working w/out hickup. "yank out my internal modem"
I also found that my internal modem raises the noise level inside my
captures. (that was a discovery a few days ago, or so.., when I found
less line noise in my captures (and capture window)) Anyways.
.
I have a Serial modem (56k v92) with lights and things. I like these
better. You know for sure if someone is truely nagging you, where'as
with software lights, they can turn them off on you :( anyways.

I was wondering why you are using the BTxx driver when this card is
supose to be a "WDM only" based card :rolleyes:
But, if this card can communcate w/ VFW drivers, then great. But, for
the most part, vdub is not WDM aware, though you can get it to work
either with the vfwTOwdm driver (though limited) or hack. I had it
working once, but no more, with 720x480 resolutions.. only because of
my strange setup and chronic system instabilities, yada yada yada.
Can't say I can duplicate, cause I don't know how it worked, but it was
a combination of hacking and bad system setup, imo. Anyways.

My Winfast card is working under my win98gold setup, using WDM drivers.
I have no issues with it (when my modem is totally disconnected) and
even though I have at least 3 IRQ's available :confused: (not to mention
all the card swaping to no avail - some things just aren't ment to
be.., I guess) :confused: Anyways.

IMO, and to be honest..

I think that my ATI-Rage Fury Pro 32mb (AGP) card does a better job at
de-interlacing than my Winfast does !! I guess it does a better
interpolating or something. I based this on my TRV22's DV cam's
capture (via my Fury Pro's Composite IN) and compared both cards
abilities. So far, my Fury Pro does a better job at de-interlacing
inside MMC. Anyways.

The one thing I do't like is that the Winfast PVR app seems to lock
the video in a "de-Interlace" mode. So, when you capture, weather to
MPEG or AVI, it's de-Interlaced. (actually, so does ATI's MMC v7.1 app
too) That's why I use virtualVCR mostly.

My suggestion..

Have you tried to completely uninstall all capture drivers, as well as
your graphics card driver ??
.
And, then reinstall your graphics card driver, and then your Winfast
drivers ??

Have you tried reinstalling Windows from "scratch" and installing a
Serial Modem intead (to IRQ 7, since this is a printer port, and most
other IRQ routing bypass this interupt) ??
.. That's going to be my next project, one of these days.. until I can
get a "perfect" 'ly working separate pc that is only used for Interneting
around. I had one for a short while, but had to use for spare parts
because of a recent mobo crash. Anyways.

Good luck with your capture card. As for me, I'm still working on
eliminating Line Noise in my captures. They still plauge me
to no end :confused: :confused: :confused:

Cheers,
-vhelp

[gkar]

vhelp,

Thanks for the quick reply. I have the deluxe version, not expert, which utlises BTxxx drivers.

I have since removed the internal modem which was an attempt to free up the single serial port for my IR remote as I also use the PC as an HTPC. As I could not get the modem to connect even though it was installed correctly. I have since intalled a USB>DB9 adaptor and connected my external modem to it and the IR remote to the serial port. I have not tried capturing -from Win98- since this modification.

I am not interested in a total reinstall from scratch as I have used up my allocation of installs under WinXP and would have to beg for another ID no. from the losers {at Microsoft}. As stated I have an initial ghost image captured just after install & update of OS graphics and chipset drivers.

I have tried different PCI slots for the cards and am not going there again.

[Edited per Rule 4]

[Arachnotron]

You are not the first one with a nforce-2 mobo and capping problems. (Try a forum search).
Normally, a BT878 based card should not give that many problems. Try to get the BTWincap drivers working, they still are your best shot. And don't forget the DX9b tuner update (or SP2 instead, since that includes dx9c already)

I did find in the past that the installation routine of the BTWincap drivers sometimes fails to completely remove the previous drivers. The results are instability and system freezes as two drivers fight for control.

You can try to do it manually, but you need to delve into the registry for that. They reside in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<driver name>
Don't forget to remove the oemxxx.inf file from c:\windows\inf too, since XP will otherwise cheerfully re-install everything again. You can find the exact number by doing a search for all oem*.inf files that contain the name of your driver.

The exact names vary per cardbrand, so I cannot help you there.

But be very, very carefull in what you throw away.

Doing a clean install and never installing the winfast drivers is the other option.

[gkar]

Thanks for the reply, spidey ;-)

Will try your ideas. As I have various ghost images I can go back to near a clean install and try the BTxxx drivers if manual deletion doesn't work.

Will post back any results.

[gkar]

I attempted a clean install of the BTWinCap drivers after installing my initial Ghost image of WinXP. They installed properly.

However, when I tried a capture using both VB and Virtual VCR they stated I had no capture device installed. It does state in the WinCap readme I need to have my tuner card's drivers installed or listed as other in device manager. So how am I supposed to do the following?:

Doing a clean install and never installing the winfast drivers is the other option

Legacy video capture devices is installed correctly in device manager. Cannot the tuner card's capture utilise these drivers for operation? Or are they proprietary? If so, then I guess I'm screwed.

Any idea if updating to DirectX 9.0c in my Win98SE partition will help with my dropped frames/capture playback speedup? I ask because you have to connect to the internet for web install and I don't particularly want to set up this OS for internet what with antivirus, blah, blah.

I don't see how attempting the following will succeed if the above did not.

You can try to do it manually, but you need to delve into the registry for that. They reside in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<driver name>
Don't forget to remove the oemxxx.inf file from c:\windows\inf too, since XP will otherwise cheerfully re-install everything again.

[Arachnotron]

Legacy video capture devices is installed correctly in device manager. Cannot the tuner card's capture utilise these drivers for operation? Or are they proprietary? If so, then I guess I'm screwed.
The legacy capture devices are installed by XP even without an actual capture device and have nothing to do with the BT drivers.
I don't see how attempting the following will succeed if the above did not.This is just an advice where to find the drivers if you need to remove them. You only need to do that if you have previously had any BT drivers installed and the BTwincap installer failed to remove them. The systems manager will not neccesarily show those old drivers, but you can find them in the registry.

[gkar]

Thanks for the clarification, Arachnotron.

Have D/led & installed the latest Winfast drivers. They seem to capture better in my Win98SE partition and there are minimal/no frames speedup upon causal inspection, using default SVCD config. Will try XVid as gives better editing and sizing options.

Will get back with confirmation. If this is the case, then I could live with this when capturing my VHS collection.

[gkar]

Have updated Winfast prog to latest drivers. updated nForce unified drivers. Still having same issues; the frames speedup hasn't been resolved like I hoped it was.

Any other ideas, anyone??

Would another brand of TV card be likely to resolve the issue? And can two run side by side in the one PC??

[Arachnotron]

And can two run side by side in the one PC??

It can be done, but you have to be carefull about driver installation programs that wipe out previous installed drivers. Also, some capture and TV apps have trouble selecting from more than one tuner, especially when they configure through an autodetect mechanism.

I have had both a CX23881/ BT878 combo and a CX23881/SAA7134 combo in the same machine for a while.

In the first case, I first installed the BT878 using the installer, and than retrieved the oemxxx.inf file it generated from the windows\inf folder. Using this .inf file I could now install the drivers manually when needed.

[gkar]

I tried a dedicated capture card along side the TV2000 but as both had 878 chips there was a conflict. I wasn't hopeful but the store has a full refund policy.

Would a USB capture device have anymore success? or would that utlilise standard drivers? Which are the bane of my frustration.

Jeez, I only want to transer some VHS's to DVD not lecture on it at the local university. You would think that Nvidia would be able to sort out a standard for chipsets as HTPCs are becoming bigger and bigger. Especially in the USA.

[Arachnotron]

I think there is a driver from iulabs that is supposed to support two BT878 cards. But in all likelyhood, if one won't work, the other probably won't either.

try here:
http://www.iulabs.com/drv/index.shtml

[gkar]

YYEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!


I have managed to get a capture working in Win XP with a USB capture device.

Question: I think this may fall slightly outside the bounds of this particular forum but let's see.

If I have the video editing programme on a fat32 logic partition, can I capture to an NTFS drive without the 4GB file restriction?

I hope so because I can then retain my Win98SE OS (for games, of course) using the default -and free- boot loader.

[Arachnotron]

If the program is running under winxp and writing to an ntfs partition, there is no problem.

What the format is of the partition the program itself resides on does not matter.

[Angelus]

I'm not sure if this applies but I have the Winfast Deluxe card too and contacted Leadtek because I couldn't get their drivers to install. I would run the installation but it wouldnt do anything. They said that it was a directx9 problem, and to uninstall directx9 and then try installing the drivers, then reinstall directx9. I tried this, but it didn't work for me. I finally tried the btwincap drivers and those worked for me.

[gkar]

Thanks to all who responded. I will now venture down the long road (already been down the winding one ;-)) to VHS capture.

Angelus

Think I will stay with what I have finally got working; have spent enough time on the matter. You were lucky to get a response from Leadtek. They never answered one of my emails. Hence, I won't be touching any of their products from this date forward.

[Angelus]

I just think its weird that I cant their drives to install on my computer. They work fine on my dad's HP computer, but on this one I built they just wont install. I'm just happy the BTWincap ones work :)

[gkar]

Hey, just be thankful you were able to get the reference drivers working -they will probably do a better job anyway- and don't have shell out an extra NZ$120 for a separate capture device. http://pages.prodigy.net/rogerlori1/emoticons/BANGHEAD2.JPG

[gkar]

Here's an update:

I finally got too frustrated with the existing HDD structure so I totally repartitioned & formated my HDD -1x SATA (a new acquisition that I was also having issues with), 1x IDE 80GB WD & 1x IDE 40GB Maxtor.

Firstly, I had to update the mobo bios for correct SATA installation. Then, I setup the SATA HDD as the boot drive with 3 other logic partitions. The 80GB HDD was partitioned into 3 drives & the 40GB into 2 drives.

After the Win XP install and update of chipset & graphics drivers & the install the tuner card, everything worked perfectly. I can now capture using the Winfast PVR programme or VritualDubMod etc.

The main conclusion I can draw is the problems were caused by the mobo bios. Computers!