VirtualVCR only captures sound in mono

[PaulJBis]

Hi all:

I'm having a problem with my VirtualVCR captures, which is that, no matter what I put in its settings, it always captures sound in mono with a resolution of 22050 Hz. The details are:

-I am using a Hauppauge WinTV card, with a Conexant chip and with the latest WDM drivers from Hauppauge's website (not the open source BTWinCap ones).
-Windows XP SP1.
-I am not using the card's TV tuner. Instead, I run SVideo and audio cables from the card to the VCR's SCART output. (Does the VCR support stereo? Actually I'm not sure, but it does support NICAM, so I guess it has to...).
-I capture sound via my AC97 sound card. The audio cables go to my capture card, and from there another cable goes to the "Line in" socket in the AC97.
-When I open VirtualVCR and go to Settings/Audio, I set the capture parameters to 16bit / 44100 Hz / Stereo. When I hit "TV Audio", it is always set to "mono", and if I set it to "stereo", hit OK and go there again, it is back to "mono". In "Input settings", I have the input set to "Line in", as it is supposed to.
In "Devices/Device settings", if I pick "Audio capture filter", "Pin line" is set to "Mono mix". If I try to set it to anything else and hit OK, it goes back automatically to "Mono mix".

Does anyone have any ideas? I searched a bit at tyhe VirtualVCR forums, but all I saw were more people having the same problem. I also found http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=62517&highlight=virtualvcr+mono searching here, but I don't know if it's relevant to my problem (am I wrong, or it talks only about sound problems when using BTWinCap and the card's TV tuner?)

[GrofLuigi]

@PaulJBis: Try connecting the VCR directly to your sound card. The "Pin line" should be set to actual physical pin you're recording from, in your case "Line in". Then test if you can actually hear something (in case scart cable is b0rk, or wrong pins are connected).

For the problem of VVCR not saving your settings, I'm pretty sure it depends on the driver. Apart from the obvious :D , maybe you could try "blindly" applying the setting you need, exiting VVCR's prefs and hitting "save" (I use this when I need some video resolutions not supported by the driver and it works). Or try playing with the .ini file...

GL

*edit*
I just read your post again... Don't touch "TV audio", it's not related to your problem (especially because you capture from S-Video) and its br0ken (or pain in the @ss to configure properly).

Another thing that came to my mind, you should check Windows' Volume Control (both for playback and recording) and try capturing audio only with another program (maybe Windows' Sound Recorder).

[PaulJBis]

Okay, this is kind of embarrassing... You know how there are times when you can't get a program to work and you try changing all the possible settings... except one? I just went to "Audio" and then to the properties of the audio codec, which I hadn't look before. Guess what was selected?

*headdesk*

Of course, what I don't know is how it got set to "22050 mono" in the first place. I certainly didn't. And the other settings in "Audio" have always been at 44100/stereo. And... and... and...

Anyway, to prevent this thread to constitute a complete waste of time: I did install Virtualdub 1.6.5, but couldn't get it to work. I thought that the 1.6.x branch did support WDM drivers? And I suppose that the "Hauppauge Win 88x (DirectShow)" entry that I saw in "Device" corresponds to the WDM driver for my card? But I couldn't get it to preview anything in the program. I could only preview by selecting the VfW device, but it couldn't capture at more than 320x240... And lastly, every time I tried to start a capture, it created an empty AVI file with the name that I had set and then stopped with an error saying "File exists". Huh? ("Of course it exists!! You just created it!!!").