Huffyuv or die trying!

[HyperSpad]

First off, here's what I'm working with:

Pure, uncut analog tv coming in through a coaxial cable (NTSC). No external tuner box. The cable connects directly to the back of my PC.

Capture Card: Hauppauge PVR-150 (surely there must be more than a few people with this one, from what I gathered from reading around the Internet, before buying it; it seemed to be a pretty popular choice and a good card)

Now maybe you can tell me this, but I'm pretty sure it uses an 881 chip (http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/support/support_pci_boards.html) (I compared the picture to the real thing). But I had no luck with installing the drivers on that page. So far, these are the only drivers (http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/support/support_pvr150.html) I've managed to get working and they don't play nicely with Virtual VCR or VirtualDub (read on to find out more). I was unable to get the Universal WDM Capture Driver (http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/) to work, and I'm pretty sure that's because my card uses the 881 chip, and not the seemingly more popular Bt848 and Bt878.

I've read through the analog capture guide (http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/start.html) here and have been trying to capture in Huffyuv for some time now. I know, I've definetly installed Huffyuv (so that's not the problem). I've tried both Virtual VCR and VirtualDub with no success so far. I think the driver for my card is WDM though cause I was able to get the preview to work for Virtual VCR, but I got no picture at all in VirtualDub.

When I go through the Virtual VCR guide (http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/capturing_VirtualVCR.html) everything seems to be going fine with setup, and then I get all the way to the end, and I hit the "Red Capture button" and catastrophy strikes! The specific error I'm getting is:

Could Not Render Filter
Smart Tee -> Compression Codec -> Flow Meter

And I have no clue what that means. I've searched through the forums here for it a bit, but there don't seem to be many instances of this particular error, or concrete solutions for that matter.

I've been using the crappy WinTV2000 software that comes with my card in place of this just to get some kind of captures. But that encodes directly to mpeg2. I want to experience the high quality that huffyuv has to offer.

Surely someone must have the same card I do and has tried to capture to huffyuv with virtual vcr or a similar program. The possibilities of something like that NEVER having happened seem astronomically low.


Thanks
-HYPERSPAD

[CityK]

I'm pretty sure it uses an 881 chipNope. Uses another connexant decoder: cx25843.

So far, these are the only drivers I've managed to get working and they don't play nicely with Virtual VCR or VirtualDub (read on to find out more)....When I go through the Virtual VCR guide everything seems to be going fine with setup, and then I get all the way to the end, and I hit the "Red Capture button" and catastrophy strikes!Here's the problem:

An analog cvsb signal is feed into the cx25843 decoder, which digitizes the signal into an RGB or YCbCr bitstream, which is then fed into the onboard mpeg2 encoder (connexant cx23416) which, to state the obvious, encodes the signal into mpeg2. The resultant mpeg video stream is then routed to the host processor to do with it what it pleases.

The catch is this: for capturing, VVCR and Vdub aren't expecting an already encoded signal! So when you feed them such a thing, these apps throw their arms up in the air and say "what the hell am I supposed to do with this?". Obviously an exageration, but you get the idea.

If you want to use huffy with the card, you have to use an utility/app which can disable the hardware encoding on the board, and, in effect, enable the card to work in software mode. Offhand, I'm only aware of one, and you'll be able to track it down on http://www.shspvr.com/smf/ .... there may be others, but I'm not certain as I don't have hauppauge. Nonetheless, you're bound to find out on shs....Note: you may also need a particular driver release to expose to the end user the ability to enable the software mode operation, but again, I'm uncertain, lacking firsthand knowledge (or particular interest).

Good luck

[HyperSpad]

Wow, you certainly sent me to the right place. I found the solution to making Virtual VCR work in a matter of minutes. Thanks.

In case anyone has the same situation as I did (hey, ya never know), here's what I did:

Follow the Virtual VCR guide (http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/capturing_VirtualVCR.html) here, and then make this one small modification to the settings:

Under the filters tab, check "Use Prefiltering," check "Show all filters" and select "Hauppauge WinTV Color Format Converter 2" and click "add". Save the settings and it won't give you that stupid error about capturing.

I assume doing the above with different filters could work for other capture cards that don't work in Virtual VCR. It's at least worth a try, I'm sure.