Newbie - I got snow.

[Mark S.]

I just started playing with the Hauppauge plugin today. I think I did the setup correctly. Im using a brand new WinTV Go PCI card. My cameras are TV tuner channels 92 and 94. I am set up as Cable, NTSC-M, Tuner Country 1.

But when I go to CapPreview and select those cameras, I get snow - actually, I get an initial split second of the camera view immediately followed by snow. A jpg is attached. Also, I get black screens in the asp pages.

I flipped through the other channels and only about half of them are viewable in CapPreview - the other half are snow with audio. However, when I shut down HS and open the WinTV app, all channels are just fine.

I hooked up another camera directly to the Composite input on the card and I can get a clear picture with this camera in CapPreview. However, I still get a black screen for this camera in any of the asp pages, but maybe that's problem number 2.

Help.

Mark

[bmms]

A couple of things to try.

As a test is it possible to have your camera's modulated to a lower channel? I have seen problems using higher channel numbers with fine tuning.

On the black screen problem with the composite input, can you try setting your "Delay after connect" on the General tab of the config screen to 400 ms - see if that helps.

[Mark S.]

Thanks for responding Bryan.

Per your suggestion, I tried modulating to lower channels - but all channels had the same problem. As a matter of fact, most of the commercial cable channels also look similar in CapPreview - a white/blue snowy picture of noise, but with audio. Among the few channels that do come in clearly on CapPreview are Cable 2 and 60, FWIW. But again, when I shut down HS and use the WinTV app, all cable channels and my modulated channels are crystal clear, so I have to believe my signal is good.

I also tried taking my cable out of the loop entirely and feeding the card directly from the modulator - it made no difference.

As far as the black screen problem goes, I am now seem to be able to snap a picture and stream. Maybe the 400 ms setting did that. Streaming is about 8 seconds behind real time - is that about normal?

On the Camera.asp page, I have a red X to the right of the camera buttons - what am I supposed to be seeing there?

Anyway, I'm still dead in the water on my modulated camera channels. I'd appreciate any help to get these channels viewable.

Mark

[Kyham]

Check the capture device

Mine has Composite, Tuner, S-Video options. If you have a similar dropdown option I would try Tuner if that is not what you are using.

I use the Composite for video coming from the cameras through a camera controller but selected Tuner for capture from a TV channel.

[Mark S.]

Thanks Kyham. As I described above, I am using both composite and TV tuner.

Mark

[bmms]

Yes the 8 second delay in streaming is normal. The delay will depend on the speed of the CPU performing the stream encoding. On my system the delay is about 10 seconds.

On the snow issue. Can I get you to do 2 things. To make sure the configuration is all set up right email me your hspi_Hauppauge_Capture.ini file in the config folder - send it to bstein@accesscomm.ca.

The second thing is set the information level (in config screen at the top) to debug level 1. Then go into cappreview and switch to one of your modulated channels. Email me the excerpt of the Homeseer log file. Don't forget to switch back the information level.

[Mark S.]

Done.

Mark

[Mark S.]

Well, I finally got it working!

It turns out that all other software that I tried (e.g., J. River) also had the same problem - they could not correctly tune my channels - even though the channels appeared fine in WinTV. This obviously confirmed my suspicion that it was something with my Hauppauge card. I had reloaded the latest drivers (3.41.22160 - I believe dated sometime in Oct or Nov) several times, with no improvement.

In desperation I went back to Hauppauge's site today looking for answers - and noticed that they came out with a new driver sometime this month (3.45.22320 dated Dec 1, 2004). I'm guessing they corrected something, because now all channels tune just fine on this plugin.

Thank you Bryan for giving it your best shot in our e-mail correspondence.

Mark

[bmms]

It's great you got it working Mark.

I did get the autotune function working in the plugin. It is in test right now.

Version 3.1.6 has some extra error handling code plus these main features:

1. The number of still snaps is now configurable by camera (possible to capture AVI but no stills by setting # of stills to zero)
2. Added the autotune function for camera's using the tuner as a video source

It took a little longer than I thought - got lazy over the holidays