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Chapter 8: Applications

• If you select RGB8 greyscale as your color 

format, SwiftCap captures in greyscale, 

but continues to preview in color.  Also, 

if you capture to the VMR7 Renderer or 

VMR9 Renderer, you will get color video; 

you will only see greyscale video with the 

“Video Renderer” selection.

• The current version of SwiftCap does not 

handle Video for Windows devices very 

well.  The buttons to access the driver’s 

Source and Format dialogs do not work.

CCA

PP

The Osprey AVStream driver performs raw 

capture of NTSC closed caption character 

pairs.  The character pairs are emitted as a raw, 

uninterpreted, DirectShow-standard CC Category 

stream.

CCApp (figure 7) renders Closed Captioning on 

video, and also displays it as line mode text in 

a separate text box.  The View options permit 

viewing of no video, video without captions, or 

video with captions; and allow the text box to be 

shown or removed.

CCApp requires that the filter CCFilter.ax be 

present on the system.  The driver setup 

program installs this filter.

The CCApp Device Properties window

7

Summary of Contents for Osprey-300

Page 1: ...Osprey 300 User s Guide...

Page 2: ...lass B digital device pursuant to Part 15 of the FCC Rules These limits are designed to provide reasonable protection against harmful interference in a residential installation This device generates u...

Page 3: ...ng FireWire Devices 14 About 1394 connectors 15 Connecting Analog Audio with the Osprey 300 16 CHAPTER 3 INSTALLING THE SOFTWARE FOR WINDOWS XP 17 Installing From the CD 18 Downloading and Installing...

Page 4: ...UDIO DRIVER 85 Selecting the Audio Source and Input Volume 85 Audio Formats 87 Audio Playback 87 Audio Configuration 87 CHAPTER 8 APPLICATIONS 91 SwiftCap 91 CCApp 95 CropApp 96 LogoApp 98 VidControl...

Page 5: ...rmation for installing and configuring the hardware and software for the Osprey 300 Capture Card This guide has been designed with the needs of the end user in mind particularly first timers and those...

Page 6: ...y 300 is an all in one analog video capture IEEE 1394 card that maximizes PCI slot usage All formatting and scaling of images are processed within the hardware allowing for maximum system efficiency a...

Page 7: ...400 rated 1394 devices The Osprey card is equipped with two 1394 connectors 6 pin connector for S100 S200 and S400 rated 1394 devices standard FireWire 9 pin connector for the latest FireWire800 devic...

Page 8: ...to the host 30 frames per second fps full resolution NTSC 720x480 as well as 25 fps full resolution PAL 720x576 The Osprey 300 uses Direct Memory Access DMA to efficiently perform this delivery of da...

Page 9: ...300 Capture Card is a universal 3 3V 5V PCI card that will operate in either 32 bit or 64 bit slots and is compliant with version 2 3 of the PCI hardware specification System Requirements Configuring...

Page 10: ...ay adapter with 4 MBytes memory minimum 16 Mbytes or more recommended and Direct Draw capability An up to date display device with DirectDraw capability DirectX version 9 0a or later Minimum System Re...

Page 11: ...the power cord plugged into a grounded power outlet Ensure that the workstation is powered OFF before installing any components Use the following steps to install the Osprey card 1 Power down the comp...

Page 12: ...NPUT RACKMOUNT PANEL OPTIONAL A rackmount version of the breakout box is also available figure 3 The 1 unit high rack mount input box has the same inputs as the breakout box but includes two sets of i...

Page 13: ...source s output cable to the Composite Video In connector Connecting an S Video Source If your video source supports S Video connect the source s output cable to the S Video In connector Compared to c...

Page 14: ...connect older FireWire devices at a greater distance than the devices can support directly use a FireWire800 hub device connected to the Osprey 300 s 9 pin port FireWire 800 1394b hubs make it possib...

Page 15: ...evices are connected via one of three connectors specified in the 1394 standards The original 4 pin connector is found on most consumer Digital Video DV devices such as camcorders This connector suppo...

Page 16: ...need to use a powered microphone using connectors with 1 volt peak to peak output RCA style connectors for left and right line level audio are used on the Osprey 300 The selection of audio input to c...

Page 17: ...installed the software you can test the card and software by running the included application program SwiftCap Installing From the CD Downloading and Installing Updated Drivers Installation Scenario...

Page 18: ...ast com To download an updated driver 1 Use your web browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator to find our FTP site 2 Download the web package file in winXP latest to your hard...

Page 19: ...boards at the same time You can skip the detailed instructions if you are upgrading from one Osprey driver version to another Just run the setup exe file and all the updated components will be instal...

Page 20: ...rtified WHQL Certified drivers will skip this step The files begin copying to the computer The ViewCast Corporation Osprey Video Division Special Offers Shortcut window displays 14 If you would like a...

Page 21: ...reement If you do not wish to accept the agreement click No to terminate the installation routine The Information window displays 6 Click Next The Select Components window displays 7 Click the radio b...

Page 22: ...formation window displays 15 Click Next The AVStream User Manual window displays 16 If you would like to view the AVStream User Manual click Yes and an Acrobat Reader window opens If not click No 17 O...

Page 23: ...will skip this step The Setting System Restore Point window displays briefly and then is replaced by the Completing the Found New Hardware Wizard window 6 Click Finish Next the Wizard finds and insta...

Page 24: ...frame from the Osprey card Click the Preview button The screen should display moving video frames 6 If the video area is a plain blue field it could be for one of the following reasons The driver is...

Page 25: ...mputer to complete the uninstall process CONFIGURING THE VIDEO CAPTURE DRIVER Use the video capture application SwiftCap to access the Osprey driver properties described in Chapter 5 Analog Video Driv...

Page 26: ...300 the DV is an entirely independent device If you look at the Windows XP Device Manager figure 1 after installing an Osprey 300 you will see something like this Under the category IEEE 1394 Bus host...

Page 27: ...he Osprey analog capture driver which has logically distinct modules for audio and video capture Unlike the Osprey analog driver which captures video into many user selectable sizes and formats the DV...

Page 28: ...irectShow filters support the DV capture module The most important is the DV Video Decoder This filter accepts dvsd video only streams as input As output it delivers an uncompressed YUY2 stream at ful...

Page 29: ...pture group at the right If you want to capture DV video and audio from another analog source select Capture Both and uncheck Capture DV Audio You can even work to capture both DV audio and analog aud...

Page 30: ...mplest possible audio video DV capture graph The difference is that the DV Capture Filter s A V Out pin is used which delivers an interleaved A V stream rather than a pure video stream The AVI file wi...

Page 31: ...ically This graph renders both audio and video The Capture Filter s DV A V Out pin is used instead of the video only pin A DV Splitter is added to the graph to split the interleaved A V stream into se...

Page 32: ...DV Video Decoder Filter has been added The properties page also shown at left belongs to the DV Video Decoder and can be accessed directly from GraphEdit and some other applications This graph captur...

Page 33: ...deo capture with the Microsoft Video 1 compressor The compressor requires YUY2 as its input fomat and so the DV Video Decoder precedes it A compressed graph of this kind substantially compresses the A...

Page 34: ...are Other types of filters such as compressors mixers and renderers are software only they have no associated hardware A filter has input and or output Pins where multimedia streams enter and exit A F...

Page 35: ...e section entitled Pin Properties The block labeled Osprey Crossbar performs input selection for the driver The main Osprey capture filter has an Input property sheet that performs the same input sele...

Page 36: ...alog For other device settings click the Video Properties button From Helix Producer Plus For audio click Settings to the right of the Audio drop box and select Vendor Provided Controls from the drop...

Page 37: ...size for cropping Size and Crop set output size enable cropping set cropping rectangle Logo set up on video logos SimulStream control the SimulStream option On some systems you may see additional tab...

Page 38: ...ked In this case the slider is disabled When you make a change to the video standard the input or the Bypass Color Correction control the sliders on this page may not become correctly enabled or disab...

Page 39: ...n be adjusted using the controls on the Video Proc Amp property page When this box is checked these controls are bypassed and the driver does not modify the color settings The read only button marked...

Page 40: ...film may have a different field dominance that requires pairing of even odd fields into frames If you notice that there are problems with interlaced video such as comb effects see if the Even Odd set...

Page 41: ...in the Video Driver Topics chapter Transfer Mode This control affects capture of video from a digital camera routed typically through the Osprey card s DV input In normal video including many digital...

Page 42: ...ure 9 adjusts the gamma curve of capture and or preview video The lumina or intensity component of analog video is not linear It is biased 1 to improve the effective bandwidth for transmitting low int...

Page 43: ...cal The red curve is a graph of the correction factor The horizontal axis is the luminance level of the incoming video the vertical axis is the gamma corrected luminance level When the gamma setting i...

Page 44: ...iver The current Extras are the following A few users may need to look at the VBI control group at the bottom of this page For most users the short answer is leave it in the Inhibit VBI Pin setting VB...

Page 45: ...rs can set up this page once and never refer to it again Note that this page does not provide everyday control of the final output size of your video Final output size is controlled either from your a...

Page 46: ...her Line 22 is captured and displayed Some broadcast material encodes data in this line This checkbox removes that data from your video however the driver currently does not support decoding of this d...

Page 47: ...elect for Size and Crop When the Both radio button is selected changes you make to the crop setup apply to both the capture and preview pins If you like however you can have different setups for the t...

Page 48: ...Most video data capture formats impose restrictions on the possible width and or height of the video referred to as granularity restrictions For example the I420 capture format requires that the captu...

Page 49: ...iver may automatically adjust the video crop and or output size without notifying you You may also find that in the Pin Properties dialog the default size you wanted is not listed because it is not a...

Page 50: ...It will be useful to understand when cropping is performed in the hardware Figure 14 shows an overview of typical video processing The input to cropping is considered a full resolution frame Thus alth...

Page 51: ...d on a frame Thus if a cropped ROI is setup defining a 360x240 area for example then a capture of video sized at 360x240 will result in video being captured from two fields If the source was interlace...

Page 52: ...e Cropping checkbox is not checked your crop size is 720x480 With Auto Size checked and the 1X Crop radio button selected your default size will be 720x480 with 1 2X Crop 360x240 and with 1 4X Crop 18...

Page 53: ...o smaller than the set minimum size The VMR7 video renderer imposes the following further minimum size restriction If hardware deinterlace is selected the minimum size that can be rendered is 88x72 If...

Page 54: ...ewed video If the capture and preview video are different sizes the logo is scaled to look the same on the preview video The logo property controls work best when you are already running preview video...

Page 55: ...ts the Logo settings for Capture and Preview to be locked together Some other Osprey applications may do this by intention as well Logo File and Color The Enable Logo checkbox which is repeated on bot...

Page 56: ...is applied first then the transparency effect is applied to the remaining non key colored logo pixels Logo Position and Size The Logo Position and Size sub page figure 16 lets you position and scale...

Page 57: ...for 320x240 video and you change to 640x480 video the logo displays at twice the size of the original bitmap Click the 1X Scale button to restore the logo to its unscaled size CAPTURE AND PREVIEW PIN...

Page 58: ...ing designated as default that DirectShow obtains from the capture driver You can obtain specialized video sizes by a two step process First go to the Filter Properties Crop tab described above and se...

Page 59: ...r own preview stream Each stream can have its own color format size frame rate crop and logo specifications For details about purchasing and installing SimulStream refer to www viewcast com When you f...

Page 60: ...s the default setting With the high quality setting the driver performs interpolated scaling which results in smoother edges and features If you are working with many streams large formats or a slower...

Page 61: ...you are actually running multiple video capture pins There is no quality advantage and some system bandwidth penalty when you are running just one stream Changes to this control take effect when you r...

Page 62: ...to have a different cropping specification a different logo with its own placement and color keying and a different color format video size and frame rate Defining and Selecting Pins When SimulStream...

Page 63: ...They are not the same A pin specification is a static or persistent group of per pin settings that you can define using the driver s property pages A pin is a transient instantiation of a DirectShow...

Page 64: ...a new pin for which a specification already exists the new definition will be ignored and the existing data will not be altered When you click OK to exit this dialog the data for the pin that was sel...

Page 65: ...tom of the property tab When you select a new pin spec the Apply button is turned on If you click Get Data the Apply button is turned off again The interface is designed this way so that you easily an...

Page 66: ...ces on the system selecting the capture device may be a two step process The details will differ slightly with different applications With VidCap32 1 Pull down the Options menu and select from the lis...

Page 67: ...The following comments are derived from tests with VidCap32 but should apply by and large for other Video for Windows applications as well Overlay video in DirectShow this is called preview video alw...

Page 68: ...a Video for Windows application with a DirectShow driver make sure that the DirectShow preview pin s default size is correctly set As explained you have to use a native DirectShow application to do t...

Page 69: ...ering problem that occurred when the interlaced odd and even fields in this video were captured Only a slight amount of motion took place yet streaking is obvious in the overall result Note the promin...

Page 70: ...reams The hardware deinterlacing provided for preview pins resides in the display adapter The availability and quality of this function depends on the display adapter and its driver The implementation...

Page 71: ...ay Mixer plus Video Renderer provides much better performance than a direct connection of Preview Pin to Video Renderer At present this is the only pathway that renders closed captioning correctly For...

Page 72: ...frames are to be rendered with VMR7 at the same time only one can be YUY2 other s will be RGB We do not provide an RGB24 option for use with 24 bit screens because on at least some display adapters th...

Page 73: ...H and I refer to five nearly identical subformats PAL N NC Argentina Paraguay Uruguay SECAM France and some other countries Full sized NTSC M NTSC J and PAL M have 525 lines total 480 lines visible pe...

Page 74: ...ess the video at a subsequent stage of processing However this dialog field refers specifically to the uncompressed raw video that the board delivers to the system The Osprey AVStream driver supports...

Page 75: ...h bit is unused This is a high color mode also known as 5 5 5 RGB8 Greyscale The Osprey AVStream driver uses the RGB8 format for greyscale video RGB8 is a palletized format Each pixel is represented b...

Page 76: ...YUV12 format has a 320x240 Y array followed by a 160x120 U array and then a 160x120 V array Note that in the I420 format used by Osprey the order of the U and V arrays is reversed from the order in t...

Page 77: ...er combines the CC overlay with the preview video which is then rendered onscreen It is also possible to capture the character pair stream as a standard stream of an avi file or to directly manipulate...

Page 78: ...les figure 17 This control is a workaround to what we currently believe to be a problem in DirectShow if you attempt to capture a CC character pair stream to an AVI file with Normal timestamping the f...

Page 79: ...ptions in its preview window It will also capture them to AVI But remember Windows Media Player will not play back the CCs There is a Closed Captioning item in the Capture menu There are two restricti...

Page 80: ...the video bits of each outgoing video frame with its timestamp data The illustration shows a timecode extracted from a watermarked frame and rendered as text on the video Four elements are used to pr...

Page 81: ...ols go to the Device property tab and click the Extras button figure 20 It is recommended that timecode marking be disabled when not in use especially the auto search feature on a slow machine it uses...

Page 82: ...iguration SELECTING THE AUDIO SOURCE AND INPUT VOLUME The audio source is set using the Osprey 300 s mixer driver interface Most applications including the Windows Media Encoder applications interface...

Page 83: ...see the list of audio input and output devices including one or more Osprey 300 s When you have chosen the device click OK and you will be returned to the Recording Control display The Osprey 300 devi...

Page 84: ...48 kHz AUDIO PLAYBACK The Osprey 300 provides audio capture only not audio playback Continue to play back captured audio using your system soundcard AUDIO CONFIGURATION The AudioConfig applet is incl...

Page 85: ...Sample Rate 32 kHz so that downsampling is exactly 2 1 When the audio input is SDI the only sample rate that the Osprey hardware supports is 48 kHz The driver will override your setting here When the...

Page 86: ...y update when you change inputs in the application or mixer click the update button to refresh the settings The Input Reference level is meaningful only on the analog unbalanced and balanced inputs wh...

Page 87: ...you through some basic scenarios for using this application Preview Click the Preview button for a quick basic test of your video setup or for basic video viewing If you do not see motion video right...

Page 88: ...frame rate and video size you want to use 2d 6 Select your audio device and source Select No Compression 2e 7 In the Audio Format group check Use Default for this experiment 2f 8 Click OK 2g Next clic...

Page 89: ...5 shows capture statistics including bytes captured number of seconds of capture and number of frames captured and dropped It also has a Play button Click this to play back the AVI file with your def...

Page 90: ...e and output size SwiftCap will reject smaller values Also you cannot specify an output size that is larger than the crop size Other Features Logo setup SwiftCap has the menu item Settings Logo Settin...

Page 91: ...and Format dialogs do not work CCAPP The Osprey AVStream driver performs raw capture of NTSC closed caption character pairs The character pairs are emitted as a raw uninterpreted DirectShow standard...

Page 92: ...rty page is capable of setting the Capture and Preview pins differently If SimulStream is enabled CropApp is hardwired to set up pin pair 0 only to set up other pins you will have to go to the driver...

Page 93: ...rop property page or SwiftCap s crop dialog Not all applications use the driver s default output size or present it as a choice you may have to manually enter the settings calculated by CroppApp into...

Page 94: ...e but cropping will not be enabled until it is turned on as a separate step CropApp requires that the filter OverlayRect ax be present on the system The driver setup program installs this filter LOGOA...

Page 95: ...t up other pin instances or to set the capture and preview pins differently use the driver s Logo property page VIDCONTROL VidControl figure 10 controls the video source standard and settings of Ospre...

Page 96: ...output is connected to the Osprey card s input Check that the correct video input is selected in the Control Dialog s Source page SCRAMBLED VIDEO IMAGE You may have set the wrong video signal format f...

Page 97: ...D AUDIO If you have a sound card installed you should be able to hear audio when you play back recorded audio Verify that the volume control for your playback device is not muted Verify that the selec...

Page 98: ...assign IRQs differently by rearranging cards or changing BIOS settings Multiple PCI cards are supposed to be able to share the same IRQ line In practice occasionally you may encounter a device driver...

Page 99: ...A 2 Environmental Specifications Operating Temperature Range 0 to 40 C Non Operating Temperature Range 40 to 75 C RH Operating Humidity Range 5 to 80 non condensing 40 C Non Operating Humidity Range 9...

Page 100: ...the driver They do not have to be present in the registry and are not created by the basic driver install If they are not present then the driver will use its internal defaults These variables are lo...

Page 101: ...e pin only on the preview pin The display adapter will deinterlace if VIDEO2 is exposed or if both VIDEO and VIDEO2 are exposed DX9 This variable is meaningful only on Windows 2000 systems not on XP O...

Page 102: ...e this window changes to Osprey Video Capture Device Installing Then the Digital Signature Not Found window appears on top of it 2 Click Continue Anyway This window will only be displayed on drivers t...

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