Thank you for purchasing the Canopus Power Capture PCI!
This ReadMe file contains important information that are not included in the User's Manual.Also,this file might contain information about the Power Capture PCI that were recently changed or enhanced. Please check this ReadMe before using your Power Capture PCI.
It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the copyright laws to the owner of copyright, except for fair use (mainly private noncommercial use).Also, in certain cases copying is prohibited with no exceptions. In no event shall Canopus be liable for any direct or indirect damages whatsoever arising out of the use of captured materials.
If your computer is using a BIOS which supports Plug and Play, you can set options for Plug and Play in the CMOS setup. If you can find the section for Plug and Play settings, and if there is a section where you can select to use ICU, please enable those settings.Also, if it can select the OS that the Plug and Play uses, set it to Windows 95.
If your computer is using a BIOS which does NOT support Plug and Play, you might be able to enable PCI boards by yourself.If this is so, make sure to enable the PCI slots for all of your PCI bus boards.
Many manufacturers give out BIOS updates for their computers. You should check at your computer's manufacturer if there is a BIOS update, especially if your BIOS does not support Plug and Play, or if you have bought your computer before Windows 95. If you are using a PC compatible computer that you have built on your own, you can ask the manufacturer of the motherboard that you are using. You may also want to check the WWW site of the manufacturer of your motherboard,if your computer is connected to the Net.
When you are updating your BIOS, always read the instructions first and check for necessary precautions.
2.Connecting cables
Make sure the cables that connect your Power Capture PCI and your video sources(VCR, Laserdiscs) are connected firmly. If the cables are loose, you might not be able to capture images correctly.
3.If you set your file types to types besides .avi or .mpg files, you can not playback the files on the Video Commander, and a message "can not load file" will appear.
4.If you are not using the Power Capture PCI capture driver, you sometimes might not be able to output video images. if this happens, change the capture driver to the Power Capture PCI capture driver by using the Capture Mapper 95.
5.The Power Capture PCI can not be detected when installed to some of the IBM Aptiva H54/H55/H56/H64/H65/H75 personal computers. If this happens, set the PCAPENB.EXE on the Driver disk as follows:
1/Copy the PCAPENB.EXE in the ENABLE folder in the Driver disk, to a directory located in the hard disk where you have your Windows 95.
2/Using Notepad, add the following line to the AUTOEXEC.BAT file.
C:\PCAPENB
Change the C:\ part to the directory where you have copied the PCAPENB.EXE.
<<Example>>
If you have copied PCAPENB.EXE to C:\OPTION, it will be
C:\OPTION\PCAPENB
<<CAUTION>>
You can not use long file names for this dirctory.
3/Restart Windows.
(2)About the Sample Picture Files
Copyrights for the sample pictures "FUJI.JPG","NIGHT.JPG","HILL.JPG"and "KOBE.JPG" contained in the Power View disk SAMPLE folder is owned by Mr.Junichi Date, the photographer of these pictures. All rights are reserved, and no part can be reproduced or transmitted in any forms or by any means except for personal use, without the written permission of the title holder.
(3)To capture without frame droppings
1.Try not to use monitor preview.(The preview adds more burden to the CPU)
2.Before capturing, defragment your hard disk by using utility tools.
3.When capturing, check if nothing else is accessing to your hard disk, before you click [OK].
4.If you are using bus-mastering for your hard disk data transfer , frame droppings might occur frequently. Change the settins to I/O data tansfer if your PC has those settings.
5.if your internal IDE hard disk has settings for block transfer, disable them.
6.If you are capturing audio with the video, the audio data transfer has priority over video data transfer. Therefore, if you set the audio capture to high quality, video data might become lost. If that happens, try setting the audio to lower quality.
7.Do not use other applications when you are using the Video Commander 32 or other capture applications, especially file management tools.
8.Do not use hard disk drives that are compressed by disk compression tools.
9.If you are using System Agent, suspend them before using the Power Capture PCI.
10.If you have more than one hard disks in your PC,we recommend you to use the hard disk with the highest transfer rate as your "capture only" drive, but not the drive that has your Windows 95 system files.
Recommended hard disk :QUANTUM FB1280AT(IDE)
11.Please turn off your CD-ROM autoplay
Go from Start/Settings/Control Panel/System/Device Manager/CD-ROM/Settings
12. Also see (5)Additional information - 19.Frame drops during playback.
(4)About Overlay
1.Displaying overlay
Option A - Overlay using a video card that supports DirectDraw
You can display overlay in window sizes up to 1024x768(*) using a video card that supports DirectDraw. If you want to display overlay, we recommend this option.
i.e. Canopus Power Window 3DV, SX, 4MC
(You will need a driver version higher than 4.03.00.1105.)
Canopus Power Window DX, DX/4MC
*You may not be able to display overlay in certain color depths or refresh rates.
Option B - Overlay using a video card with analog video input and overlay capabilities.
You can also display overlay by connecting the video output of the Power Capture PCI to the video input of your video card, and running the display overlay application that comes with your video card. But if the video card is using a capture driver for overlay, you can not use the capture driver on the Power Capture PCI, which means you can not capture nor overlay Motion JPEG and non-compressed RGB videos. If your card can provide overlay without a capture driver, all files can be displayed with overlay.
2.Overlay using the Video Commander 32
The Video Commander 32 supports overlay only when you choose Option A of the above methods, and you can control the overlay images (on/off, image size) using the Video Commander 32 when you choose Option A.
3.Precautions during Overlay
Do NOT change your display settings by using your utility applications during overlay.
4.In certain conditions when displaying overlay, noises may appear on the monitor.
5.Sometimes screen characters may look blurred when displaying overlay. This may happen when you have the Microsoft Plus! installed in your system. When this happens, click START/SETTINGS/CONTROL PANEL/DISPLAY/, and click the PLUS! tab, and take off the check mark in the [Smooth edges of screen fonts] box.
6.You can not have overlay during non-compressed RGB capture.
7.Images from video game machines
Video game machines output irregular NTSC signals. If you connect the video output from a video game machine to the Power Capture PCI and show overlay, the overlayed image will show lines from the previous image, and will not be displayed properly. This is because of limitations for overlay, and has no effect on the image capturing. Once you capture game images in Motion-JPEG files, you will be able to display those images with overlay without any problems.
(5)Additional information
1.The "hard disk speed test" measures only the performance of your hard disk: However, the overall capturing performance of your system is determined not only from the hard disk speed, but also from many factors, including your motherboard chipset,and other configurations.
The "lowest compression ratio" for your system is figured from the hard disk speed test result, and your system's overall performance. This means that even if the hard disk speed is the same, you might get a different "lowest compression ratio" for a different computer or if you get a different peripheral device.
Also, the "lowest compression ratio" is only for your reference. Other elements, such as your Windows or Video for Windows might also effect the capture performance, resulting in poorer(or better, in that matter) results.
2.The "Hard disk speed test":
The test results might differ slightly, according to the condition of your Windows 95. This also effects the measurement of the "lowest compression ratio", which makes the test results ambivalent.
Please note that the speed test does not work properly on drives that are compressed, or has compressed partitions inside.
3.Interrupts:
The Power Capture PCI uses an open IRQ which is assigned by Plug and Play, and cannot use the same IRQ with an another PCI device. Therefore, if you are using many devices that use up all your IRQ, a conflict occures and the Power Capture PCI will not function properly. If this happens, disconnect other cards from your PC.
4.If the Video Commander(or other controllers) buttons are not responding:
If the control buttons do not respond when you are playing video, try clicking the right button of your mouse where it does not show other commands.
5.If the frames drop frequently when you are playing AVI files made with the Ulead Video Edition:
Close the Video Edition, and try playing the AVI files with the Video Commander 32 or Media Player.
6.When capturing, a new AVI file is made each time:
If you choose a captured file name which has a number at its end, the Video Commander 32 will automatically make a new file with a sequence number each time the "SAVE" button is clicked. If you want to overwrite the same file each time, do not use a file name with a number at its end.
7.When using VCRs:
When using VCRs as your video source, do not rewind, fast forward, or pause the video during playback. The NTSC signal coming from the video source differs slightly during these procedures, which results to unproper video capturing.
8.Changing channels at your VCR:
VCR sends particular NTSC signals when you change channels rapidly at your VCR.This also leads to unproper video captures.
9.When the Video Commander 32 is shut off:
While the Video Commander 32 is shut off, the Video1 INPUT is bypassed to the Composite Video OUTPUT, and the Video3 INPUT is bypassed to the S-Video OUTPUT.
10.If the speed doesn't get any faster when you choose "x3":
If you are capturing audio with the video, Video for Windows will give audio the priority when you playback captured files, which would result in slow playback. If this happens, do not use the "x3" mode.
11.The playback speed seemes faster than the original video sequence:
If you are capturing audio with the video, and if there are many frame drops during capture, the created AVI file will be shorter than the time settings. When you playback these files, they will appear like fastforward playbacks. If this happens, try setting the compression to a higher level, or lower the capture rate per second.
12.The preview shows strange colors:
To monitor preview, set the display colors to 16-bit RGB or higher.
13.The display indicator when capturing video:
The Power Capture PCI will do the task of capturing before showing it through the display indicator, and in some PCs the indicator display may not be shown, because the system will be too busy doing the capturing.
14.Capture during preview:
To stop preview during capture, you can edit the CANOPUS.INI file in the WINDOWS directory.Open the CANOPUS.INI file, and search for this section:
[Video Commander 32 Capture]
PreviewStop=0
If you change the PreviewStop=0 to PreviewStop=1, the preview will stop during capture. This will freeze the preview image during capture, but it will upgrade the overall capture performance.
Note: This setting will not stop video output.
Also, in some cases when you have preview during capture, the "starting capture" dialog box might not appear after clicking the "REC" button. If this happens, The dialog box will appear by pressing the [Alt]key. But if this bothers you, try stopping the preview during capture according to the instructions above.
15.Full motion capture of Motion JPEG format videos:
In some cases, when you are using Video for Windows and capturing in 30FPS, troubles like these may occur:
<Frame droppings>
When playing videos captured in 30FPS, frame drops might occur once in approximately every 27 seconds. This drop rate differs among video sources. Also, if you set the frame rate to 15FPS, this drop rate will fall accordingly to approximately every 54 seconds. This will occur also when you are not capturing audio.
This happens because there is a slight gap between the true frame rate, and on how the Video for Windows recognizes the frame rate. Even though the frames were all captured without drops, the Video for Windows thinks that some frames were dropped.
<Audio gap>
When you are playing long video files with audio, you might notice a slight gap between the video image and the audio. This happens because of certain limits in Video for Windows.
These problems cannot be solved altogether, but can be treated individually, if you can choose which problem to solve.
We have two different drivers for you to choose from, which solves one of the two problems stated above.
a.Frame drop prevention driver:
Inside the \VCAP\FULL directory in the Driver Disk, you will find
PWCPVCAP.DRV
If you install this driver, this will prevent frame drops(unless it ocurrs for reasons other than Video for Windows).
b.Audio gap prevention driver:
Inside the \VCAP\SYNC directory in the Driver Disk, you will find
PWCPVCAP.DRV
This driver will prevent audio gaps, but frame drops might occur as above.
The setup will install the frame drop prevention driver at default.
To change drivers:
The two drivers have the same name, but are inside different folders, as stated above. Close all Power Capture PCI applications, and copy the driver that you have chosen to the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory.
16.Hangups occur during Window playback of unproper JPEG data files.
To playback JPEG data as fast as possible, the Power Capture PCI does only a minimum necessary check of the playback data file. If you can not set the input source to stop hangups, add the following lines to the CANOPUS.INI file in the WINDOWS directory. This may slow down your JPEG file playbacks.
(CANOPUS.INI)
[pwcpmipg.drv]
CheckJPEGData=1
17.When capturing, if you set the file name to an existing file, and answer yes to the overwrite confirmation message, the existing file will be erased, even if you cancel the capturing at the capture start dialog box. If you have checked the [Do not confirm when overwriting files] at the capture settings, the file will be erased after you have clicked the OK button at the capture setting.
18.Uninstallation of other Canopus products
Some files that are needed for the Power Capture PCI may be erased from your system if you uninstall other Canopus products from your computer. This will unable you to use the Power Capture PCI. If this happens, please reinstall the Power Capture PCI driver and applications.
19.Frame drops during playback
There are some things that you can do to prevent frame drops during playback.
* We recommend that you have more than 64MB of system memory for smooth playback.
1) In the Video Commander 32, click OPTION and check [ Use the driver for preventing frame drops].
By using this this driver, you will also be able to play AVI files larger than 1GBytes.
*Limitations - you will not be able to Window Playback, or play AVI files that are not in M-JPEG formats. A error message will appear if you try to play those files. Also errors may occur depending on your PC or the type of files being played.
2) In the Video Commander 32, click OPTION and check [ Keep memory space for the playback driver ]. *Limitations - Windows will secure 8MB of system memory space when starting. This might effect other applications.
3)Disable virtual memory: From the Start button, click Settings, Control Panel, System, Performance, and click Virtual Memory. Choose [specify my own settings], and check [Disable Virtual Memory]. * Limitations - This might cause system disorders in certain systems.
(6)Limitations
1.You can NOT playback VIDEO-CDs or CD-Is with the Video Commander.
2.Still frame capturing:
When you capture still frame images with the Power Capture PCI, it will capture images according to the original size, disregarding the image size settings.
3.Non-compression RGB capture:
If you choose "no compression" when capturing, you might see jitters on the captured video, depending on system overall performance and the motion speed(faster the motion, the more likely to jitter).
4.Playback:
The Power Capture PCI might not be able to playback captured files properly, when you capture high-motion frames with low compression.
5.Playback of files larger than 1GBytes:
Because of certain Windows 95 limitations, before now you could not play files larger than 1GBytes inside Windows.
You were able to capture and create files larger than 1GB using the Power Capture PCI, but you had to keep in mind that you will not be able to playback files larger than 1GB.
But by using the new driver that comes with this version 1.11, now you will also be able to play AVI files larger than 1GBytes. For instructions, please see [(5)Additional information - 19.Frame drops during playback ] in this readme file.
6.Monitors that have video input/output changeover connectors:
Certain video cameras with LCD displays, have only one connector which can switchover between video input and output.
These types of cameras cannot be used for proper video monitoring. Please connect monitors that have connectors for video input only.
(7)Registered trademarks and trademarks
Windows,Microsoft are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
All other registered trademarks and trademarks belong to their respective holders.
(8)Revision dates
The version number stated here is given to product as a whole. A different version number may be given to seperate applications or drivers.
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Version 1.00 Release: 1996/08/01
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First release.
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Version 1.01 Release: 1996/10/07
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[Video Commander 32]
Supported ActiveMovie MPEG driver.
Supported still frame capturing with MPEG drivers(other than CompCORE MPEG driver, which was supported from the beginning )
Supported capturing AVI files when the file name doesn't contain the extension ".AVI"
[Driver]
Fixed the error that showed "This program has performed illegal operation.." sometimes during playback
Supported small TV size, TV size and Wide TV size formats
Supported capture rates down to three decimals e.g 29.975fps
Supported illegal signals during capture
Changed the dialog box for capture format settings
Supported software MJPEG playback. The driver is inside the MJPGDEC2 folder in the driver disk
Supported several Fujitu FM/Vs
[Others]
Added PCAPCHK.EXE for checking the performance of the Power Capture PCI.
Since PCAPCHK.EXE also has the functions of PCIVIEW.EXE, we have taken off PCIVIEW.EXE from the appendix.
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Version 1.02 Release: 1996/10/23
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[Driver]
Supported video images without color
Fixed the error that showed the video output to the left
[Others]
Fixed the error so the CINEMA95.DLL will be overwrited properly when Version 1.01 is installed over Version 1.00.
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Version 1.03 Release: 1996/11/05
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[Driver]
Supported few PCs that were incompatible
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Version 1.10 Release: 1997/1/31
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[General]
Supported overlay, by using together display cards which support DirectDraw overlay.
Fixed hangups that occured during playback.
Added a function to check JPEG data during window playback
Fixed an error which showed a wrong amount of oped disk space when you choose a drive which you have removed after you have once chosen as a capturing target disk.
[Video Commander 32]
Took away the File Size button from the Capture Setting dialog box. Each file size will be set to 1 MB at default.
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Version 1.11 Release: 1997/04/04
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[Driver]
Fixed bug that showed "overlay was possible" when it was not.
Fixed hangups that occured in some PC's.
Reduced frame drops during playback.
[Video Commander 32]
Added Power Capture Wizard
Supports a new driver, to reduce frame drops during playback.
