NextPVR Forums

Hi everybody !

I have been using Vista Media Center for years and now heard of next nextpvr and wanted to try it because of the streaming possibilities and some nice features.
I got dvbt running quickly but now I had some other idea: My current hope is that I can include a usb camera (Logitech QuickCam E2500) as a "live tv" program (trying to see if it can work as a baby phone). for now everything local in one machine.

After quite a while of digging in documentation and forums I came to the conclusion that the usb cam would be considerd an "analog device", for some reason (although I find the name misleading, since it seems more an issue of mpeg or raw). So I installed the SoftPVR via option 2 and downloaded the Filtercheck tool. however, it says "Filter information dumped to filtercheck.log" and then crashes.
This is what I can see in filtercheck.log afterwards:

13:59:09.234 INFO Log started
13:59:09.234 INFO Filter Check v1.0
13:59:09.234 INFO
13:59:09.234 INFO
13:59:09.234 INFO Checking AM_KSCATEGORY_CAPTURE filters

I believe it crashes on some unexpected entry in some list or so.

Anyways, the names of the analog devices are also listed in skype when you select your video input device (at least I believe it is the same). So I copied the name "Logitech QuickCam E2500" from the combo box there to the AnalogDevices.xml file. After next start, the camera was "recognized" (it showed up in Settings /devices as type analog, but I have no clue whether I should use soft encoding or hardware encoding. I chose soft but I get an error message when I switch to the assigned channel ("unable to find available capture device", but earlier I have seen also something like "error communicating...").

Anybody has an idea why FilterCheck crashes on my vista machine (probably not, but what can I try instead) ?
Or, does it make sense at all what I am trying to do, i.e. can nextpvr handle a usb camera as an analog capture device ?
If so, how should I set it up ?

Thanks for any comments,
Captain Ramius

I think you may be on a loser here ;( I say this because I think nextpvr and most other (Windows) PVR software depends on the drivers for video input to be Microsoft BDA interface compatible. Tuners and the like usually are, but USB cameras are not.

I investigated this some time ago with nextpvrs predecessor to be able to view a security camera, but never got anywhere until I used an analogue camera and analogue TV tuner with video in.

No, NPVR won't work natively with that sort of device. You might be able to get it to work with NetworkRecorder and SageGraphRecorder (http://www.nextpvr.com/nwiki/pmwiki.php?...rkRecorder). The documentation page for SageGraphRecorder (http://www.nolberger.se/Sage/GraphRecorder/) mentions a USB camera.

I use a cheap IP camera (Foscam) to monitor our front porch using npvr (so we can check if it's a solicitor, before rousing ourselves). The Foscam is networked, and I use an npvr custom task to launch firefox, which is set so that the home page is the Foscam's address and opens fullscreen. A remote key is programmed alt-f4 to exit out. Works really well (it's live video btw, not a snapshot).

ga_mueller Wrote:I use a cheap IP camera (Foscam) to monitor our front porch using npvr (so we can check if it's a solicitor, before rousing ourselves). The Foscam is networked, and I use an npvr custom task to launch firefox, which is set so that the home page is the Foscam's address and opens fullscreen. A remote key is programmed alt-f4 to exit out. Works really well (it's live video btw, not a snapshot).

Ah, but, .... I need to view the camera from a client of npvr including via NMT's ;(

Works fine for me on my Atom client, but I don't know the limitations with nmt's, having never used them.

martint123 Wrote:Ah, but, .... I need to view the camera from a client of npvr including via NMT's ;(

As johnsonx42 alluded to, if you can create a DirectShow graph then creates a ts file, it should play as channel on the NMT.

Martin

mvallevand Wrote:As johnsonx42 alluded to, if you can create a DirectShow graph then creates a ts file, it should play as channel on the NMT.

Martin

I have that on my 'to check out' list for next week. Never having a need, I never paid much attention to threads with 'sage' in them.
More reading up on graphs also needed here.