Go7007sb

[richardrobens]

Hi,

I am a disappointed user of the Plextor ConvertX PX-M402U. I was looking for a wdm driver for this device but I found gb-pvr. I like your tool but I have no tv here... I plan to develop some plugins soon as this is a very interesting project. But my first goal is to find or create a wdm or vfw driver for my device. So noone needs to install the windvdcreator software. And I want to use the device for my webcam and in virtual dub and other software. I think a good driver would benefit many people but Plextor will not provide it I guess. At least there is a linux sdk now.
Why I write this in your forum? I am interested in your GO7007SB plugin as you seem to understand the M402U's architecture better than me at this time. I can't find the source code of your GO7007SB plugin, is it available?
Do you have any good advice that might help building a vfw or wdm driver for this (or maybe even all GO7007SB) device?
I am student and it is not a commercial product I am talking about. Not even official work - I just need a good driver or alternative to the win dvd creator as this tool crashes way too often. I want to backup old Hi8-Videos to dvd and I really like the quiality of the plextor hardware but the software is not good enough for the money.

Anyone who can help please contact me. I don't even have to see my name on the resulting tool, I just need a driver *g*

Thankx a lot,

Richard

[sub]

I can't find the source code of your GO7007SB plugin, is it available?

Sorry, no the source code is not available for this plugin.

But my first goal is to find or create a wdm or vfw driver for my device.

I dont quite understandard what you want, but the following information may help you understand better.

The PX-M402U and other GO7007SB device do have WDM drivers, and in fact GB-PVR uses them. Having WDM drivers does not mean it'll magically start working with all sorts of applications. The applications still need to written in such a way that can understand the types of information produce by the WDM drivers (in this case DivX/MPEG1/2/4 not YUV as used by the WDM drivers of many of the older software encoder cards).

The only reason GB-PVR requires WinDVD Creator to be installed, is because the hardware on the GO7007SB devices produce PCM audio, which is less than desireable and not compatible with the MPEG standard. These WinDVD Creator components are use to on-the-fly encode the audio to MPEG1 Layer II audio, and to mux it back into the MPEG file. There are alternatives to the WinDVD components, as some of the GO7007SB ship with different software which performs the same task. For example, the LifeView TVWalker ships with the HT components.

I hope that helps.

[richardrobens]

Thankx for your fast answer! It really helped me.

I just wonder why the device won't show up in virtual dub or other applications. So my idea was to write a vfw driver or whatever. I got some very cheap usb devices that can grab video and put it to any common software like yahoo messanger or even virtual dub. I don't quite understand why there is no common standard for video input devices. If I ivent a new video processing device I have to give routines for supporting my device to all video tool providers like adobe, virtual dub and gbpvr? That can't be right. Simple software like yahoo messanger or msn messanger or webcam32 and so on must use some common base. Encoding the PCM audio in a driver can't be that hard I guess. Is this some part of the work your plugin does?

I wanna start an application and it must say "wow, you got that fantastic Plextor Video grabbing device... do you want to grab now?".

Did you use your plextor for any other use than writing the plugin for gb-pvr? Any information about their wdm driver? Any kind of API they provide?

At least your application allows me to see live "tv" with my device, which is sooo great, I can't explain Maybe I should use gb-pvr to backup my Hi8-movies?

Greetings,

Richard

[sub]

WDM drivers are just drivers that are written to comply with a Microsoft set of standards which defines things like how the drivers are structured, how they're loaded by the system, how video data is passed between components, how the capture devices describe themselves and the data formats they use. Because these standards were followed, I can fire up GraphEdit insert the PX-M402U WDM Filters into a graph and connect it up, and it all just works.

For a long time, all the capture devices that were manufactured only output a single format of data (YUV video with PCM audio), and this is what most applications were developed to expect.

In more recent years the Hauppauge hardware encoder devices (PVR250/350) started to change this, by releasing WDM drivers that produce MPEG2 Program Stream data. For a long time there no applications that knew how to understand this data, so the PVR250/350 werent usable in lots of video process applications that people had. The software is finally catching up now, and these cards are now quite well supported (but still dont work in many of these apps you'd like to use).

The same things is happening again with these GO7007SB devices. They've introduced devices that produce Divx/MPEG1/2/4 data. These application you're talking about dont know how to interact with this type of data, so they dont end up listing your device as an option.

Did you use your plextor for any other use than writing the plugin for gb-pvr?

No just GB-PVR.

Maybe I should use gb-pvr to backup my Hi8-movies?

It wasnt really designed for this type of task, so it would be awkward at best. Really WinDVD Creator would be better suited to this task.

[richardrobens]

Thank you for the good explaination. Now I get a feeling of what I need and what I do not need to develop. I used the term WDM driver because Hauppauge and others do and they say that video wdm drivers are a standard that is used in win2k and xp and before that there was vfw. Your explaination of how things developed make much more sense to me. So I guess I have to develop a meta-driver that translates the mpeg2+pcm stream of the plextor device to a format which is supported by older applications - so I need yuv and pcm. PCM I already got so translation from mpeg2 to yuv is the only thing I need. This can be done in software in realtime on modern cpus I guess, so this is what I might concentrate on.

Thankx for your time. I will look at gb-pvr at the weekend and look at the plugins and then I will have some fun with your plugin doc and write a plugin I guess. This is just fine as I begin to love .NET and a plugin for gb-pvr seems to be a good idea and much fun. Maybe I should write a "grab hi8 movies to harddisc" plugin hehe...

Thanks a lot for your support!

Richard

[richardrobens]

If anyone is interested because he/she has a plextor PX-M402U...
You can use this device with yahoo messanger. Use PlexGoCap to set Resolution to 320x240 and Compression Mode to MPEG1. As long as PlexGoCap is not closed, these settings remain. And this is perfect for yahoo messanger.
VirtualDub grabs too.

The problem was somewhere in my system, I figured it out when I started GraphEdit and a simple Renderer Graph did crash my system... All because of the good ideas and adivce sub gave me in this thread. Thankx a lot!

Greetings,
Richard