Windows NT & Matrox Video Tools (Beta 2)

[Rincewind]

Hi!

I have currently installed the Marvel G200 (No TV) within NT 4.0 SP5. I downloaded the latest drivers from the Matrox site, and the Beta 2 of the video tools. Everything seems to work OK, but there's one problem with the video capturing.

Under Win98, when an AVI exceeds 2GB, a new file is created and the capturing continues.. Under NT, with these tools, capturing continues in the first file, but the frame rate drops down to approx. 4 fps.

Capturing a file of about 30 mins, ended in a file of 640MB, with a framerate of 4 fps, while the initial settings were for a framerate of 25fps. (which would mean about 10GB per 10 minutes of video)

Does anybody know why this is happening and how I can avoid this?

Thanks.


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We have no choice in what we are, yet what are we but the sum of our choices? --Rob Grant
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[Rick6612]

Hi Rincewind,

I don't know the answer to your question, but if you've seen my other posts here regarding video capture, etc., under NT, then you will know that I am having plenty of problems with it.

At this point, all I can say is that regardless of what people say about NT being so stable, etc., the fact is that it is much harder to get anything to work right under NT than it is to get it to work right under 98. Drivers for 98 are generally better (i.e. they actually work) then drivers for NT; hardware is more likely to work properly under 98 (i.e. IRQ sharing is supported, etc., under 98) then it is under NT; and finally, NT just seems to always be kind of "back level" in terms of supporting things that 98 supports (FAT32, IDE drives larger than 8 GB, IRQ sharing, USB support, etc.).

In other words, don't expect it to work very well under NT - instead, expect problems.

Rick

[gibverse]

I had a similar problem with the Beta2 video tools... got no responses out of the forum. I wound up reformatting my hard disk, and reinstalling NT + SP5 from scratch.. works flawlessly now... And I will add I run as well under NT as 98 for my capturing needs.

John

[Rick6612]

Hi John,

Tell me what the secret is! I'd love to get it to work under NT.

Rick

[gibverse]

First off, I really haven't done much.. I am getting the feeling I'm just lucky.

Here's my system:
ASUS P2B
Pentium II 400
128 mb PC100 RAM
(2) 9.1 gb Seagate Medalist Pro hard drives
32x CD-Rom
2x2x6 cd burner (those captures get big)
Matrox Marvel G200-TV AGP 8mb
3com 3x905b-TX network card
Creative Labs PCI64 soundcard

Things I like to point out:
My system has NO ISA cards... these tend to make NT lag sometimes.
I assign IRQs to all PCI devices via BIOS.
PnP OS is OFF in BIOS.
I don't run any other OS besides NT 4
98 tends to screw with PnP everytime it boots.

I installed NT after a fresh reformat (didn't try to upgrade or save anything). And put SP5 on, 3 and below just don't fix enought stuff!
Run DMAcheck and turn on DMA... you need DMA on to even think of doing Vidcap under NT w/o SCSI drives.
My hard disks are setup as follows:
physical drive 1: primary master
3.6 GB, C: -- NTFS for NT and all programs
4.9 GB, E: -- NTFS for saving stuff
physical drive 2: primary slave
all 9.1 D: -- FAT32 (using Win Internals FAT32 driver) for capturing

On your capture drive or partion, run the sector scan atleast 3 times... make sure there isn't a bad sector to be found... if so, sell that drive to the kid down the street and get a new one.. just 1 bad sector can really mess you up.

I normally use Matrox's PCVCR to capture, if not, then AVI_IO or Adobe Premiere 5.1a. I stoped using Ulead 5.2 since it basically was a license to crash with Beta 1... I'm so used to Premiere that I can go back. Also, I using Xing MPEG encoder 2.20 to help compress things. I do make .ASFs on occasion, but don't like how I can export the timeline directly to asf in Premere. I tried the LSX demo, and really liked it, but after getting Xing, (and paying for college), money for that will have to wait... [side note, happy to hear it comes with the Marvel G400]

After reinstalling the last time, I've had no problems whatsoever....

Hope you can get your setup working with the above advice. I'll say this, NT is very anal about stuff, but when its all setup great, it will last... I haven't rebooted in 2 weeks!

John

[Rincewind]

To those who responded: Thanks.

I'm currently at work, and I won't be back at my appartment till the weekend, but I'll try some things then.
Regarding Johns remarks, I have the feeling it might have something to do with the sequence of installing SP5, Matrox tools and the MS media player codecs... Since I am working with a completely clean installation, it's no problem to start over and fiddle around a bit with the installation order. If I remember correctly, my current setup was done as:
1) NT
2) SP5
3) Matrox drivers (version 4.07, since the website specifically states you need those in order to use the video tools. Anybody know if the 4.13g2 version works too?)
4) Video tools for NT (beta 2)
5) IE5 (and media-player, newer files not replaced)
6) re-apply of SP5

For comparison, here's my current system:
Chaintech 6BTM mainboard
Celeron 466a on a socket370->slot 1 converter, currently running at 525 MHz (7*75MHz)
Symbios810 SCSI adapter
Plextor SCSI CD-Rom drive
Yamaha SCSI CD-Writer
10.4GB WD Caviar UDMA IDE
Soundblaster PCI64
3COM 905 10/100 NIC
and, of course, a Matrox Marvel G200 AGP

Currently, no ISA cards installed. (I need to add 1 though, for my scanner. But I want to make sure the video-edit works first) All interrupts are assigned by BIOS, PnP OS option is off. With NT, DMA IDE support is switched on.

Capturing video with NT works fine, with 0 frames lost, capturing 25fps on PAL resolution. The one thing that is not working is what I mentioned before.

Cheers!
Martijn



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We have no choice in what we are, yet what are we but the sum of our choices? --Rob Grant
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[Rick6612]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the information...

I installed NT from scratch, basically the same as what you guys have described. I installed NT, installed SP5 (so I could use the rest of my 18GB boot drive), installed drivers for the Marvel, my SB128PCI sound card, my Linksys network card, and my Promise Fast Trak. I have an ISA modem in my PC, but I can't say for sure at this point if I ever even installed drivers for it under NT...

Anyway, once I got all the drivers installed, I installed the B2 Video Tools, then installed Ulead MSP. Then I installed the Sysinternals (Winternals) FAT32 driver and AVI_IO. Then I installed Internet Explorer 4.0 so that I could install the new Windows Media Player (V6.4). Then I installed SP5 again just to be sure.

DMA is on for my Promise Fast Trak, but I can't get it to turn on for my boot drive. I ran DMACHECK and it now says DMA Detection is enabled, but DMA is not in use. I'm not sure what the problem with that is. DMA is enabled when I boot up under 98, so I don't think it is a hardware problem.

I guess I'll have to keep fooling around with it and see what else I can figure out.

Rick

[Rincewind]

You can force UDMA on.

Head over to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\atapi\Parameters\Device0

Or

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\atapi\Parameters\Device1
(depending on which channel you want to enable UDMA) and look for the DmaDetectionLevel key.
It has three possible values, 0x0, 0x1, and 0x2.

0x0 means DMA disabled, 0x1 means enabled. Now, even though 0x1 enables DMA, it only enables _detection_ of the DMA level. If, for some reason, NT is unable to verify the UDMA capabilities of all the devices on the bus, it turns it off anyway. If you are _absolutely_ sure all devices on that bus are UDMA capable, edit the key and set it to 0x2. This value forces UDMA on for that channel.

(BTW, if you try this, and NTis unable to boot afterwards, use the "last known good" boot option to restore your system into a bootable state.)

-Observe the usual disclaimer: Regedit yadayada own risk yadayada not responsible yadayada etc...

Cheers!
Martijn

[Rick6612]

Hi Martijn,

Thanks for the suggestion. I had mine set to 0x1, which didn't do me any good. I'll try changing it to 0x2 and see what effect that has.

The only thing on my Primary IDE channel is my brand new WD UDMA66 7200 RPM 18G hard drive. Like I said before, DMA is on under Windows 98 without any problems. So I don't know why NT doesn't think it should turn DMA on?

Someone else told me I need to go to bmdrivers.com and download a busmaster driver for NT in order to get DMA to work. I downloaded a driver from there, but haven't tried to do anything with it. Do you know if this is really necessary? Or if I just change DMADetectionLevel to 0x2, like you suggested, will that do that job?

Thanks!

Rick

[Rick6612]

Hi Martijn,

I tried the trick with setting DMADetectionLevel to 0x2: On one machine it works! On the machine that has the Marvel in it, I end up getting INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE and NT chokes.

I've been seeing a lot of that message since I've had this 18GB boot drive. I know about NT's limitation to 8G until you get SP4 on. Is there another limitation somewhere between 13GB (the size of the boot drive on the machine where the 0x2 trick works) and 18GB (the size of the boot drive where it doesn't work)?

Anyway, it's a good thing you told me about how to go back to the previous configuration!

Rick

[Rincewind]

Rick: I have been looking around, but I haven't found anything regarding problems with large disks under NT... sorry..

Furthermore, I have been away a while, but I'd thought I'd update you on what I have been trying so far. I de-installed the video-tools, de-installed the Matrox drivers. Then installed IE5, with the multimedia support. Installed the Matrox drivers, installed the video-tools and applied SP5.

Works like a charm now. _on a 16 bit palette_ that is. after 2GB of capturing, a new file is generated. As it should.

The one new "problem" that popped up is that the video tools don't want to run in 32bit palette, which it did do before.. *sigh*

So I guess I'll have some tweaking to do...

Next thing is Win2000 drivers. :-)

Cheers!
Martijn

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We have no choice in what we are, yet what are we but the sum of our choices? --Rob Grant
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