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The following is the substance of a support case 090304-00247 I logged several days ago and to which I have has no response (other than the email saying one would be coming within some hours). If anyone can provide information which helps fix things ie 1) enables multiple use of the OS video capture driver, or 2) simply re-enables capture for VS 11.5 after someone else has used it, I would appreciate it.

Recently I had a motherboard failure which resulted in an operating system re-installation, followed by application re-installation (even tho the apps were on a separate logical drive not affected by the OS install) to get all the registry links right. VS11.5 appeared to work fine after the basic VS11 install and the 11.5 upgrade files were applied, but I had no reason to do video capture at that time.

I go to a movie making class focussed on the use of VS11/11.5, and one item of interest has been the conversion of VHS tapes to DVD. A separate Kaiserbaas analogue video/audio (the red white & yellow RGB plugs) to USB interface was recommended by the tutor and that device came with its own drivers and OEM (cyberlink) software. It worked fine, but when I tried to capture from the same device using VS, I got an error message (screen dump image). Uninstalling the cyberlink software and the device drivers followed by a capture attempt using a standard USB interface changed the error message (screen dump image) but basically VS won't capture from an external device any more.

Is there a way to correct this without re-installing everything?

Thankyou

David K

I subsequently raised case 00248 relating to the attaching of screen images demonstrating a problem to a support request. I have those dumps available for review in a jpg image format. I haven't gotten a response to that request either.

Ever since version 11 was introduced VS has had problems with analog capture. AFAIK, v11 couldn't do it at all, even pass thru. Version 12 suffered the same fate until a patch cleared up some of the problems.

Here on the board we always recommend that you capture with the hardware's proprietary capture software. You can then import the captured footage into VS for editing/output.

The analogue capture problem with VS11 was with Firewire capture (external firewire capture device, mini DV camera used as passthrough, or Digital 8 camera either being used as passthrough or actually playing an analogue 8mm or Hi8 tape). As far as I am aware, it did not affect capture using USB devices -- or at least no one that I recall reported a problem as such in that regard. And the patch which partially fixed it was brought out for VS11/11+/11.5+.

The problem has its source in the fact that VS11 was produced after Corel had taken over InterVideo which had taken over Ulead, the original producer of Video Studio and related products. Moreover, VS11 was the first product in the Ulead/Corel line which was meant to be wholly compatible with Vista. (VS10 was made mostly Vista-comatible with a patch.)

The problem was that Corel replaced the variety of capture plug-ins which had worked well in all previous versions of VS, with a single plug-in for VS11 called the IVI (InterVideo) Capture Component. They say they did so because the old ones depended on DirectShow technology which they claimed was not compatible with Vista. However, a variety of other NLE editing programs which are fully compatible with Vista continue to use DirectShow capture plug-ins, so I doubt the veracity of Corel's claim. I personally believe they changed it because InterVideo had probably started developing new code, including use of their own capture component, when Corel took over development of the product. But anyway, we are stuck with it. We complained long and loud, but only got a partial fix.

Then we learned VS12 (a.k.a. X2) was in the pipeline, and naturally we thought that not only would the VS11 patch be worked into the new program's code, but they would correct the other aspects of the firewire capture failure which that patch had not fixed. WRONG!!! X2 cannot capture from any analogue source using firewire. And as far as I am aware, the one patch for X2 which has emerged has not fixed this problem. The work-around seems to be to use another program, such as Windows Movie Maker or a small freeware program called WinDV, to capture in DV/AVI format, then edit the DV in VS.

As I say, as far as I am aware, this particular problem does not relate to USB captures from analogue sources. But as Black Lab has indicated, the real problem with USB analogue captures is that VS has never worked (regardless of the version) with many analogue capture devices, and that has continued with VS11 and 12. The problem seems to be that the manufacturers of those USB devices also produce their own capture software, and they protect their proprietary interests by tweaking the devices so that they only work with their own software. And of course they don't share that secret with software manufacturers like Corel.

So anyway, this has been a very long way to say I agree with Black Lab's ultimate advice to you -- capture with the software which came with the device, then simply open the captured files in VS for editing.

It's been a tortuous journey and I'd like to thank everyone for their input. The Corel support desk and the hardware supplier both with some emailing coughed up essentially the same advice as Ken and BlackLab. The hardware device is indeed unique, and the software it came with (Cyberlink) has been tweaked to suit - the kaiserbaas response even stated that the hardware would not work with the cyberlink retail product.

Moving on the the next step - how to fix VS11.5+ when use of the conversion hardware was completed, the best advice was re-install. erk. Every time I've done that for computer crash resolution, all the settings etc are erased/changed back to default. It's a pity there isn't some industry agreement on this sort of thing.

Given the history of capture with VS11 a button to simply re-install/re-connect to the OS capture driver would seem to be not an insurmountable issue, rather than go thru the pain of a complete new install.

Davidk