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Vista and UFOCapture
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Lightningwizard



登録日: 2007.10.19
記事: 165

記事日時: Fri Oct 19, 2007 8:29 am    記事の件名: Vista and UFOCapture 引用付きで返信

Hi SonotaCo and everyone,

This is my first post, so let me introduce myself Smile
I am working in Toulouse (France) on the subject of sprites and their connection with lightning processes and conditions in the thunderstorm. We use UFOCapture and it works excellently. It is more sensitive than the algorithms programmed for another camera working on a Linux system, in operation at a mountain observatory during Eurosprite campaigns. I am also working on analyses of gigantic jets (including the two that were caught from Oklahoma late August, by UFOCapture).

Sprite catching has also become my hobby, I install my Watec 902H2 Ultimate + 12mm F0.8 at the balcony when conditions are right. A number of sprites captured this way I show on my website. Unfortunately it is often too cloudy when storms are around.
Last week I broke my long distance record, with sprites about 650 km far away. Unfortunately I also corrupted again my harddisk of my laptop Confused (intensively used since 2004) and lost the last captures.

So I bought a new laptop (Core2Duo, 2 GB RAM, SATA 4200 RPM).... which came with Windows Vista.
I discovered some problems using UFOCapture v.2.18.

1) The first one is solved: after installing the program, error 19: UFO2F.ax cannot be found. Pressing re-install ax must be done but has no effect. Solution: Exit the program and run the program 'as administrator', under the right mouse click (or Properties), then click re-install ax. The next times it can be run without administrator rights.

2) Major capture issue: I am using a Dazzle DVC100 card from Pinnacle. I updated the drivers for Vista. It works, but under Vista it takes very long for 'activating' the video stream... it varies, but can take 30 seconds. Now, under XP if something was detected and recorded, the program does not have to re-activate the video stream and continues quickly/smoothly. Apparently, under Vista, UFOCapture stops the continuity of the video stream, and after capture (it still says detecting) the image stands still or is black for anywhere between 0.5 second and 45 seconds, missing anything that may happen during this time.
It seems like there is an unnecessary interruption of the video stream, requiring re-initalization every time. This may be avoidable, because the only thing that should happen is recording the buffered frames to disk in the background while the video stream keeps being analyzed.

3) Minor issue. If I delete movies one by one, pressing the delete button in some cases minimizes or switches away the UFOCapture window.

Thanks for your help and the great program!

Oscar

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http://www.lightningwizard.com
EuroSprite blog:
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Lightningwizard



登録日: 2007.10.19
記事: 165

記事日時: Fri Oct 19, 2007 8:40 am    記事の件名: reply by SonotaCo 引用付きで返信

As I had already an answer by email from SonotaCo before I finished registration at the forum (thanks for your quick response!), I will post his anwers in bold and continue the discussion here, as I can imagine Vista will be used much more by future users.

>1)
>Solution: Exit the program and run the program 'as administrator'
Yes, that is the only way. That is the spec of Vista.

>2)
There are big unbelievable changes in Vista.
a) low-priority I/O control feature.
b) incompatibly of device drivers.
c) many hidden tasks that runs automatically.
I think the a) or b) is the cause of your problem, but I am not sure. If you cannot solve the problem by the following notes, I recommend to go back to Xp.

a)
Windows Vista set the priority of I/O operation very low for all the
programs that starts up automatically.
Originally, this feature is for the background windows maintenance programs and limits the performance of the program to almost 1/100. But it affects all auto-started programs!!!
You can check the I/O priory by performance monitor of Vista.
Check UFOCaptureV2's I/O priority of Disk.

Therefore, do not activate UFOCaptureV2 by placing the shortcut in
startup folder. If you want to activate UFOCaptureV2 automatically, use program launchers. Activate program launcher by startup, and activate UFOCaptureV2 from it. Then the I/O priority will be normal.

b)
By the big change of device driver interface, many capture cards became un-usable on Vista. The incompatibility is very serious.
Also, because the Windows media center requires new interface, there are many Vista drivers which are implemented only for media center, and loses the compatibility for old programs. I don't know the detail of Dazzle DVC100, but it might be one of it.

Now I am recommending IEEE1394 video capture devices for windows Vista.
The device driver of IEEE1394 is provided by Microsoft himself, and it has perfect compatibility.
For example, I am using Canopus ADVC-55 on Vista. It works very well.


3)
????

I'm hoping my comment hits the point.
Regards,
SonotaCo


最終編集者 Lightningwizard [ Fri Oct 19, 2007 9:10 am ], 編集回数 1 回
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Lightningwizard



登録日: 2007.10.19
記事: 165

記事日時: Fri Oct 19, 2007 9:07 am    記事の件名: 引用付きで返信

Dear SonotaCo,

Sonotaco wrote:

There are big unbelievable changes in Vista.
a) low-priority I/O control feature.
b) incompatibly of device drivers.
c) many hidden tasks that runs automatically.
I think the a) or b) is the cause of your problem, but I am not sure.
If you cannot solve the problem by the following notes, I recommend to
go back to Xp.


I think I can eliminate a) and c), because I start it manually and I eliminated unnecessary services (I stop also antivirus and Windows Defender, Live Messenger).

Sonotaco wrote:

b)
By the big change of device driver interface, many capture cards
became un-usable on Vista. The incompatibility is very serious.
Also, because the Windows media center requires new interface,
there are many Vista drivers which are implemented only for media center,
and loses the compatibility for old programs.
I don't know the detail of Dazzle DVC100, but it might be one of it.

Now I am recommending IEEE1394 video capture devices for windows Vista.
The device driver of IEEE1394 is provided by Microsoft himself, and it
has perfect compatibility.
For example, I am using Canopus ADVC-55 on Vista. It works very well.


aiii... I would hope it could be solved for USB 2.0 devices, because the Canopus is more than 200 euros!
The reason I wonder about this, is that everything runs fine, the drivers for Vista at least make the Dazzle work properly without strange things. It seems that initialization is slower than on, XP, but after this it is stable.
But when something is captured, the stream is apparently interrupted and has to be re-initialized causing a blackout of varying duration. I don't know what exactly happens after detection, but I would expect that the program would write to disk but not interrupt the video stream. Do you think this could be improved by programming or is this behaviour an unwanted side effect without apparent solution? May the new DirectX 10 offer any hope to work around this?

Or maybe there are settings somewhere I don't know of... does anyone have a USB 2.0 capture device working properly with UFOCapture on Vista?

cheers!
Oscar

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http://www.lightningwizard.com
EuroSprite blog:
http://eurosprite.blogspot.com
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SonotaCo
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登録日: 2004.08.07
記事: 12653
所在地: 139.67E 35.65N

記事日時: Fri Oct 19, 2007 9:50 am    記事の件名: Re: Vista and UFOCapture 引用付きで返信

Hi Oscar

Welcome here Razz . Thank you for very comprehensible posting. This will help many people.

Quote:
But when something is captured, the stream is apparently interrupted and has to be re-initialized causing a blackout of varying duration. I don't know what exactly happens after detection, but I would expect that the program would write to disk but not interrupt the video stream. Do you think this could be improved by programming or is this behaviour an unwanted side effect without apparent solution? May the new DirectX 10 offer any hope to work around this?
Or maybe there are settings somewhere I don't know of... does anyone have a USB 2.0 capture device working properly with UFOCapture on Vista?

OK, anyway, I will check my USB 2.0 capture devices on Vista today. If I can encounter similar problem, I will research them.

----
I looked over your web pages/blog. I was impressed. It is great and beautiful Shocked .
Especially, your still image of sprite in color is amazing Exclamation .

May be you have already seen, there are some pages of sprite freaks in Japan. Enjoy!.
http://sonotaco.jp/forum/viewforum.php?f=4
http://usjma.jp/~kaminari/
Sorry they are all written in Japanese, use http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/


最終編集者 SonotaCo [ Thu Aug 12, 2021 9:07 am ], 編集回数 1 回
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SonotaCo
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登録日: 2004.08.07
記事: 12653
所在地: 139.67E 35.65N

記事日時: Fri Oct 19, 2007 3:11 pm    記事の件名: Re: Vista and UFOCapture 引用付きで返信

Hi Oscar

I found similar phenomena Exclamation under following environment.
WindowsVista (32bit. Japanese)
CPU Core2Duo E6320 1.86GHz
Mem 1GB
HDD SATA 500GB
Capture equipment Buffalo PC-SMP2E/U2 (USB2.0)

I had not tested PC-SMP2E/U2 on Vista before, because the manufacture has not shipped the driver for Vista nor guaranteed the use on Vista.
But using its driver for Xp, it actually works.

The time of "Activating" is 4 to 30 sec.
The time of video freezing after the detection is 0 to 10 sec.
These time varies depending on the timing.
I think this is just like what are said.
I also tested both SuperFetch service of Vista On and Off. But it looked like almost same.

UFOCaptureV2 does following things at the end of detection.
- Close output video file, rename its name to contain the correct beginning time.
- Save still images and logs.
- Mail or FTP transfer if they are set to do.
- Restart video file writer for next detection.
(UFOCaptureV2 does not reset video stream nor input device. They are running and just waiting for the end of those tasks)

Now I cannot imagine why this delay happens on Vista & USB2.0 Crying or Very sad .
It seems that the time is spent by system modules such as manipulation of files. but not sure.
Well, I will continue investigation, but do not expect a lot Wink .
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SonotaCo
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登録日: 2004.08.07
記事: 12653
所在地: 139.67E 35.65N

記事日時: Sat Oct 20, 2007 5:26 pm    記事の件名: 引用付きで返信

Hi

Today, I measured the time spent of each module that runs in the activating of video stream on Vista & PC-SMP2E/U2.
As a result, almost all of the time was spent by run command of DirectShow media control.
Sometimes, it takes more than 30 seconds!
The command is processed by DirectShow and device driver, where I cannot do anything.
More over, I found that Vista & PC-SMP2E/U2 sometimes falls in deadlock.
It looked very unstable.

PC-SMP2E/U2 works well on Xp, and also IEEE1394 works well on Vista.
I don't know why the combination of Vista & USB2.0 capture device cause troubles.

I also tried to stop the new services of Vista such as Windows Search , Ready Boost, or Superfetch.
They are running in background and might bother the application tasks.
It seems that it has some effect, but it did not solve this problem.

Well, I think it is hopeless to use the combination until the future update of the driver or DirectShow modules.
Sorry.
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Lightningwizard



登録日: 2007.10.19
記事: 165

記事日時: Tue Oct 23, 2007 12:54 am    記事の件名: 引用付きで返信

Thank you for your investigation SonotaCo. I had a look on the web for possible known solutions (none found), and details of video capturing under windows (many terms and components I'm not familiar with)... For now, it looks like I must start a search for a second-hand Firewire capture device....

Oscar

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EuroSprite blog:
http://eurosprite.blogspot.com
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Robert J Cobain



登録日: 2006.04.25
記事: 79

記事日時: Tue Feb 05, 2008 5:07 am    記事の件名: 引用付きで返信

Hi Oscar,

I have managed to get UFOCapture an Windows Vista working, however I am not sure exactly what is needed to get it working.

There are some things though which I think contributed towards getting it working.

1) Use another harddisk rather than the one where vista is installed
2) Disable the volume shadow copy service
3) Disable the Recycle bin on that particular drive.
4) Disable Search indexing service
5) Disable virus scanning in Meteor capture folders
6) Reduce to an absolute minimum the number of processes that run in the background
7) Make sure the disk has at least 30% free space
Cool Make sure disk gets defragged reguarly
9) Watch out for the vista scheduled defrag task, it defaults to the middle of Wednesday night, change it to daytime
10)Go to Start-->Control Panel-->System-->Advanced System Settings-->Advanced-->Performance Settings->Visual Effects-->Adjust for best performance-->OK
11) Disable Windows update service
12) Disable Windows defender service
13)Disable Ready Boost service


As I said, not sure what is wrong but it worked for a good while, then I upgrades Vista Sp1 beta and it didnt work again. So now I am using a dedicated PC on XP!

Basically vista has severe problems with UFOCapture but its possible to get it working.
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SonotaCo
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登録日: 2004.08.07
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所在地: 139.67E 35.65N

記事日時: Tue Feb 05, 2008 9:08 am    記事の件名: 引用付きで返信

Hi Robert
Thank you for reporting.
Robert J Cobain wrote:
I upgrades Vista Sp1 beta and it didnt work again.

It is the most disappointing news. Sad I was looking forward to Sp1.
I have not tested Vista Sp1 yet, but it seems that I will have to do something.
The only way that I can think of is to write an asynchronous file writing module by my self instead of Microsoft's modules.
Oh.....
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Robert J Cobain



登録日: 2006.04.25
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記事日時: Tue Feb 05, 2008 9:50 pm    記事の件名: 引用付きで返信

Hi SonotaCo,

It was only the beta version of SP1 but I was hoping that it would fix the issues too!

It does seem to be something which is specific to UFOCapture, because if I use VirtualDub to capture, there is no problem! Shocked
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登録日: 2004.08.07
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記事日時: Tue Feb 05, 2008 11:35 pm    記事の件名: 引用付きで返信

The core part of UFOCapture is time shift motion detection with scintillation mask.
It requires huge image processing to achieve high accuracy of detection.
Therefore, timing has become very severe.
The circumstance is completely different from other capture software.
It is apparent that modules on Vista need more time to work normally.

But don't worry, I will manage it Cool .
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Robert J Cobain



登録日: 2006.04.25
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記事日時: Wed Feb 06, 2008 4:23 am    記事の件名: 引用付きで返信

If you find out the reason for the problems, please post them here, I would love to know what is going on with Vista! Confused
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Robert J Cobain



登録日: 2006.04.25
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記事日時: Wed Feb 06, 2008 4:28 am    記事の件名: 引用付きで返信

O one other thing I forgot to mention in the list, use FFDShow tryouts instead of 'AVI' for capturing uncompressed video.
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Lightningwizard



登録日: 2007.10.19
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記事日時: Wed Feb 06, 2008 6:13 am    記事の件名: 引用付きで返信

I will try some of your suggestions... I already disabled several things like search indexing, window transparency, Defender and antivirus I turned off before capturing, without success. Not sure about shadowing...

I did not try another harddisk yet or disabling recycle bin (I don't really want that). My laptop actually has a slow 4200 RPM, but it should be okay as long as triggering is not continuous (I hope). But switching to a form of compression or WMV did not change anything despite the smaller files (and for my purposes I need to be able to de-interlace nicely, compression messes this up). My alternative is only a USB 2.0 disk, and the transfer speed may then be the bottleneck.

The newer Vista drivers of the Dazzle did not do anything. I do note that since Vista I never see in the capture config screen "lines detected: 625" or something. Now it is 0. Maybe because Watec gives B/W images... I can't remember if it displayed it before for this camera. But if 'nothing' is detected, it may take a longer while to initiate the stream. Perhaps you could verify this between XP and Vista systems for the same equipment (if it allows).

I think the way UFOCapture works it does the calculations continuously but saving the movie (or images?) cause the problem irregulary.... but the basic problem occurs already before starting "Preview" in UFOCapture, as this usually takes very long. During this time UFOCapture shows levels of 0, so I guess they do their work on a blank screen or are standby.
Note that also the internal laptop webcam has the same initialization problem in UFOCapture actually. And I have experienced troubles with it when using messenger programs: "device in use by another application" while that application wasn't using it at all. It might be using SuperFetch, loading things in the background for future use. I will try turning this service off.

Oscar

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http://www.lightningwizard.com
EuroSprite blog:
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Lightningwizard



登録日: 2007.10.19
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記事日時: Thu Feb 07, 2008 2:18 am    記事の件名: 引用付きで返信

testing the Dazzle and internal webcam, turned off Superfetch and Readyboost now as well, no virus software active and Defender is off:

- both are re-initialized after recording. Not only in UFOCapture but also in AmCap (a basic utility you can dowload). Initalization takes sometimes long for the Dazzle also in AmCap. Initialization takes only half a second for the webcam. During initialization there is no disk or process activity.

I think this means we can exclude UFOCapture routines as problem, as you thought already. There is something fundamentally different in Vista.
Could you verify in your capture device settings that there is signal detected (1) and 625 lines (if PAL)? For our system on XP and a different Pinnacle USB device it indeed lists this, but not my Vista system. I will ask Pinnacle about this failure to detect signal and lines.

Oscar

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EuroSprite blog:
http://eurosprite.blogspot.com
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