Readme file for VVLCAP.DRV Ver 1-22
===================================
Vivitar Motion Picture Phone
VfW Capture Driver
19 June 1997
Introduction
------------
This file describes how to install and use VVLCAP.DRV,
for the Vivitar Motion Picture Phone/Parallel Port Camera
Video for Windows driver.
The driver is a VfW installable video capture driver which can be used with
standard VfW applications, eg VidCap, to capture video and still image
data.
It is compatible with a wide range of applications which utilise the VfW
interface to access image capture devices. In particular the Vision PPC
camera is an ideal low cost video input device for video telephone
applications.
Installation
------------
This installation procedure assumes you have already got the Microsoft
Video for Windows Runtime files installed on your PC. These are a
standard part of Windows 95. However, users of Windows 3.1 or 3.11 will
have to separately install the Video for Windows files to utilise the
VVLCAP driver.
Run the accompanying installation program, INSTALL.EXE.
This will copy the Parallel Port Camera driver file in your windows\system
directory. It also adds the following line to your system.ini file.
MSVIDEO=vvlcap.drv
If you are using Windows 95 it adds the driver to the registry and disables
any other video capture drivers in the registry.
User Notes
----------
The installation program searches for the camera on the installed
parallel ports. It then stores this port, together with other information,
in an INI file, called VVLCAP.INI, which it creates in the default windows
directory.
For the best framerate with most applications select 16 bit RGB mode from
the Video Format dialogue box. Also ensure that Capture Compression is set to
Manual in the Video Source dialogue box. Enabling Capture Compression reduces
the amount of data that must be passed through the relatively slow parallel
port interface. The default Quality setting of 75 will improve the framerate
without degrading the video quality too much. A lower setting of 50 is ideal
for use with video conferencing applications.
Automatic compression seeks to maintain a high framerate without sacrificing
picture quality. If there is a lot of movement in the image it will look
blurry. This settles when the movement lessens. If the blurriness is
unacceptable, switch compression off, or use a Manual setting as suggested
above.
Supported Formats
-----------------
24 Bit RGB 16 Bit RGB 8 Bit RGB Intel Raw (YVU9)
640 x 480 Yes - - -
320 x 240 Yes Yes - -
288 x 216 Yes Yes - -
200 x 152 Yes Yes - -
176 x 144 Yes Yes Yes Yes
160 x 120 Yes Yes Yes Yes
128 x 96 Yes Yes Yes Yes
Image sizes greater than 176x144 are designed only for the capture of still
images, as a result they have very slow update rate. Also images larger than
200x152 may exhibit a horizontal splitting of the image if the subject/camera
is moved during the image capture.
176 x 144 image size is a special mode that has been added to support
H261/263 image codecs.
To further support video conferencing applications the driver can also
deliver 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 format YUV data at 176x144. The 4:2:2 format is
'YUY2' and the 4:2:0 format is 'YV12' - YUV 12 Planar.
Image sizes other than those tabulated above may be used. However the
following restrictions apply:
- Images sizes, rows and columms, requested must be factors of 8.
- Minimum number of columms is 80, and the minimum number of rows is 60.
- Images sizes greater than 176 x 144 are only supported in 24/16 bit RGB modes.
- Images sizes greater than 320 x 240 are only supported in 24 bit RGB mode.
Changes since Ver 1-21
----------------------
Startup bug introduced at 1-21 found and fixed
Changes since Ver 1-19
----------------------
Settings dialog box now reports on ECP, bidirectional and unidrectional ports,
rather than reporting bidirectional and undirectional as the same type.
Automatically detects non-compliant ECP chipsets, and adds a Force4Bit entry
to the ini file so that the driver runs only in 4 bit mode.
The install program builds a partial registry entry for any driver in
system.ini, but not already in the registry, and disables it.
This ensures that the driver stays disabled if control panel|multimedia
is run.
Changes since Ver 1-18
----------------------
Added Automatic Compression control.
Settings dialog box queries camera for information, rather than the ini file.
Changes since Ver 1-10
----------------------
Significantly speeded up 320 x 240 capture mode.
Improved colour balance in all mode.
Sorted bright lights appearing pink problem.
Speeded up RGB16 and RGB8 modes.
Increased default colour saturation.
Changes since Ver 1-08
----------------------
Added 320 x 240 16 bit RGB mode.
Added 640 x 480 24 bit RGB mode.
Rewrote 176 x 144 mode code to remove grey border around the image.
Restricted image sizes to multiples of 8 in horizontal direction.
Added support for YUV modes for variable image sizes from 176x144 down.
Changes since Ver 1-07
----------------------
Fixed bug that caused VideoLink 324 to fail to capture video.
Fixed bug that caused driver to fail to find camera if a LPT port that does
not exist is specified in the INI file.
Changes since Ver 1-06
----------------------
Sorted bug that caused image freeze with CU-SeeMe when the driver is
set to 16 bit mode.
Speeded up the switch into 8 bit Palette mode by a factor of 4.
Changes since Ver 1-03
----------------------
Added 320x240 still image capture.
Added 176x144 video modes.
Modified CAPTURE module to support Rev C Dongle PCB
Removed support for Creative 'cyuv' mode.
Changes since Ver 1-00
----------------------
Fixed a bug that caused system crashes when applications did floating point
calculations at the same time as stream mode video capture.
Fixed bug that caused bad pixels to appear in image sizes greater than
160x120 on some systems.
Fixed Normal/Low light button function.
Modified "Image Format" dialog to split video and still image sizes.
Now saves the Normal/Low Light setting in the INI file.
Capture Compression is now enabled by default.
