Osprey User Guide

Osprey User Guide
AVStream Driver Version 4.0

ViewCast Corporation
3701 W. Plano Parkway, Suite 300
Plano, TX 75075-7840 USA
Revised 04/26/2007

© 2007 ViewCast Corporation. No part of this specification may be reproduced, transcribed, transmitted or stored in a retrieval system in any part or by any means without the express written consent of ViewCast Corporation. ViewCast Corporation reserves the right to change any products herein at any time and without notice. ViewCast Corporation makes no representations or warranties regarding the content of this document, and assumes no responsibility for any errors contained herein.
UL Statement
Underwriters Laboratories Inc. has not tested the performance or reliability of the security or signaling aspects of this product. UL has only tested for fire, shock and casualty hazards as outlined in UL’s Standard for Safety UL 60950-1. UL Certification does not cover the performance or reliability of the security or signaling aspects of this product. UL MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS, WARRANTIES OR CERTIFICATIONS WHATSOEVER REGARDING THE PERFORMANCE OR RELIABILITY OF ANY SECURITY OR SIGNALING RELATED FUNCTIONS OF THIS PRODUCT.

FCC NOTICE:
WARNING: Connections between this device and peripherals must be made using shielded cables in order to maintain compliance with FCC radio emission limits.
WARNING: Modifications to this device not approved by ViewCast Corporation could void the authority granted to the user by the FCC to operate the device.
The Osprey Video Capture devices described in this guide, except the Osprey-300 and the Osprey-530, have been tested and found to comply with the limits for a Class B digital device, pursuant to Part 15 of the FCC Rules. These limits are designed to provide reasonable protection against harmful interference in a residential installation. This equipment generates, uses and can radiate radio frequency energy and, if not installed and used in accordance with the instructions, may cause harmful interference to radio communications. However, there is no guarantee that interference will not occur in a particular installation. If this device does cause harmful interference to radio or television reception the user is encouraged to try to correct the interference by one or more of the following measures:
• Reorient or relocate the receiving antenna.
• Increase the separation between the equipment and receiver.
• Connect the computer into an outlet on a circuit different from that to which the receiver is connected.
• Consult the dealer or an experienced radio/TV technician for help.
If the above measures are unsuccessful, please consult the dealer or manufacturer of your radio or television receiver, or speak with an experienced radio/TV technician.
The Osprey-300 and Osprey-530 Video Capture devices described have been found to comply with the limits for a Class A digital device, pursuant to Part 15 of the FCC Rules. These
limits are designed to provide reasonable protection against harmful interference when the equipment is operated in a commercial environment. This equipment generates,
uses, and can radiate radio frequency energy and, if not installed and used in accordance with the instruction manual, may cause harmful interference to radio communications.
Operation of this equipment in a residential area is likely to cause harmful interference in which case the user will be required to correct the interference at his own expense.
NOTE: This reminder is provided to call to the CATV installer’s attention Section 820-40 of the NEC, which provides guidelines for proper grounding and, in particular, specifies
that the cable ground shall be connected to the grounding system of the building, as close to the point of cable entry as practical.
Shielded Cables: Connections between this device and peripherals must be made using shielded cables in order to maintain compliance with FCC radio emission limits.
Modifications: Modifications to this device not approved by ViewCast Corporation could void the authority granted to the user by the FCC to operate the device.
Note to CATV Installer: This reminder is provided to call to the CATV installer’s attention Section 820-40 of the NEC, which provides guidelines for proper grounding
and, in particular, specifies that the cable ground shall be connected to the grounding system of the building, as close to the point of cable entry as practical.
Product Disposal Information:

Dispose of this product in accordance with local and national disposal regulations (if any), including those governing the recovery and recycling of waste electrical
and electronic equipement (WEEE).
RoHS Compliant: ViewCast Corporation is committed to compliance with the European directive on the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment, Directive 2002/95/EC, the RoHS directive.

For current RoHS statement, see www.viewcast.com.
Osprey® and Simulstream® are registered trademarks of ViewCast Corporation. Microsoft®, Windows® XP, NetMeeting®, NetShow®, and Video for Windows® are trademarks or
registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Any other product names, trademarks, trade names, service marks, or service names owned or registered by any other company
and mentioned herein are the property of their respective companies.

 

Getting Started with Your Osprey Video Capture Card

System Requirements
Please note that the following system requirements relate to your Osprey Capture card only. The video capture or encoding applications you use will likely require a much more powerful system than that which is listed below. Please consult your software documentation for applicable system requirements.

Minimum System Requirements:
• Direct Mode: 600 MHz Intel® Pentium® 3 processor or equivalent
• PostProcessing Mode and SimulStream: 2 GHz Intel® Pentium® 4 processor or equivalent, 3 GHz recommended
• Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional or Home Edition, Windows Server® 2003
• Up to 7.5 MB of available hard disk space
• 256 MB of RAM, 512 MB recommended
• One available PCI slot

Installation Steps
In all cases, the most efficient and complete installation method is to run the setup.exe program on the product CD or in the web package that you downloaded. The setup program automates the Plug and Play steps required to install the drivers and ensures that they are performed correctly. It also installs the bundled applets and User’s Guide. If you have multiple Osprey capture cards in the system it configures all of the boards at the same time.
This is the method that we recommend if you are installing an Osprey card for the first time on a system, and the Osprey software has not yet been installed. After the install is run, as soon as an Osprey card is installed in the PC, it is detected and its drivers are started automatically.
If you are updating Osprey software, you should uninstall the software and reboot your computer before installing the update.

Installing the Osprey AVStream Driver
Insert the Osprey Software CD into your CDRom drive. If you have autoplay enabled, the main menu for the Osprey software CD will automatically appear. (Autoplay should be enabled by default. If the main menu does not automatically appear, see “Manually Accessing the CD Menu”)
In the CD main menu, select your Osprey card from the list.
The “Osprey AVStream - InstallShield Wizard” will appear. This Installation Wizard will guide you through the following installation process:
1. ”Welcome” window: Click “Next.”
2. License Agreement window: Click the radio button next to “I accept the terms in the license agreement” and click “next.”
3. Customer Information window: Enter your name and the name of your organization (if any), choose whether you want to install the software for all users, and click “Next.”
4. Video Standard window: Select a default video standard for the AVStream driver and click “Next.”
For more information on video standards, see “Video Standards and Sizes” on page 29 of this guide.
5. Setup Type window: Select “Complete” or “Custom” installation and click “Next.” If you select “Custom” installation, please see “Custom Installing the AVStream Software” on the following page for more information.
6. Ready to Install the Program: Click “Install.”
7. Installing Osprey AVStream: This window will show the progress of the installation. If, during the installation, a warning window appears regarding Windows Logo Testing, click “Continue Anyway” to proceed with the installation.
8. InstallShield Wizard Completed: Click “Finish.”

Custom Installing the AVStream Software
If, during step 5 of the installation process, you choose a “Custom” installation, you will see the following window:

This window will allow you to choose individual components you want to install. Click on each components to see the amount of hard drive space it will require. You can also change the location on your hard drive in which the components will install. This installation option is recommended for advanced users only.

Installing Your Osprey Video Capture Card
When you install your Osprey Video Capture Card, please keep in mind that all computer cards are sensitive to electrostatic discharge.
Slight discharges from your clothing or even from the normal work environment can adversely affect these cards. By following these simple guidelines, however, you can minimize the chance of damaging your Osprey card.
• Handle cards only by the non-conducting edges.
• Do not touch the card components or any other metal parts.
• Wear a grounding strap while handling the cards (especially when located in a high static area).
• Provide a continuous ground path by leaving the power cord plugged into a grounded power outlet.
• Ensure that the workstation is powered OFF before installing any components.
• If you are not familiar with how to install a PCI bus card, refer to your system’s documentation for more complete, step-by-step instructions.
• To be used only with UL Listed computers that include instructions for user installed accessories.

To install your Osprey card…
1. Power down your computer and disconnect the power cable.
2. Remove the computer’s cover and locate an empty PCI slot.
3. Remove the cover screw from the empty PCI slot’s cover, set the screw aside.
4. Remove the slot cover.
5. Remove your Osprey Video Capture Card from its anti-static bag.
6. Insert the Osprey card into the empty PCI slot and make sure that it is seated evenly.
7. Secure the back panel of the card with the slot’s cover screw.
8. Replace the computer cover.
9. Turn the computer on.

Multiple Board Types, and Adding or Moving Boards
There are six classes of Osprey devices, as follows:
• class 1: o100, o200, o210, o220, o230
• class 2: o300
• class 3: o440
• class 4: o530, o540, o560
• class 5: o700HD and later DSP-based PCI-Express products
• class 6: o240 and related non-DSP PCI-Express products
Each of the six device classes has a separate driver. This user guide applies only to classes 1 through 4.
Therefore if you have both an Osprey-230 and an Osprey-560 in the same machine, then you have to install a separate driver for each
board.
When you add or move boards after the AVStream 4.0.0 driver is already installed, there are two possibilities:
A: You add a board of a different class from what is already in the machine. For example, there is already an Osprey-230 in the machine with the current driver installed, and you want to add an Osprey-560.
For this case you have to obtain and install the driver install package for the new board.
B: You move a board from one slot to another, or if you add another board of the same type. For example, you might have an Osprey-230 in the machine, and want to add another Osprey-230. In this case, the following sequence will begin:
The New Hardware Wizard runs and displays the Found New Hardware window followed by the Digital Signature Not Found window.
1. Click Continue Anyway. (This window will only be displayed on drivers that have not been WHQL Certified; WHQL Certified drivers will skip this step.)
2. The Controller installing window (not shown) displays, and the text inside this window changes to “Osprey Video Capture Device, Installing …” . Then the Digital Signature Not Found window appears on top of it.
3. Click Continue Anyway. (This window will only be displayed on drivers that have not been WHQL Certifi ed; WHQL Certified drivers will skip this step) The Completing the Found New Hardware window displays.
4. Click Finish. The Digital Signature Not Found window displays.
5. This window displays once for each Osprey board you are installing. The Systems Setting Change window displays.
6. Click Finish to restart the computer.

Setting the AVStream Driver Properties

Accessing Your Osprey Video Capture Card Properties
After you have installed your Osprey Card and the AVStream driver, you will be able to access the properties for your card through most major DirectShow applications (such as Windows Media Encoder or RealProducer®). For detailed information on how to select your Osprey Card and access its Video Properties window from 3rd-party applications, please refer to the documentation for your encoding application.

The Video Capture Properties Window
The Properties are organized as tabs or pages in a dialog box entitled “Video Capture Properties.” The tabs are as follows:
• Video Proc Amp – set brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, and sharpness.
• Video Decoder – select the video standard – NTSC, PAL, SECAM.
• Input – select the video input and NTSC / PAL / SECAM video standard.
• Filters – SimulStream, processing mode, gamma, deinterlace, and detelecine.
• Device – various less frequently used controls.
• RefSize – set the reference size for cropping.
• Size and Crop – set default size, enable cropping, set the cropping rectangle.
• Logo – set up on-video logos.
• Captions – set up on-video caption rendering.
• Capture and Preview Pin Properties – the default DirectShow pin controls.
In some applications you may see additional tabs besides those listed above. The additional tabs are system-supplied, for-your-information only, and contain no controls that you can set.
Please note that these property tabs are not where you set frame size and frame rate. These are part of the “pin properties”, and are explained in Pin Properties, below.
Some controls are interactive – changes you make are immediately updated on the video. Examples are the brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, and sharpness controls, the graphical gamma control; and the graphical sizing and positioning controls for logos. The OK, Cancel, and Apply buttons have no effect on these controls. It is also important to note that the OK and Apply buttons commit only the changes on the currently displayed page.
 

Per-device Controls, Per-pin Controls, and Global Controls
Some controls operate on the device as a whole, while other controls operate on individual filters and pins. Specifically, controls on the following tabs are per-device. A change to any of the following controls affects all pins and filters on the device.:
• Video Proc Amp
• Video Decoder
• Input
• Filters
• Device
• RefSize
Controls on the following tabs are per-filter and per-pin. Changes here affect only the filter or pin specified:
• Crop
• Logo
• Captions
For more information on filters and pins, please see “Overview of Filters, Pins, and Properties” in Chapter 3 of this guide.
At the top of these three tabs is a control group named Pin Select.
The three buttons in this group determine whether changes you make will select both the capture and preview pin associated with the filter, or just the pin – preview or capture – that you have selected.

When the “Both” radio button is selected, changes you make to the setup apply to both the capture and preview pins.
If you like, however, you can have different setups for the two pins.
For example, you could enable a feature on the capture pin but not on the preview pin. When you select the “Capture” radio button, the current logo settings for the capture pin are loaded, and changes you make apply only to the capture pin, not to the preview pin. The “Preview” button works the same way.
Please note that the Osprey SwiftCap capture application greys out the Pin Select choices and forces the “Both” selection. This application expects settings for Capture and Preview to be locked together. Some other Osprey applications may do this, by intention, as well.
The DirectShow Pin Properties that applications may display for Capture and Preview pins are always per-pin.
Some of the controls on the Filters tab and the Device tab are global to all Osprey-2XX, -300, -440, or -530/540/560 devices. Global controls are noted as such in their descriptions. The rationale is either that the control is logically global to all devices or that it is a rarely used, less important control, such that users will prefer the convenience of setting the control just once for all devices.
The groupings of Osprey board models to driver binaries are as follows (“o100”, etc., are short for Osprey-100, etc.).
• o200avs – o100, o200, o210, o220, o230
• o300avs – o300
• o440avs – o440
• o540avs – o530, o540, o560
If a control or setting is described as “global”, it affects all devices on the system within the group to which it belongs. That is a global change made in an Osprey-230 property page will affect an Osprey-210 in the system, but not an Osprey-560 in it.

The Video Proc Amp Tab

Use the slider controls to set Brightness, Contrast, Hue, Saturation, and Sharpness. If preview or capture-to-screen video is running
when you access this page, you can see your adjustments interactively.
Hue: The Hue adjustment functions for NTSC video only and will be disabled when PAL, SECAM, or Osprey-530/540/560 digital video is selected.
Sharpness: This slider has six positions corresponding to six hardware filter settings. Generally, the positions to the left result in smoother video, the positions to the right result in sharper video.
Since each step engages a different combination of discrete filters, the control may be non-linear in its action. That is, some steps may result in slight differences while other steps may result in large differences. The specific filters engaged by each step may differ from input to input. This is especially true on the Osprey-530/540/560 when switching between analog and digital inputs. So, if you use different inputs on the Osprey-530/540/560 you may want to adjust each input individually. If the video source is capable of being paused, the effects of different sharpness settings are most easily seen by pausing the video.
Please note that because this is a DirectShow standard dialog, this dialog includes features that are not implemented on the Osprey cards and are therefore greyed out. The Osprey driver does not implement White Balance and Backlight Comp controls, and the Auto checkboxes do not function because the driver does not implement automatic setting of the Proc Amp adjustments. The Osprey driver does have a Gamma control, but it is located on the Filters property page.
For all of the Video Proc Amp controls the driver maintains one set of settings per Osprey device. It does not maintain individual settings
for each input or type of input.
Changes made on this page apply to all video preview and capture pins on the currently selected device.
When you change the video standard or video input you will not see changes in the slider controls – such as the Hue button becoming disabled – until the driver properties dialog is closed and re-entered.
Osprey-530/540/560 notes:
When a digital video (SDI or DV) input is selected, the Hue adjustment does not function and will be disabled.
When a digital video input is selected and the checkbox “Bypass Color Correction” on the Input tab is checked, all four of the Brightness, Contrast, Hue, and Saturation sliders are disabled.
When a digital input (SDI or DV (1394)) is selected, the analog controls are greyed and three controls relevant to digital inputs are enabled.
On the Osprey-530/540/560 the driver cannot decode Closed Captions when brightness or contrast are set at extreme values.
This will only be a problem when they are set to such extremes that normal video will not be viewable.

The Video Decoder Tab
The VideoDecoder Tab is a DirectShow standard control for setting the NTSC/PAL/SECAM video standard. Note that these controls are also on the Input Tab. Most users will find the Input Tab more convenient to use.
Changes apply to all video preview and capture pins on the currently selected device. If you have multiple Osprey cards, set the input individually for each of them.
Changes made with this control take effect immediately – the Apply button really has no function on this tab. If video is running and a standard is selected that does not match the incoming signal, the video is likely to freeze or glitch until the signal matches again.

The Input Tab
All controls on the Input tab apply to all filters and pins on the currently selected device. If you have multiple Osprey cards, set the input individually for each of them.
Changes take effect when you click the Apply or OK button.

Video Input Group

The main Video Input control is a drop list for selecting the video signal source. The inputs shown on the list are tailored to the inputs available on your hardware.

Video Standard Group

The Video Standard control group is a copy of the controls on the Video Decoder tab.
The North American standard is NTSC. The Japanese standard is NTSC-Japan. The five PAL standards, B, D, G, H, and I are very similar, and are treated the same way by the Osprey driver. The driver also supports SECAM video.

Input Format Group: Analog Inputs

On the Osprey-2X0, -300, and -440 analog cards, and for the Osprey-530/540/560 when an analog input (composite or svideo) is selected, the following controls provide additional adjustments.

B&W composite camera:

This checkbox improves the clarity of video from monochrome sources. This checkbox is only enabled when a composite input line is selected; otherwise it is greyed and the control has no effect.
When a composite input line is selected, and a monochrome device is attached, this checkbox should be checked – the result will be a sharper image, as shown in the “notch kill” item of the image pair below. If a device that has color capability is used, this checkbox should be unchecked, or else the image will be textured and unstable. Note: this control is only for true monochrome devices, without color capability. For example if you are looking at a DVD of a black and white film, this checkbox should not be checked because a DVD player has color capability. If this control is checked with a color source, the image will appear shimmering and unstable.

Reverse field order
This control might be useful if you are capturing video from a digital camera, and routing through the Osprey card’s analog composite or s-video input. The normal field pairing order for NTSC cameras is Odd-Even. However, some progressive video cameras and video footage that originated on film may have a different field dominance that requires pairing of even/odd fields into frames. If you notice that there are problems with interlaced video such as “comb” effects where alternate lines are reversed, the Reverse Field Order setting might clear up the problem.

Input Format Group: Digital Inputs(Osprey-530/540/560 only)

The Osprey-530/540/560 controls for analog inputs are the same as for the analog cards, as described above.

Progressive scan
This control affects capture of video from a digital camera, routed usually through the Osprey card’s DV input (540 and 560 only). In normal video, including many digital cameras, field 1 containing lines 1, 3, 5… of the video is transmitted in its entirety followed by field 2 containing lines 2, 4, 6…. The capture card interleaves the two fields together, and the progressive scan setting should be turned off. A digital camera, however, may transfer data in progressive mode, meaning that the data is transferred as a single field of lines 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…. You will know that you need to use the Progressive Scan setting if the video displays as two separate half-height fields, one on top of the other.

SDI 486-line mode
This control is important and will be needed with many NTSC SDI setups. The NTSC standard provides 485 lines of video. The lines appear to a video capture devices as interleaved from two fields, with 243 lines from field 1 and 242 lines from field 2.
SDI sources may add a 486th line, which will be line 283 at the top of the above list, before line 21. This reverses the apparent field order as seen by the Osprey-530/540/560, and alters the lines on which captioning data will appear.

Check the SDI 486-line control:
1. If you do not see closed captions with CC1 enabled, or see spurious incorrect captions.
2. If you do see CC1 captions correctly when the CC3 caption channel is selected.
3. If no XDS data can be decoded from a source that is known to have XDS data.
4. If, using a broadcast source, on the RefSize page, having selected “Start Video at Lines 23/286”, you see a single line of ancillary data (line 285) at the top of the screen.
This control is mainly for use with SDI sources but it is enabled with DV sources as well. Therefore, if you are using a 486-line SDI source along with a 485- or 480-line DV source, you will have to manually change this line each time you switch between these inputs. 486-line mode is automatically inhibited for the analog inputs – composite and svideo – so you do not have to switch it off when you select one of these inputs.

Bypass Color Correction
When a digital video input is selected (SDI or DV), a checkbox entitled “Bypass Color Correction” is enabled. When this box is checked, default values for Brightness, Contrast, and Saturation are used, and the user-accessible controls on the Video Proc Amp tab are disabled. The Video Proc Amp controls become enabled or disabled only when the driver’s properties dialog is exited and re-entered.

The Filters Tab
SimulStream

Use this control group to enable SimulStream or SimulStream evaluation mode, and specify how many filters will be exposed.
For more background about Devices, Filters, Pins and their relation to SimulStream, please refer to “Overview of Filters, Pins, and Properties” in Chapter 3 of this guide.
NOTE – users of versions of the Osprey AVStream driver prior to 4.0.0 will find that the method of representing and managing multiple video capture and preview pins is greatly revised for 4.0.0. We recommend that you review the following material even if you are thoroughly familiar with 3.X.X SimulStream.
SimulStream is a purchased software option. It makes a single hardware device appear as several separate devices capturing the same input stream. Each stream can have different size, color format, frame rate, crop, logo, and captioning. You can have multiple video capture streams in a single application, or multiple applications each with one or more capture streams.
For details about purchasing and installing SimulStream, refer to http://www.viewcast.com/pages.asp?page=osprey-simul_stream.
The base AVStream driver includes an evaluation version for you to try out for free.
When SimulStream is installed the controls in this group affect the fully licensed SimulStream mode, as opposed to the free evaluation mode. When SimulStream is not installed, they control evaluation mode. Evaluation mode works the same as full SimulStream except that an evaluation logo is displayed on the video. If you have set up a custom logo, the evaluation logo preempts it as long as evaluation mode is turned on.

Background: Filters.
From a practical point of view, Filters have two interrelated purposes:
1. They allow applications to enumerate and list DirectShow video capture and preview pins or streams (each with different settings) as named entries in their video device select list. You can set up the driver to show 1 to 10 fi lters per device. Each fi lter has one preview pin and one capture pin.
Standard applications can access a particular fi lter without any custom programming specialized for Osprey devices.
2. Each fi lter has independent settings for cropping, default output size, logos, and captions, that can be stored between sessions. Compared to the previous “pin-based” method, there are no requirements for a particular startup order, in order to associate settings with instantiations.

If you are familiar with GraphEdit, the best way to visualize SimulStream filters is to construct a multifilter graph with GraphEdit, and apply different crop, logo, and caption settings to each filter.

The Enable Checkbox
The checkbox at the top of the group turns on SimulStream for the currently selected device.
If you have a full SimulStream license installed, this checkbox controls full SimulStream. If you have a SimulStream license installed but have not turned on SimulStream, the text line at the top of the control group will say that SimulStream is “installed”. If you do have SimulStream turned on, the text will say that SimulStream is “enabled”.
If you do not have a purchased SimulStream license, this checkbox controls SimulStream evaluation mode. If the Enable checkbox is unchecked, the text line at the top of the control group will say that SimulStream evaluation mode is “installed”. If you check the checkbox, the text will say that SimulStream evaluation mode is “enabled”.
When you change the SimulStream Enable status and click Apply or OK, a message box comes up asking to restart the system. It is strongly recommended that you do so. If you do not, SimulStream may partly work, but the filters may be incorrectly named and their pins may be incorrect.
When SimulStream (or SimulStream evaluation mode) is enabled, the driver always works in “Postprocessing Mode”, as described below in the Mode control group. The Mode control will be forced to Postprocessing Mode, and the “Direct Mode” control will be disabled.

Show N filters per device.

With this control you can set up the driver to expose 1 to 10 filters per device for enumeration and selection by applications. If, for example 4 filters per device is chosen, device lists in applications will show four entries for the current device. For device 1, they are designated as 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4.
This is a global setting, affecting all Osprey-2XX, -300, -440, or -530/540/560 devices as a group.
When you apply this change, a message box comes up asking you to restart the system - it is important that you do so. The number of filters you have requested will not display or work correctly until the system is restarted.
Note – while it is possible to expose and enumerate up to 10 filters per device, the practical number of working filters will be less than this. The practical number of filters depends on the capability of the system, the types of filtering turned on in the driver, the types of scaling and color format conversions requested in the driver, and the type of processing being done by the downstream application.
When video is being directly rendered to the screen, the video format and type of renderer used can make a major difference in system performance and in the number of streams that are possible.
If multiple capture devices are in the system, the number of filters is the total across all the devices; in addition, some times of processing such as deinterlacing and gamma correction that are performed once per device may in this case occur multiple times. So, in summary, a high-end, multicore or multiprocessor system can support 5, 6, or more concurrent filters on one device if the processing per filter is light; but only 2 or 3 if the processing load inside or outside of the driver is particular heavy.

Allow multiple instances of each filter
This control enables you to run multiple instances on one device of applications that do not have device select controls.
It is recommended that you leave this turned off unless you have a specific need for it. Turning it on will affect some of the above description. Specifically, crop, logo, and caption settings cannot be kept separately for applications sharing a filter, and may interfere with each other in a confusing way. The most recent crop, logo, or caption setting will be the one that is saved – it will overwrite settings that might have previously been saved from another application.
This is a global setting, affecting all Osprey-2XX, -300, -400, or -530/540/560 devices as a group.
When you apply this change, a message box comes up asking to restart the system – this change will not work correctly until you do so.

Mode
 
The Mode group selects the two main functional modes of the driver - Maximize Video Quality and Maximize Video Throughput(EaseStream). For essential background on these operating modes, refer to Overview: Direct Mode and PostProcessing Mode in Chapter 3 of this document. Please see Chapter 3 for an EaseStream overview.
Deinterlace / inverse telecine and gamma correction are applied to all filters on the device and must have the same settings for all filters.
Crop, logo, and caption settings can be different for each pin of each filter, and the driver saves settings between sessions separately for each filter.
Video size, color format, and frame rate can also be different for each pin, but it is the responsibility of the application to save these settings.

Deinterlace

The deinterlace group has four radio buttons:
• Off – Perform no deinterlacing of any kind.
• Motion Adaptive – Apply motion adaptive deinterlacing to all video.
• Inverse Telecine – Apply inverse telecine deinterlacing to all telecine video. Perform no deinterlacing of video that is not telecine. Available for NTSC video only.
• Auto - Apply inverse telecine deinterlacing to all telecine video. Apply motion adaptive deinterlacing to all video that is not telecine. Switch dynamically between the two modes as the content changes. Available for NTSC video only.
Deinterlace settings are applied and stored per-device and are applied to all filters and pins associated with a device.

Background - telecine and inverse telecine:
Telecine video is NTSC video that was originally created on film at 24 frames per second. In the telecine conversion process certain fields are repeated in a regular, recurring sequence. If a telecined sequence is viewed directly on a progressive screen, interlacing artifacts will be visible.
The process called Inverse Telecine is the reverse of Telecine - it drops the redundant fields and reassembles the video in a 24 fps progressive format. Interlacing artifacts are 100% removed. If the video is viewed at 24 fps, you will see the exact timing and sequencing that was on the original film. If the video is viewed at 30 fps, every 5th frame will be repeated; however, there will be no deinterlacing artifacts.
Telecine and inverse telecine only apply to NTSC video. They are not used for PAL and SECAM video. The Auto and Inverse Telecine buttons will be disabled when PAL or SECAM is selected as the video standard.

Background – motion adaptive deinterlace:
Motion adaptive deinterlace is an algorithm for deinterlacing pure video (non-telecine) content. It detects which portions of the image are still, and which portions are in motion, and applies different processing to each.

The Currently Using Group

These indicators show which algorithm is currently being used.
These are NOT control buttons – they are read-only indicators.
They are mainly useful in Auto Mode, to indicate which algorithm – Inverse Telecine or Motion Adaptive – is currently being applied.
They are also useful in Inverse Telecine mode to show whether telecine content is present and the Inverse Telecine algorithm is being applied.
The mode currently in use is marked by a green arrow. A mode that is possible under current control settings but not currently in use is marked by a dark grey arrow. A mode that is not available with the current control settings is marked by a pale outline arrow.
With inverse telecine enabled, when telecine content is detected, the five Cine Phase dots show whether the 3:2 pulldown sequence is shifting. If it is shifting, the green marker will shift. This will happen in mixed telecine/video content, and also in content that was converted to telecine and then post-edited in the video domain.
Whenever a shift happens, there will be a few frames that are not deinterlaced. If these shifts are frequent, you may have to switch to Motion Adaptive deinterlacing for consistent quality.
When the telecine detector locks the first time in a streaming session, the leftmost Cine Phase button will be green. If the telecine sequence is perfectly coherent, the phase will never shift. Once it does shift, the absolute phase of the Cine Phase display (which of buttons 1 through 5 is green) is not significant – the only significant fact is that phase shifts are occurring. When the sequence relocks, all phase button are equally correct.

The Tweek… Dialog:
Use the tweek dialog to adjust the parameters that control motion adaptive deinterlacing.
Note: When the driver is using the Inverse Telecine algorithm, either in Telecine mode or Auto mode, the Tweek settings have no effect at all, and Test Mode is inoperative.

Test Mode: When the Test Mode box is checked, the motion adaptive algorithm enters a test mode that displays motion pixels as bright green dots. The dots will mainly be along edges that are in motion, but if the motion threshold is set too high there may also be a random distribution of green dots caused by pixel jitter and instability of the video signal. The extensiveness of the green areas will vary according to the settings of the other tweek controls. Test mode is always automatically exited when you exit the Tweek dialog.

Motion Threshold: The Motion Threshold slider and edit box adjust the threshold of difference from spatially and temporally related pixels that is judged to be “motion”. If you enter Test Mode and move the slider to the right, the number of pixels that are considered in motion will be greatly reduced. As you move the slider to the left, the number of motion pixels will greatly increase until nearly the entire screen is considered in motion. The recommended default is 16.

Sharp and Smooth Motion: When the Sharp Motion radio button is selected, detail in motion areas will be sharper, but at the expense of somewhat jagged diagonal edges.
When the Smooth Motion radio button is selected, there will be more loss of detail in motion areas, but edges will be smoother.
Since the eye does not see detail clearly in areas of motion anyway – whereas edge artifacts are always highly intrusive – the Smooth algorithm should be preferred for most applications. The Smooth algorithm uses a bit more CPU.
Both algorithms treat still areas (areas that are not green in Test Mode) the same way, and there should be no loss of detail in still areas.
In Test Mode, with the Sharp algorithm green speckles will be on alternate lines only, and with the Smooth algorithm they will be on all lines.
Notes:
1. If your video format results in exact 2:1 or 4:1 vertical scaling for a particular pin, then all the video will come from one field. This will be the case for uncropped NTSC CIF (320×240) or QCIF (160×120). It may be the case for special cases of cropped video as well.
In the PostProcessing sequence as currently implemented, the “sharp” motion adaptive deinterlacing algorithm has no effect on single-fi eld streams, since it alters only the fi eld that these streams do not use. The “smooth” algorithm operates on both fi elds and may have a detectable blurring effect on areas of motion. (“Sharp and “smooth” are set in the Tweeks… subdialog.)
Inverse telecine if enabled does not affect the individual fields for a one-field pin; however, if the pin’s frame rate is 24, the driver will detect and remove the frames that are repeats. If you are streaming multiple pins, and the exact single-fi eld special scaling case holds true for one pin but not another, different processing will be applied to the two pins.
2. When Auto mode is selected, some kinds of content will cause the driver to frequently switch between Inverse Telecine and Motion Adaptive processing. Content such as title sequences and commercials is often telecine, but cuts between scenes generally break the telecine sequence, forcing the driver to resynchronize. It takes it a number of frames to lock on to the new sequence. The driver will drop back to the Motion Adaptive algorithm as soon as it becomes aware that telecine sync has been lost. However, it may take it several frames to discover that this has happened; these frames will not be correctly deinterlaced.
You should decide whether to use Auto, Inverse Telecine, or Motion Adaptive mode depending on the type of content you expect.
If the content is consistently telecine, then either Auto or Inverse Telecine is recommended for perfect recovery of the original progressive format.
If the content is telecine with post-detelecine video-based editing, Auto mode will result in the best overall quality – but there may be several frames that are not deinterlaced every time the pulldown phase sequence has to be relocked.
If the content format is a rapidly changing mix of telecine and video, or is all video, or is of unknown type, the Motion Adaptive setting will give the most consistent results. The quality of telecine sequences will not be the best possible, but there will be no instances of frames not deinterlaced at all due to telecine re-locking.

Gamma Correction

This control adjusts the gamma of the incoming video. “Gamma” refers to the response curve of video cameras and CRTs. When video is captured at a camera, the response of the camera is deliberately nonlinear – low lumen values are boosted, and high lumen values are compressed. This is done for two reasons: (1) It increases the effective bandwidth in the low lumen range, where it is needed, at the expense of the high lumen range, where it is less needed; (2) it matches the response characteristics of TV sets and monitors.
The calibration specified in video standards matches the requirements of cameras and TV sets in broadcast use, but generally does not match the needs of computer-based applications or the response curves of computer monitors. So a correction inverse to the original bias is often needed, and you may want to tune for the characteristics of a particular monitor.
When the gamma correction filters is disabled, either by unchecking the Gamma Correction checkbox or by setting the gamma correction value to exactly 1.00, the software-based gamma filter works in passthrough mode, with no effect on the video and with no processing bandwidth used. When gamma correction is enabled, the factor applied is as shown in text box and in the graphic. If you are running preview video while adjusting the filter, you will see the effects of your adjustments interactively.
There are four ways to adjust the gamma correction value:
1. By directly entering text in the numeric text box.
2. By clicking the [+] and [-] buttons.
3. By dragging the mouse with the left button down between the upper left and lower right.
4. By clicking the button marked “2.20” (NTSC) or “2.80” (PAL/SECAM). These values are the inverses of the gamma bias that was applied at the video source according to the video standard, so that the resulting video is gamma-neutral.
The graphic, in addition to showing the transfer function as a red curve, shows the visual effect via the two greyscale bands on the adjustment square. The lower third of the square shows a nonvarying linear adjustment range. The upper two thirds shows the greyscale mapping of the current setting. When the setting is 1.00, the two portions are identical.
Gamma correction is enabled only when Postprocessing Mode is selected.
Gamma correction applies to all filters and all output pins on each device. The gamma correction can be different for different physical devices.

The Device Tab
These controls are less often used items.
Unless specifically noted, changes made on this page apply to all filters and all video preview and capture pins on the currently selected device. Unless noted, different settings may be set and stored for different devices.
• PCI Compatibility Mode
• Processor Assignment
• Device Info…
• Extras…

Processor Assignment
This control is relevant only on machines with two or more processors, and with two or more Osprey devices of a particular class(Osprey-2XX, -300, -440, -530/540/560) installed. On single-processor machines, this control is greyed.
Normally, when a machine has multiple processors and multiple Osprey devices, best performance is achieved by letting the Windows dispatcher assign devices to processors dynamically. The processing for a device will generally end up on the first processor to become idle, and load balancing between processors will occur naturally.
On a few machines, however, it has been noticed that Windows will run all Osprey devices on one processor, resulting in unbalanced loading and reduced performance.
The upper button in the control group sets the usual, default case whereby Windows if free to assign any device to any processor.
The lower button is for those few cases where the default setup does not work right. It causes each Osprey device to be hardwired to a specific processor – device 0 to processor 0, device 1 to processor
1. The assignment is round-robin, so if there are four Ospreys on a two-processor machine, device 2 will be assigned to processor 0, and device 3 to processor 1.
Changes made to this control will take effect when you restart the machine.
If you have mixed classes of Osprey devices – for example an Osprey-230 in the same machine as an Osprey-560, overriding the default of this control is not recommended. The two device types run under different drivers, and both drivers will consider their device to be “device 0”, and both will assign it to processor 0.

PCI Compatibility Mode
Some PCI bridges present compatibility problems for the Osprey hardware, especially systems using the 430FX chipset. The symptom will be dropping of a significant amount of audio and/or video data.
Use the “Normal” setting unless you are seeing this symptom, but if you are seeing it, try setting this control to “430FX”, or, possibly, to “VIA/SYS”. The change will take effect as soon as you click “Apply” or “OK”.

Device Info…
This button display useful information about the capture card and the driver, including
• The DirectShow name of the device.
• The device and filter number.
• The PCI bus and slot numbers of the device.
• The device type code.
• The serial number of the device.
• On Windows XP x64, whether the application is 32-bit or 64-bit.
• The versions of the kernel driver and user mode DLL (AX).
• The versions of the interfaces between the kernel driver and user mode DLL..
• The file name of the kernel driver binary.

Extras…
“Extras” are features of the AVStream driver that are new, not fully defined, or subject to change. Extras may also include workarounds to apparent DirectShow issues that are expected to be resolved fairly soon. Extras should be expected to change more frequently than other aspects of the driver. The current Extras are the following:
• Timecode Video Marking: Refer to the Vertical Interval Timecode section on page 31 of this guide for more information.
• Closed Caption Timestamping: This control is a workaround to what we currently believe to be a problem in DirectShow with capture of CC to AVI files. If you attempt to capture a CC character pair stream along with a video stream to an AVI file with “Normal” timestamping, the file will become extremely large and the capture will fail within a few seconds. “AVI-Compatible” mode allows capture of CC to AVI. Unfortunately, the problems with timestamping mean that time synchronization between the video and CC streams depends on their physical interleaving in the file, so that time synchronization will be quite poor; we do not have a workaround for this at this time. For all applications other than capture to AVI, this control should be set to “Normal”. WME9 among others requires the “Normal” setting if CC is used.
Vbi Pin (Osprey-530/540/560 only): The Osprey-530/540/560 do not provide full Vertical Blanking Interval (VBI) support, and do not normally expose a VBI Pin. Windows Media Encoder 9, however, has a Closed Captioning scripting capability that requires a workaround: Although this application connects to the driver’s Closed Caption Pin for delivery of actual Closed Caption data, it looks for a VBI Pin in its capability enumeration phase. This control directs the driver to expose a logically correct but non-functioning VBI pin so that the WME9 scripting capability can be used. We recommend hiding the VBI Pin for other applications, since no valid VBI data will be delivered. Changes to this setting only take effect when the you restart the device either with the system’s Device Manager, or by rebooting the system.

The RefSize Tab
The RefSize tab controls features related to the reference size, format, and proportions of the video. These controls are not commonly used. Most users can set up this page once and never refer to it again. Note that this page does not provide everyday control of the final output size of your video. Control final output size either from your application, from the Crop tab, or from the Pin Properties dialog described in the next section.
Changes made on this page apply to all video preview and capture pins on the currently selected device.
• Horizontal Format
• 525-Line (NTSC) Vertical Format
• Reference Size for Crop and Logo Placement
• Horizontal Delay
• Source Width (Osprey-530/540/560 only)

Horizontal Format

Use the Square Pixels setting for video that will be viewed via a computer monitor. This setting results in a square aspect ratio sampling of the source video. This results in a source image of 640×480 for 525-line standards and 768×576 for 625-line standards.
Use the CCIR-601 setting if the captured video will be later viewed on a dedicated video monitor. This setting results in a CCIR-601 aspect ratio sampling of the source video. It results in a video input horizontal size of 720 pixels for both 525-line and 625-line standards. This sizing is standard for dedicated monitors but results in video that appears horizontally stretched(525-line) or squeezed (625-line) on a computer monitor.
It is more efficient to set the horizontal mode to match the size of the output. For example, if your target video size is 640×480, using Square Pixel sizing in PostProcessing Mode will avoid an unnecessary software scaling step in the driver.
On some systems, for reasons external to this driver, 640×480 video will render a lot faster than 720×480 video – that is, the speed difference will be a lot more than the 9:8 ratio of numbers of pixels.
Osprey-530/540/560 note: This control is implemented only for 525-line standards. When a 625-line standard (PAL or SECAM) is selected, CCIR-601 720-pixel sampling is automatically selected, and the control is greyed.

525-Line (NTSC) Vertical Format

This control is only meaningful for NTSC users. It has no effect for PAL and SECAM 625-line video standards.
Select 480-line video for all normal applications. Select 485-line video for specialized applications.
When 480-line video is selected, you can select which of three video lines should be the top line of displayed or captured video. Lines 21 and 284 are used for Closed Caption in films and broadcast video.
Lines 22 and 285 are sometimes used for ancillary data in broadcast video. If these lines are used for data they will appear as moving bands or streaks across the top lines. Therefore, the most generally useful start lines are 23 / 286. For cameras and some packaged content, however, all video lines starting with 21 / 284 can be part of the displayed video.

Reference Size for Crop and Logo Placement
This part of the dialog is read-only because you do not set it directly – rather, it shows the results of more fundamental settings made elsewhere in the dialog.
The settings shown by the 525-line / 625-line buttons reflects the video standard selected in the Input or Video Decoder tab. NTSC formats result in 525-line, 29.97 frame per second video. PAL (other than –M) and SECAM formats result in 625-line, 25 frame per second video.
The Height and Width boxes show the size of the incoming video based on all the settings you have made.

Horizontal Delay

The Horizontal Delay control moves the video horizontally in the capture or preview frame. Video devices differ in their timing characteristics, so some devices may need different adjustments from other devices. Adjust this control if you are seeing a black line to the left or right of the video. Use the left and right arrow buttons to move the video to the left or right. Click [0] to restore the default zero setting. The allowed range is -15 to 15. With uncropped video, the video will shift only on every second increment 0, 2, 4….

Source Width (Osprey-530/540/560 only)

The Source Width control can be used to trim the black left and right edges of an image. This control is only available for NTSC video, and only when the Horizontal Format is set to Square Pixels such that the reference size is 640×480.
The suggested procedure is as follows:
1. With video preview running, click [720] to display the entire image, which will usually include black left and right edges. Changes will appear interactively.
2. Use the Horizontal Delay control immediately above this control to center the image so that the black edges are of equal width.
3. Click [704] to trim the image to the nominal borderless width.
4. Click [+] and [-] to adjust the trimmed size so that the black edges are completely removed but no active video is lost. The allowed range is 688 to 720.
It is possible to obtain the same result using the cropping control(Size and Crop Tab) but there are some differences.
1. The Source Width control affects all pins and all filters on the device, whereas the crop control would have to be set separately for all SimulStream filters.
2. In Postprocessing Mode this operation is often more efficient in terms of processing than a crop operation. The crop and scale are done in hardware, so if you are using the resultant 640×480 image directly without further cropping there is no scale/crop processing cost incurred.

The Size and Crop Tab
This tab has two functions.
• It sets the default output size, whether or not cropping is enabled.
• It enables and disables cropping, and sets the cropping rectangle.
The default output size is the video size that appears in the DirectShow pin properties dialog as the “default” choice. It is a pathway for setting a custom or nonstandard video size in applications that do not have a custom video sizing controls built into them.
“Cropping” means removal of unwanted video around the edges of the incoming image. For example, if the incoming video is letterboxed, with an aspect ratio wider than 4:3, you can crop away the black slivers at the top and bottom of the image and capture just the active portion.
Changes made on this page apply to all video preview and capture pins on the currently selected device.
• Pin Select
• Reference Size
• Granularity
• Enable Cropping
• Default Size

Pin Select
When the “Both” radio button is selected, changes you make to the crop setup apply to both the capture and preview pins. This is the default setting and is what most users will want.
If you like, however, you can have different setups for the two pins.
For example, you could enable cropping on the capture pin but not on the preview pin. When you select the “Capture” radio button, the current crop settings for the capture pin are loaded, and changes you make apply only to the capture pin, not to the preview pin. The “Preview” button works analogously.
Note: The Osprey SwiftCap capture application greys out the Pin Select choices and forces the “Both” selection. This application expects the Size and Crop settings for Capture and Preview to be locked together. Some other Osprey applications may do this, by intention, as well.

Reference Size
The reference size information is always read-only on this dialog tab.
It is determined by settings made on other tabs – specifically, the Input tab, where a 525-line or 625-line standard is selected, and the RefSize tab, where Square Pixel or CCIR proportioning is selected.
The read-only text box describes which of these options is currently governing the reference size.
The reference width and height represent the full uncropped size of the incoming video. Your crop settings are interpreted relative to this reference size. For example, if you are capturing 525-line video, with a reference size of 640×480, and your crop rectangle is (0, 0, 640, 480), then your video is effectively uncropped. But if you are capturing 625-line video, with a reference size of 768×576, the same(0, 0, 640, 480) crop specification will truncate the right and bottom edges of the video.

Granularity and Alignment
Osprey products impose restrictions on the possible width and/or height of the video, referred to as “granularity” restrictions. For example, the I420 capture format requires that the capture width be a multiple of 16 and the capture height be a multiple of 2. When video is cropped they also impose a requirement for alignment of the left side of the cropped video field. The specific requirements for the 4.0.0 driver are changed from the 3.X.X driver versions. They are as follows:

Granularities of Supported Color Formats

	Granularity	Granularity	Alignment	Alignment
Format	Horizontal	Vertical	Horizontal	Vertical
YUY2	4	1	2	1
UYUV	4	1	2	1
I420	16	2	2	1
YVU9	16	4	2	1
RGB555	4	1	2	1
RGB24	4	1	2	1
RGB32	4	1	2	1
GrayScale	4	1	2	1
[none]	4	1	2	1
[any]	16	4	2	1

The Granularity controls show you the granularity restrictions for the selected video format, and assist you in choosing crop and output sizes that observe those restrictions. Since alignment is the same for all formats, there is no control for it.
Since the preview and capture pins may be set to different color formats, they may have different granularities. When the Crop tab is opened, the two drop boxes titled Capture and Preview are initialized to the current or most recently used format for the selected pin.
If your Pin Select setting is “Capture”, only the Capture granularity box will be enabled; similarly for Preview. The two small read-only edit boxes to the right of the group show the horizontal and vertical granularities for the selected color format for the selected pin type.
If your Pin Select setting is “Both”, both the Capture and Preview drop boxes are enabled, and the two boxes to the right of the group show the worst-case granularity that works for both the Capture and Preview color formats. For example, if the Capture color format is I420 and the Preview color format is YUY2, the resultant granularity is I420’s more stringent 16×2 requirement.
The granularity and alignment settings affect values you subsequently enter for crop width, crop height, and default output width and height - they will be adjusted to these granularities.
Adjustments are made when you click “Recalc”, “Apply”, or “OK”.
You can change the video format in the drop box, so that granularities are set for a different format. Note that this does not automatically cause the pin to have this format – you still have to select that format using the Pin Properties dialog or via your application. It just ensures that the sizes you select will work correctly when you do select this color format in the application.
If you set up your crops with a less restrictive granularity (for example, YUY2) and then capture with a more restricted granularity(for example, I420), the driver may automatically adjust the video crop and/or output size without notifying you. Or, the capture may fail. You may also find that in the Pin Properties dialog the default size you wanted is not listed – because it is not a legal size for this format.
If you select “[none]” as the color format(s), the minimum granularity and alignment adjustments are applied to your crop and size data.
If you select “[any]” as the video format, the coarsest granularity required by any of the available formats is applied to your crop and size data. In practice, “[any]” is the same as YVU9, that is, 16×4.
You are guaranteed that your crop and output sizes will never be adjusted, regardless of what video format you select now or in the future.

Enable Cropping

If you uncheck the Enable Cropping checkbox, your video will not be cropped regardless of any crop settings you might previously have made. The edit boxes showing the edges, height, and width of your crop will be read-only and will show settings for full-frame, uncropped video.
If you check the Enable Cropping checkbox, your video will be cropped to the indicated boundaries. Previously stored crop settings will be recovered. The six edit-boxes are enabled. The Top and Left boxes set the top left corner of the cropping rectangle. The Right and Bottom boxes set the bottom right. The Width and Height boxes set the size of the rectangle.

The Recalc Button
The Recalc button recalculates the whichever of the six crop edit boxes you have not filled in. For example, if you set Top, Left, Width, and Height, Recalc will calculate Right and Bottom. If you set Top, Left, Right, and Bottom, Recalc will calculate Width and Height.
Whichever of the vertical group was least recently touched, is the item that will be recalculated; similarly with the horizontal group. If you have only changed one box of the group, you can force the order of recalculation by clicking one of the other two boxes. For example:
If you have changed Left, and you want to preserve Width (but alter Right), then click on Width before Recalc. If you have changed Left, and want to preserve Right (but alter Width), then click on Right before Recalc.
If your specification will result in a crop rectangle that is too large or too small, Recalc will adjust it appropriately. If it can’t set up an allowed size by changing just the third most recently clicked setting, then it will try to change the second most recently clicked setting instead or as well. If it has to it will change your most recently changed setting.
Recalc will also factor in granularity and positioning requirements as required.
In the Default Output Size group, Recalc will change the default output size if Auto Size is checked. If Auto Size is not checked, Recalc will leave the output size alone.
Notes:
1. Note that the crop width and height are subject to the granularity requirements of the selected video format, as explained in the previous section. For example, if your video format is I420 and you try to set a crop width of 360, it will get adjusted down to 352.
2. If you enable cropping, key in some custom settings, and then disable cropping, an uncropped specifi cation will be displayed and your settings will disappear from view.
However, the driver does remember your custom settings, and if you enable cropping again, they will reappear.
3. Versions 4.0.0 and later of the Osprey AVStream driver can upscale cropped video, up to the reference size.
4. Cropping rectangles are frame-based rather than fi eldbased.
Thus if a crop rectangle is set up defi ning a 320×240 area, then a capture of video sized at 320×240 will result in video being captured from two fi elds. You may therefore see interlacing artifacts in the captured video, unless a deinterlacing fi lter is applied. This may be initially confusing since most users typically think of 320×240 video capture only coming from a single fi eld and thus would not have interlaced artifacts. However, in this case, the source video is only 320×240 in size (i.e. the crop rectangle) and thus any captured video that is greater than the fi eld height within the crop rectangle (equal to ½ cropped ROI height) will result in a scaled capture of multiple fi elds. Also, the driver will use both fi elds whenever they are needed to interpolatively scale the output with best possible accuracy.

Default Size

The standard DirectShow Pin Properties dialog allows you to select the height and width of captured video from a dropdown list. The dropdown list has a particular range of choices that may or may not fit your needs. The dropdown list includes one default size that is provided by the capture driver. The Default Size control allows you to set up what default size will be shown.
If you check the Auto Size checkbox, your default video size will be automatically sized to your crop settings. The three radio buttons, 1X Crop, 1/2X Crop, and 1/4X Crop, determine whether the output size is scaled down from the crop size.
• Example 1: If you are running standard 640×480 NTSC video, and the Enable Cropping checkbox is not checked, your crop size is 640×480. With Auto Size checked, and the 1X Crop radio button selected, your default size will be 640×480; with 1/2X Crop, 320×240; and with 1/4X Crop, 160×120.
• Example 2: If you have enabled cropping with size 320×240(one quarter of the full video area), the default Auto Sizes are as follows: 1X, 320×240; 1/2X, 160×120; 1/4X, 80×60.
If you leave Auto Size unchecked the default size radio buttons are disabled and the height and width edit boxes are enabled. You can set any default size with the following two restrictions:
• Since the driver does not upscale video, the default size must be smaller than the crop size. For example, if the crop size is 320×240, you cannot set default size 400×300.
• Sizes are subject to the granularity requirements of the selected video format, as explained in the Granularity section above. For example, if your video format is I420 and you try to set a default width of 360, it will get adjusted down to 352 as soon as you click on another control.
Note that Pin Properties dialog default entry does not appear in the default VFW/DirectShow mapper dialog. Thus, unless a VFW application, like Virtual Dub, specifically allows for custom resolutions, the VFW app will only be able to select from the options the VFW/DirectShow mapper lists.

The Logo Tab
The logo property superimposes a graphic over captured video using the logo property controls.
Logos have the following characteristics:
• Any RGB-24 bitmap in .bmp file format can be used.
• A selectable key color can be specified; all parts of the logo graphic with that color are not drawn on the video.
• A transparency control can be used to blend the logo graphic with the background video.
• The logo can be interactively positioned and scaled.
• The logo appears on both captured and previewed video. If the capture and preview video are different sizes, the logo is scaled to look the same on the preview video.
The logo property controls work best when you are already running preview video. With preview video running, you can view your changes interactively. (If your application displays capture video in real time, capture video can be used instead.)
The logo property is organized as three sub-pages – File, Color, and Position. The Pin Select control group and Enable Logo are common to all three. For other controls, click the File, Color, or Position radio button to bring up the right sub-page.

Logo Pin Select
When the “Both” radio button is selected, changes you make to the logo setup apply to both the capture and preview pins.
If you like, however, you can have different setups for the two pins.
For example, you could enable the logo on the capture pin but not on the preview pin, and thereby save some CPU time. When you select the “Capture” radio button, the current logo settings for the capture pin are loaded, and changes you make apply only to the capture pin, not to the preview pin. The “Preview” button works analogously.
Note to SimulStream users: The Pin Select control group is different when SimulStream is enabled. Refer to the SimulStream section of this guide for a description.
Another note: The Osprey SwiftCap capture application greys out the Pin Select choices and forces the “Both” selection. This application expects the Logo settings for Capture and Preview to be locked together. Some other Osprey applications may do this, by intention, as well. However, several other applications, such as Windows Media Encoder, do not grey out the Pin Select choices, and you have the options to choose “Capture,” “Preview,” or “Both.”
Please see the screenshot below.

Logo File and Color

The Enable Logo checkbox, which is repeated on both sub-pages, enables or disables logos. If you disable logos, all your other logo settings are retained for when you re-enable logos again.
The [Browse…] button brings up a standard file select dialog. Logo files must be:
• In .bmp format with a .bmp filename extension.
• In RGB-24 format.
If you have a graphic that is in another format, edit it with a drawing or photo edit program such as Windows Paint, and save it as RGB-24.

Keycolor

You can control the key color and the transparency effect. If preview video is running, you will see your changes interactively.
A “key color” is a color that disappears from the graphic so that the underlying video shows through unchanged.
If the Enable Key Color checkbox is unchecked, all colors are displayed.
If the checkbox is checked, key coloring is activated. The five radio buttons are activated. You can select one of four standard colors – dark gray, medium gray, cyan, or magenta – or a custom color. It you select Other, for a custom color, the three edit boxes – Red, Green, Blue – are activated, and you can enter any color value into these boxes.
Keycolors to identify transparent portions of logos can be exact or inexact. The Tolerance control determines this. If Tolerance is 0, then all keycolors have to exactly match the Red / Green / Blue values shown in the key color control group. If Tolerance is nonzero, then the Red / Green / Blue values can deviate from the keycolor by the tolerance value and still be treated as being equal to the keycolor.
For example, it Tolerance is set to 5, and the keycolor is set to grey(192, 192, 192), then pixels in the bitmap with value (187, 187, 187) will also be transparent.

Weighting

The degree of transparency of the logo is variable through 256 steps.
If the setting is 255, the logo will be opaque. If the setting is 0, the logo will be completely transparent. If you have set a keycolor, the weighting or transparency value is applied only to pixels that do not match the keycolor and hence are always completely transparent.
You can set the weighting either with the slider or by editing the number in the edit box.
Note that the SimulStream Eval logo is a special case – it is restricted to the range 128…255 so that it cannot be made completely transparent.

Logo Position and Size
The Logo Position and Size sub-page lets you position and scale the logo. It is strongly recommended that you have preview video running when you use these controls.
The large indented rectangular area at the top of this sub-page represents the video area where the logo can be positioned. The smaller rectangle represents the logo. To position the logo, click on the logo rectangle and drag it to the new position.
The four “Nudge” buttons, L, R, U, and D, move the logo left, right, up, or down exactly one pixel at a time on the output video. Since the positioning rectangle may be scaled down from the full video size, the Nudge buttons allow more accurate positioning of the logo.
The slide control at the bottom right of this sub-page controls the scaling of the logo. The [1X Scale] button returns the size to the original size of the .bmp graphic. The quality of a scaled image will not be as good as the quality of the 1X image. We recommend that wherever possible for production work you prepare artwork of the exact size at which it will be used.

Notes on Logos:
• Because the logo properties tab is used to set up a logo interactively on live video, its behavior is different from the behavior of the other tabs. The driver updates the controls on the logo tab immediately, without waiting for you to click [Apply]. You will see that [Apply] enabled only right after you select a different pin spec. As soon as you make any change to any logo control, [Apply] becomes disabled and stays that way until you change to another pin spec.
• If you set up a logo with video set to one size, then resize the video, the logo is not scaled correspondingly. This may not be desirable, since you may want the logo to expand to the same scale as the video window. Click the [1X Scale] button to restore the logo to its unscaled size or import a logo prescaled to the new desired size to ensure the best image quality.

The Captions Tab
Osprey-530/540/560 note: With these products the driver cannot decode captions when video brilllghtness or contrast are set at extreme values. This will only be a problem when they are set to such extremes that normal video will not be viewable.

CC Pin Select
When the “Both” radio button is selected, changes you make to the captioning setup apply to both the capture and preview pins. This is the default setting.
If you like, however, you can have different setups for the two pins.
For example, you could enable cropping on the capture pin but not on the preview pin. When you select the “Capture” radio button, the current captioning settings for the capture pin are loaded, and changes you make apply only to the capture pin, not to the preview pin. The “Preview” button works analogously.
Note: The Osprey SwiftCap capture application greys out the Pin Select choices and forces the “Both” selection. This application expects the Size and Crop settings for Capture and Preview to be locked together. Some other Osprey applications may do this, by intention, as well.

Render NTSC Closed Captions on Video

The 4.0.0 driver can internally render closed captions on video when NTSC video is selected on the input. There is a control to select which channel to render (although CC 1 is the only channel that is commonly used).
Note that this control only affects rendering on video performed internally by the driver. The AVStream 4.0.0 driver has two additional ways of delivering captions.
First, it exposes a DirectShow-standard CC pin. This pin can be used directly by applications such as Windows Media Encoder’s scripting facility.
Second, the driver has a proprietary Closed Caption API for use by C++ developers. It delivers raw captioning data from any CC or Text channel. It also delivers line-interpreted data from these channels, suitable for a scripting display or for capture to an ASCII file. Is also delivers XDS - “Vchip” and other ancillary data – in raw form. The applet named CCChannels.exe that is included with the driver release demos these capabilities.
The control group “Render Logical White As” maps white captions to a color other than white. This is a proprietary extension to the Closed Captioning standard. When logical white is mapped to, for example, red, the CC standard captioning red also works; however, it is not possible to distinguish “logical white” red captions from “standard colored” red captions. Since standard colored captions are so little used, this characteristic has little practical effect.

CC Pin

This group controls whether the closed caption character pairs emitted by the DirectShow CC pin are from field 1 or field 2 of the video. The DirectShow specification is that CC on a CC pin is always from field 1; however, this extension allows application developers to access field 2 data such as XDS data (including vchip) via a DShow standard pin.

Capture and Preview Pin Properties
This dialog is the default DirectShow way for obtaining a user’s settings for the output format of captured video.
Changes made in this dialog apply to the currently selected pin only.
The settings for the capture and preview pins are independent; in applications like GraphEdit or AMCap, both must be set before both pins are used.
Access to the Pin Properties dialogs is application-specific. For example, in the AMCap capture application, access is by two entries in the Options menu, Video Capture Pin… and Video Preview Pin….
In GraphEdit, right click on the pin you wish to set the properties for.
Many applications do not use these dialogs; they instead have their own built-in ways of setting these parameters.
The three active fields of the dialog set the Color Space or pixel format of captured video; Output Size of the video, and Frame Rate.
The recommended order for setting these parameters is: First, Color Space; second, Output Size; third, Frame Rate. If you set the frame rate before the other two, it may be lost so that you have to reset it.
The Output Size drop box displays a selection of standard size settings plus one additional setting designated as “default” that DirectShow obtains from the capture driver. You can obtain specialized video sizes by a two-step process: First, go to the Filter Properties Crop tab described above and set the Default Size to a custom value. Then, enter the Pin Properties dialog and select the default entry, which will now be set to your custom value.
For more information about the supported color formats, refer to Video Driver Topics, Color Formats.
The area of the dialog marked Compression is not relevant for the Osprey AVStream driver.
The Video Standard setting is read-only in this dialog. To set the video standard, go to the Video Decoder tab of the filter property pages.

AVStream Driver Reference Information
Overview of Filters, Pins, and Properties
In DirectShow the words “filter” and “pin”, as well as “driver” and “device”, are frequently used. The following diagram shows their relationship as they apply to Osprey hardware and drivers.

At the bottom this diagram are one or more physical Osprey hardware devices. All Osprey devices of a given type (such as Osprey-230 or Osprey-560) are controlled by a single Osprey binary, the Osprey AVStream Driver. For each physical device the AVStream Driver creates one logical Video Device and one logical Audio Device.
On top of each Osprey logical Video Device, one or more Video Filters is created. If the SimulStream option is not installed, there is a single Video Filter for each Video Device. If SimulStream is installed, there can be multiple Video Filters for each Video Device
The distinction between “Device” and “Filter” is important mainly to SimulStream users. For non-SimulStream users, Device and Filter effectively mean about the same thing. For SimulStream users, each SimulStream Filter acts as a “virtual device” that can be accessed by name and can deliver a separate video stream with its own independent control settings.
When SimulStream is enabled, some functions and capabilities are device-level, and others are filter-level. Examples of devicelevel functions are input select, and the controls for brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, and sharpness. These are closely tied to the underlying hardware of the device, which inherently allows only one input to be selected at a time, and one set of hardware control settings to be applied. Examples of filter-level functions are crop, logo, and caption settings, which can be different for each video filter, and in fact for each pin of each filter. Some other capabilities such as deinterlace and software gamma correction could logically be either device-level or filter-level, but are treated as device-level
for practical reasons.
Each Video Filter has one Capture Pin and one Preview Pin. A “pin” is the source or destination of a video or audio stream. A video capture pin is a general purpose pin used for capture to a file, an encoder, an on-screen renderer, or any other destination. A video preview pin is mainly intended for on-screen rendering. Each Osprey Video Filter also has a Closed Caption pin and a Vertical Blanking Interval (VBI) pin for capture of specialized ancillary data.
On top of each Osprey logical Audio Device, one Audio Filter is created, with one or more pins capable of sourcing one or more audio streams. There is not much practical distinction between an Audio Device and an Audio Filter in either the SimulStream or non-SimulStream cases.
Both devices, filters, and pins may have associated “Properties”.
“Properties” are control parameters that can be read from or written to the component. Some Property Pages are standard Windows DirectShow pages. For example, the Property Page for an individual pin is a standard DirectShow page. The “Video Proc Amp” and “Video Decoder” Pages are also DirectShow-standard. The rest are proprietary to the Osprey driver.
As a user, you interact with Property though visual “Property Sheets”, “Property Pages”, or “Property Tabs” that are part of a tabbed dialog. As a programmer, you can set properties directly from within the code of your application, using either the standard DirectShow API or the custom Osprey extension API that is available from ViewCast Corp in an SDK.

Overview of Direct Mode and PostProcessing Mode
Maximize Video Quality
The 4.0.0 driver has two distinct operating modes. Direct Mode is a simple, low overhead mode for basic capture. PostProcessing Mode enables a number of filters, transforms, and renderers within the driver, and supports the SimulStream option.

Direct Mode

The purpose of Direct Mode is to capture and/or preview video with very low CPU overhead. It is meant for low capability machines, and for other cases where it is imperative for the driver to use as little CPU as possible. Scaling, cropping, and color conversion are done in hardware, incurring no processing overhead – but at the cost of reduced flexibility.
The drawing shows a graph of Direct Mode processing; the drawing is mainly interesting as a comparison point for the PostProcessing Mode drawing in the next section.
In Direct Mode, each device has one video capture pin, and one video preview pin. Video can be cropped and scaled, and the crop and scale specifications can be different for two pins.
In Direct Mode, the driver does not apply deinterlacing, gamma correction, logos, or on-video captioning.
There is no SimulStream in Direct Mode; if SimulStream is turned on, the Direct Mode control is deselected and disabled.
In direct mode the driver is somewhat restricted in the combinations of capture and preview video that it can produce at the same time.
If the capture pin alone is used or the preview pin alone is used, the driver can produce video in any size and rate.
If both the capture and preview pins are used, the limitations to video size and rate are as follows: The capture stream is preemptive over the preview stream, in accordance with Microsoft recommendations for video capture drivers. That is, if (1) there are both a preview and a capture pin; (2) the capture pin frame rate is 29.97 frames per second (25.0 PAL/SECAM); and (3) the source video of either or both pins is interlaced, using both video fields, then there will be NO preview video – the preview window will be blank.
If the above conditions hold except that if the capture pin frame rate is less than 29.97, then the preview rate will be 29.97 minus the capture rate. In other words, the preview pin will obtain a video frame only in time slots when the capture pin does not require one.
The driver never copies video from one pin to another in Direct Mode.
On the Osprey-2X0, -300, and -440, Direct Mode supports Closed Captioning delivered to the DirectShow CC pin, as well as to the new Osprey-proprietary CC streaming interface demo’ed by the CCChannels applet supplied with the driver. The Osprey-530/540/560 implements Closed Captioning differently, and captioning of all types requires Post Processing Mode. Direct rendering of captions on video within the driver requires Post Processing Mode for all Osprey boards.

PostProcessing Mode

The drawing shows a possible graph of video data flow within the driver in PostProcessing Mode. This particular graph assumes that SimulStream is activated so that more than two video pins are possible. There are four video output pins, represented by the pale yellow round rectangles:
• The upper pin produces scaled and/or cropped I420 video, w