Using Plextor M402U, PX-TV402 with VDub, looking for ISO?
 

I read a note in Avery Lee's blog from 2006 that he specifically included hardware support in VirtualDub for the (non) uncompressed capable Plextor M402U.

Apparently he was making Anime transfers and was surveying many capture cards, including the famous ATI collection for those that did not have wicked Automatic Gain Control problems.

Being from the (year 2006) hard drive space or DVD space was at a premium.. so when the Plextor MPEG-2 and DiVX/Microsoft MPEG4 hardware compression device came out.. he was especially interested.

Like the (great ATI TV Wonder USB2.0N) with the Theater 200 chip. The Plextor M402U did not have AGC problems.. but unlike the USB 2.0N.. it had (no) capability for outputting uncompressed full video over its USB 2.0 connection to the PC. But it did all three compressions formats, MPEG-1, MPEG2 and Certified Divx and Microsoft MPEG4 Divx with quite a bit of control over the GOP and bit rates.

This presented a problem for VirtualDub.. it was totally fixated on uncompressed video for input. While it could compress video on the way out using DirectX filters.. it just didn't have a menu option for controlling the hardware compression capable capture device. (until) he made one.. called [ Capture Filter ] in VirtualDub 1.6 .. it still works good in 1.10

The problem I have is both that this device has no 64 bit drivers, and while the 32 bit drivers reportedly worked even in Vista they are hard to come by. The disc that came with a M402U included the device drivers, and a number of trial programs.. but also the Intervideo WinDVD Creator, and WinDVR5 (for the PX-TV402).

Capture software that understands a DirectX capture device is hardware capable is very ("rare").. that VirtualDub can do it with one device is frankly amazing.. it breaks all the rules and assumptions for VDub.

Mostly hardware compression video capture devices veered off course toware PVR and Scheduling software with poor control over the device.. and almost without exception they went with Divx or Microsoft MPEG4 exclusively. They simply could not do MPEG-2 and could not resist deinterlacing the video.

(all of that to explain.. why I'm interested in .iso files of the original two discs)

Plextor made GoCap available on their website.. long gone, can't be downloaded ... (except.. in a backwater.. Japanese version of archive.org).. but it depends on the Intervideo Multiplexer DirectX filter that is installed by WinDVD Creator or WinDVR.. assuming you had the original OEM disc and installed those free programs.

Corel bought Intervideo and no longer supports or makes available any XP software.. so you can't buy the "full version" to get around not having the original OEM discs.

I'd really like to find, or get copies of the M402U (and) PX-TV402U original installation discs (both of them, there was one orange-yellow disc for each, and they were slightly different)

So I could install the software, and then "study" the DirectShow Graphs which those programs invoked when they were brought to life.

This is kind of a historical, pet project to satisfy my curiosity.. but I notice all the time people all over looking at these curious boxes.. which always get sold without the driver/application discs. It would be Super if somewhere they could turn to to get these ('singular') CD iso images.

also.. like the ATI USB 2.0N.. Plextor released a version for the Mac.. so they could be used as capture devices on the MAC.. which meant they could do full control hardware compression for MPEG-1, MPEG2 and Divx on the Mac through EyeTV. The advantages were obvious since a compressed stream was (far less) likely to drop frames over USB2.0 than a full bandwidth audio and video stream

To my knowledge only one or two other IEEE1394 Firewire video capture devices ever did this on a Mac and they are long gone.

This was fantastic hardware then and now, but the world view was so self-centered on the idea that "no one would ever" care or have the hard disk space to archive at such "fantastic speeds and file sizes".. or "ever have a fast enough CPU" to finish an archival restoration program in a single human life time..

Reading the release notes, this was part of the overall effort to get DirectShow device capture support into VirtualDub. Something that was 5+ years late at the time! VirtualDub likely supports other DirectShow capture devices that have hardware compression (I know it did with old Video For Windows devices), but those have gone out of vogue as of late with the new focus on live streaming with OBS and the like. One gotcha is that you have to disable all filters and compression when capturing to prevent your captured video from being re-compressed.

That's very good to know NJRoadfan.. I was wondering about the filters. That is how would you know it hadn't been re-encoded.

I'm hoping that it will support other hardware compression devices.. but only those that grant you full control over the compression specs.. all the cheapy PVR chips didn't seem to provide that control from their drivers.. (or) the bundled capture software didn't bother to include it.. thats part of what the Graphs I hope will make apparent.

OBS is pretty cool, but it requires Vista or above and won't ever run on XP.. its the new VirtualDub .. lol.

huh.. you got me thinking.

Plextor M402 on Vista 32 with OBS.. possible ???

Oh that's interesting, it seems it uses a SAA7115 A/D chip, the successor to the SAA7114 found in the cypress/AVT TBCs. I believe it's found in a few nvidia VIVO graphics cards as well.
EDIT: And also the Haupaugge Wintv PVR-250 PCI card.

I have been using AmaRecTV for alot of capture work, mostly because it seems to work properly with my RGB frame grabber (Epiphan DVI2PCIe) and sources with oddball frame rates. It allows fine grained control of capture devices above and beyond what VirtualDub normally exposes, including the capture graph.

http://www.amarectv.com/english/amarectv_e.htm

Note that the above page doesn't have the latest version, grab 3.10 here (top link): http://www.amarectv.com/download_amarectv.htm

FWIW: An ISO of the Sept 2004 version of the M402U distribution disk runs about 230 MB. Certain items on the disk such as the InterVideo apps will require a serial number to operate.

402U Drivers and other info in the following thread
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...nvertx-px.html

Thanks

I'd really like to get a copy of the .iso file of the disc however.

Serial numbers don't matter as much as performing an install, or extracting the filter files.

Below the Application layer of all these programs is the Dshow DirectX layer.. which is the really important part, its leggo blocks with filters (or COM modules of code).. as long as they are registered in the Windows registry you can do many things. But in my case the GoCap application "assumes" the filter from Intervideo has been installed. It doesn't need a serial number to be active as far as I know.. most programmers were protecting the Chrome.. or the User Interface.. not the back door.

I do understand people are trying to protect the Application serial numbers.. and think the rest of the disk is trash.. but its really a gold mine. The .iso files are the whole story.. and they are very valuable. They are a time capsule with lots of collateral information. The file size of an old .iso cdrom file is the size of a pea or a knat.. its "itsy bitzy" tiny compared to anything moved around on the internet today.. so trying to save space really isn't worth the time.

At 230 MB the ISO is too big to upload as an attachment, or e-mail, unless lordsmurf has a suggestion. (There appears to be more than one person interested in the .ISO.)

If you have 7Zip for Windows installed

1. right click (on the .iso file) > select "Add to Archive"
2. look "down" at [Split to volumes, bytes] > select "drop down arrow"
3. pick > 10 MB
4. click > OK

7Zip will [both] compress and break out the single .iso file into 10MB chunks labeled .zip.001 .zip.002 ect..

You should be able to attach those to a message and Lord Smurf can archive them, or people can download them and reverse the process by right clicking on the first file and extracting the image.

Do post how many chunks there are in the "set".. so people know when they are completely uploaded.

For a 350 MB iso I just ran a test and it produced 28 (10MB) files. The compression depends on the actual content in the ISO image. (for my test it knocked off about 70 MB from the 350 MB original ISO size.. not bad).

I think you could upload larger (100 MB) files but it depends on what the forum will allow or your connection to the internet. Smaller upload files in pieces prevents you from having to re-upload any failed attachments or uploads.

I will do it upon lordsmurf's OK, probably as a set of 3 files since 99 MB zips are allowed.

Do it. :)

Both WinRAR and 7zip have multi-part options. My preference in WinRAR, but again both work.
See also this post: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/comp...html#post25600

Yes, do 99mb chunks.

Thanks. I will get to it Monday.

The three files containing the 7zip split of the Plextor ConvertX PX-402U distribution disk ISO are attached.
The ISO was created by WinISO from a 2004 Rev 2.06 distribution disk.

Note: The InterVideo applications will require installation keys (not included with the ISO file) at some point in the process. The keys would have been provided with the PX-402U.

7Zip automatically added the sequence number (001, 002, and 003) to the file name. I had to add a .7z extension to avoid an invalid file name error message. You may need to drop the .7z after the sequence number for 7zip to recognize the file.

Thanks

I did have to drop the .7z extension as you said, but extraction delivered the complete .iso file and I can see all of the proper folders in the Iso

I'm sorry for bumping this old thread. I also have the "Plextor ConvertX PX-TV402U" and I bought it 2nd hand (or 3rd or 4th hand maybe) and it didn't come with anything but the converter itself. I would love to try to install this ISO CD and test it on my Windows XP setup... but I can't find a serial for InterVideo anywhere. Can someone please help me?

What, exactly, is the Intervideo application? (Intervideo was a company, not a software. They had multiple softwares.)

Skimming through the thread again: WinDVD Creator and WinDVR5?
What version if WinDVD Creator?

Being defunct software from 15+ years ago, from a company that no longer exists, for a product that was never popular or widespread, with few probably actually left in circulation (most trashed, recycled), I don't see why serials to make it run again can't be posted here. dpalomaki, do you have one?

I have some versions of WinDVR and WinDVD, from years ago, but will have to search my backup drives.

On this disc, Intervideo WinDVD and WinDVD Creator is included. The thing with this "Plextor ConvertX PX-TV402U" is that it is supposed to have MPEG-1/2/4 HW encoder... but with the "PlextorGoCap" app (that is the only app available from Plextors webside), I'm not allowed to set recording bitrate. I would hope that is possible with the included Intervideo software on this disc... and that it will take advantage of the built in HW Encoder. It seems no other software seems to do so :question:

-- merged --

Unfortunately, the ISO provided in this thread seems to be for the Plextor "PX-M402U", not the "PX-TV402U" that I hve... because the driver in this ISO won't install with my "PX-TV402U". The only difference between the two models should be that the "PX-TV402U" has a built in TV tuner, while the "PX-M402U" has only analog inputs. I belive that the original ISO for the TV-version also had the InterVideo WinDVR software included...

So it seems like I'm still looking for the ISO for the "Plextor ConvertX PX-TV402U" box, though :smack:

WinDVR/DVD is software-only encoding, from all that I have ever seen. And that's why it was never good software.

Did you try PlexTools Professional XL ? if this program can't, any other program can't also,
this program supports all Plextor devices.