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..