Warning: GV-USB2 and/or AmarecTV on non-US Windows!
 

I recently ran into an issue on a system that uses the comma "," as decimal instead of "."

Apparently, this is common in some parts of Europe and especially in France.

The solution is to simply change Windows' region setting and choose "." as a decimal separator.

There are 2 distinct issues:
The first will mainly impact you if you try to capture NTSC with any capture card using AmarecTV on comma-region system,
The second if you try to use IO-data gv usb2 with any software to capture NTSC with a windows that uses comma, and ofc if you use both together.

The reason why everything works fine with PAL is probably because PAL fps is not a fraction it is 25/50, but NTSC is 29.97

The error on AmarecTV may look like this

Another reason behind this error is if you manually modified the suggestions to some unsupported format (unsoprted color space, or dimensions).
VirtualDub, despite its massive list of things I don't like, handles this particular kind of error reporting better

Some programmers are really bad at understanding there are different countries and languages, and I have suffered from this stupid thing a lot, but in this very particular instance, you can't blame I-O data. Please note that their product only OFFICIALLY supports windows in Japanese and the device is not officially sold outside Japan.

Also, note that they no longer officially support Windows versions prior to 10.

Hope that helps people who may run into these issues too!

@mbassiouny, could you give us the AmerecTV scenario? Where would a comma appear when we want a dot? Are you talking about the "Format" box where 29.97 would be 29,97 if Windows is set up incorrectly?

Secondly, an example for the GV-USB2 and what error messages you get, or are you suggesting the same one, as you've shown for AmarecTV? I don't understand:

Thanks!

It is not actually "set up incorrectly" it is correct in some countries :)

What we call 1.5 (3/2) (one point five) is something French and Spanish people would call "one comma five"

> could you give us the AmerecTV scenario?
You have French Windows, with the settings set to use the decimal as "," Set your card To NTSC

AmarecTV will use "," in the format box where you set dimensions, etc, but even if you manually change it to ".", it still won't work and gives the format error. This implies there is something inside the software that uses the system decimal separator that you can't access (or maybe you can in some other setting I did not notice??) Either way, it is simpler to change Windows settings system-wide, or user-wide on your capture computer.

VirtualDub+GV-USB2, set to capture NTSC, set window size accordingly etc, you will never get the preview or anything and if you try to capture it won't work, I don't remember the exact error message but I think it was "capture can't start".

Close virtuaDub, change system settings to use "." instead of "," launch Vdub again, and voila, everything works fine.

Some cards like the pinnacle 510+vdub, are not affected by your system's separator.