Monsoon SnappySoft for analog capture?

[AndyO6322]

I am looking for a long-obsolete software called Monsoon Multimedia SnappySoft to use with my Dell capture device. Is anyone aware of a source for this application, since the Monsoon website has been idle for more than 6 years? I have not been able to find a reliable download site for the full software files (rather than a free trial limited version). Any help is much appreciated.

[7jlong]

Their old website turns up in searches at the Internet Archive, so if you dig around there you might get lucky.

[lordsmurf]

The bigger question is .... why?

In all likelihood, that's a very non-suggested capture card. What is it? A lot of those old capture cards were beyond craptastic, turning video into blocky mush with out-of-bound values.

OP is not a newbie. Is this for testing?

[aramkolt]

My guess is this is a Dell Angel USB capture card which outputs an MPEG2 stream. It's overall a quite well built card on the inside, but the downside is that not very many capture programs support it. Supposedly there is a way to modify one of the files to get the full version since you can't actually buy it anyway these days as snappysoft as a company is long gone, but I haven't found any place that actually says what the "hack" is to make it useable for longer than the limited time that the trial version allows - but someone out there knows how.

Supposedly it also has line-TBC like effects by itself as well, but I haven't tested mine yet on tape sources because I'm in a similar situation as you and would rather wait to get a program working that can do longer captures to look for things like audio sync issues.

The other sort of current capture program that works with the Dell Angel is PowerDirector, but that's kind of a bloated software that costs quite a bit for just saving an MPEG2 stream and it doesn't run very well on slower computers I think. In some cases, if you have a DVD burner in your Dell laptop and windows 10 on it, it may let you download it for free on the App Store, though most windows laptops these days don't have optical drives.

Best bet for snappy soft would be to find the file modification to get rid of the trial limitations which I suppose might be considered ethical since you can't buy the software even if you wanted to and the company no longer exists anyway. Meets the abandonware definition in my book.

So if anyone knows what the trick is to remove the trial limits, I'd be interested in hearing about how to do it

[AndyO6322]

Aramkolt, thanks for your feedback. You have captured my situation exactly. I am using the Dell Angel USB with SVHS input, outputting a MPEG2 file. The setup has been working well for me over a wide range of homemade VHS tapes. The device uses an NEC chip, similar to what is in the Toshiba RD-XS DVD recorders, for hardware encoding of the analog signal and the results have been very good.

The drawback, as you pointed out, is the limited capture program options that support this device, which was designed primarily to work with Windows Media Center PCs. I am currently using AmCap (Noel Danjou) software which works but often crashes on my Win 7 PC. I am looking for a software solution this is more stable. The device manufacturer, Lumanate, indicates that Monsoon Multimedia SnappySoft will support this device, but the Monsoon website is long gone (I’ve checked Internet Archive with no success). So that is my motivation for finding a full (activated) version of this legacy software.

So, as you commented, if anyone knows a way to remove the trial download limits, please advise.
.

[HiFiVideotape]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndyO6322

if anyone knows a way to remove the trial download limits, please advise..

Back in the software pirating heyday you may have been lucky to find a crack, patch, keygen, replacement executable, or something similar to accomplish what you want. I'd be shocked if anyone could procure that now for such an obscure and outdated piece of software.

If this is for use as a proper capture workflow and the only reason you're trying to force the Dell card to work is due to tight budget and "not wanting to spend hundreds of dollars," you could consider a good preowned professional SD capture card online for $30-$40 and download its free full-featured pro Win7 capture software and/or VirtualDub (if desired). Capture uncompressed and/or lossless, choose to process with scripts or GUI, and use NLE if editing.

[latreche34]

Not sure if this helps.

[aramkolt]

Jwillis84 is the one that mentioned the "hack" in one of his posts over at Videohelp, he said it was extremely easy to do and said it was widely known back in the time when this program would have been in active use, but he may have ethical concerns about actually re-telling what it is. He seemed to say that it was extremely easy to do and just required changing one line of text in a preference file or something similar to remove the trial restrictions.

Here's the post (I was basically asking the same question as you): https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...es#post2754722

He said there is a different program called Amcap that works on other OS's than XP, but it does cost something like $30 and the license restricts use to one machine. You would have to email the developer for the older version that will run on XP, but he says the new license keys do work with the old program, but then that's your one copy for the $30. Since I don't really know that I'd be using the Dell Angel for any real work and it's limited to one machine per license, I haven't sprung for it just yet. $30 is more than fair pricing if it's a device I'd actually end up using compared to the 20+ other devices I have to test, so I'll probably use the limited version of snappysoft for testing and then if it happens to be great, I'll have to decide which computer to put Amcap on.

There's also a reddit post that talks about older versions amcap still working on windows 11, v1 and v8:
https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomp...ng_program_on/

For V8: https://archive.org/details/amcap80
Screenshot 2025-01-11 at 10.49.53 AM.jpg


Though in internet archive, a review says there's a couple of trojans in the file which is interesting that they'd even host it with those present, but maybe they are required for the actual program since this is apparently browser extension based?

However, I'm also seeing posts that the older Amcap programs were developed by Microsoft and the one that Jwillis84 suggested is probably the newer one that is privately developed and probably just using the same name, so no idea if those older amcap programs can capture the MPEG2 streams myself since I haven't actually tried either of those myself. The new one that costs $30 should work for sure though, just lame that the license is limited to one computer (so you can't really try it with XP and Windows 10/11 for any real longer captures to see if there's issues or not).

[AndyO6322]

aramkolt, thanks for the jwillis84 info on SnappySoft activation. I do have a purchased version of the newer, privately-developed AmCap program installed on my Windows 7 - 64 bit machine and it works with the Dell Angel USB, however it often crashes or freezes up, hence I was looking for software alternatives that are more stable and easy to use.

The version of AmCap I am using and is recommended by jwillis84 was developed by Noel Danjou and is different from the original MS version. I've also tested PowerDirector 12 and Sonic MyDVD software and it works, but doesn't provide for setting specific capture bit rates and VBR/CBR when used with the this capture device. I plan on installing and running the trial version of SnappySoft to determine if it's worth pursuing further.

P.S. I was also wondering if there are any old PVR/tuner devices available on ebay that would have included a full, activated copy of SnappySoft on a disc. That would be a great find!

[aramkolt]

The other way around it is to use Windows Media Center edition PC/operating system apparently, that just plain old supports MPEG2 streams natively from what I've read.

That's good to know on the paid version of Amcap that it likes to crash, again not something that you might notice right away with a trail version and it'd be disappointing to pay for it only to find out it does that later.

My guess is that the Dell Angel truly only has one continuous bitrate that it outputs, and while you might be able to select other bitrates, I'd suspect that it might just resample the stream or compress it from the computer-side which really isn't what you'd want.

Do you have any testing that shows going to a higher bitrate on the few apps that do allow you to change it actually looks better than whatever the default bitrate is on the programs that won't let you change it?

[AndyO6322]

I don't have comparative test samples with varying bitrates using the Dell Angel. Going by the recommendations in these forums, I am targeting a bitrate in the 8-9 Mbps range with CBR. The higher bitrate supposedly helps the MPEG2 encoder deal with artifacts in the source signal. From what I've researched, going much beyond 9 Mbps doesn't provide additional benefit.