ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0 works, power supply issue

[jwillis84]

Aero themes are not compatible with ATI MMC and Windows 7 will automatically switch to a Basic theme and continue to load the program.

Wallpapers other than [solid] will "hide" the Full Desktop TV image. If you minimize the TV app it defaults to taking over the desktop background and displays a Live TV image. If you pick a desktop picture or image, this will cover it up. Changing the background to a plain solid color will reveal the Live TV image when the TV app is minimized.

[jwillis84]

Sneak attack

Working on capturing a WinINSTALL LE repackage of the install on a clean Vista x86 install.

I couldn't [fix] the problem of the ATI TV Wonder USB2 drivers "failed to copy file" but I did figure out what it was trying to do when it failed.. and found a work around.

For some wacky reason, when the INF file is being processed, it can copy (some) WDM driver files to C:\Windows\Temp and fails to copy others.. a look at \Inf\setupapi.dev.log "suggests" a binary hash problem with the driver catalog.. at least that is what it claims.. so I think one of the new Vista security services was preventing the copy operation for some files, but allowing others.. weird.

So..

Before starting the cdrom setup program.. I copied all them to C:\Windows\Temp

D:\Install\TVW_USB2\WDM
to
C:\Windows\Temp

as far as the ATI setup program is concerned it thinks it copied them there, even though they are already there.. it certainly can't overwrite them.. because Vista is preventing it.. and the ATI install program continued merrily along.

Device is discovered and all the device drivers are successfully added to the Vista operating system.

Flakey or not.. the install succeeds and the MMC see the devices and proceeds to install.

[lordsmurf]

My primary concern is overlay in VirtualDub 1.9.x+ .
2nd concern is ATI MMC (for 15mbps MPEG-2 capture on dual/quad-core).

Where are you on that?

Hint: since we're talking WinVista/7/8/10, look at VirtualDub Filtermod Plus, which is a stable variant of 1.10.x.
https://github.com/eladkarako/VirtualDub-FilterMod-Plus
The x64 version may be useful for capturing in our endeavors.

Another hint: VirtualDub 1.5 -- and earlier, and 1.6, and Mod, but don't waste time on those -- have an overlay that acts different. It's softer/blurrier, but often succeeds where 1.8/9/10 fails. It's a good test to see if *something* works, in regards to overlay. As you know, minor successes can lead to later major successes.

I can get my PCI to act fine in MMC or Vdub 1.5, but not 1.9/10. Something broke when I installed new drivers, when downgrading the PCIe to PCI. The AIW USB acts identical. I'm going to reformat as WinXP later tonight, after the Yankees lose (hehe).

I'd be happy, for now, with overlay 1.9 Vdub + MMC on XP. For me, that's be a victory (although one that's NEVER been hard before). Trying to recreate this in Win7 would be great, as I could upgrade to SSDs! An enemy of audio (in video) work is noise, and removing spinning disks is a biggie.

Recreating in Win7x64 would be the impossible come true, and be a game-changer. Modern system hardware (motherboard/CPU/RAM/etc), modern-ish OS, legacy capture.

But it all starts with overlay and MMC.

[jwillis84]

I think I'm still playing catch up to you.

I just got Vista reliably installing from cdrom, and upgrading to Win7 x86/32

I also just captured a Vista install of the MMC install to an .msi with WinINSTALL repackager

.. curious, the repackager indicated the ATI software was compiled with language support required "English (Canadian)" all the other binaries are English (United States).. not sure but that could have thrown a monkey wrench into certain installs. We tend to not install with additional language support. English is English, but there are slight variants.

I wanted to see if this captured .MSI installer could install "direct" to Win7 x32 .. then try Win10 x32

There is a "slight" extremely small chance the .MSI installer will work on x64 because even though DirectX deprecated certain interfaces.. ATI apparently wasn't playing by the rules.. they talked direct to the hardware.. even though the DirectX interfaces were removed.

I'm still working only with the ATI USB2 device.. and haven't unboxed the PCI/PCIe cards yet.

So my progress would appear frustratingly slow.

[lordsmurf]

ATI was Canadian. Although U.S. is always the primary market for tech, hence first on language support even when Canadian company, that was clearly an oversight on their part. Interesting.

Focus on the USB and PCI. PCIe will probably waste your time. The PCIe generation required a driver that would not be seen, at all, in Vista or 7. Only the AGP and PCI had success (in my tests), and USB (in yours). I still think the USB will be less compatible than PCI, but am following your posts with great interest.

Overlay and MMC is the holy grail here.

XP should be easy (but isn't on PCI/USB), Win7 x86 good target to shoot for (probably via Vista upgrading).

On another note, I don't really think Vista/7 Home vs Ultimate/Pro will do much differently. However, I don't know for cetain, so not willing to dissuade you from that thought avenue.

[jwillis84]

Thanks for the audience

Exploring is a end goal in itself, but it gives me that incentive that keeps me coming back sooner than later.

I've already found the ATI software "works" completely on Win7 x86 due to your suggestions and encouragement. I really was not thinking that was possible after installing and seeing it fail to initialize video. Coming through the Upgrade path, I see its more a registry settings problem, and that DirectX simply changed between Vista and 7 and that made the software incorrectly start misconfiguring itself on initial install. If its installed "before" you Upgrade to 7 it keeps working as before.

I've also discovered the [solid] work around of copying the WDM drivers to C:\Windows\temp (before) attempting to install the drivers using the ATI Driver install package. Something is blocking the step where that package copies the drivers to C:\Windows\temp (before) it actually copies them into the driver store and initializes them in the registry. Doing that "pre-step" makes the ATI software installs ["stable"] on Vista.. and I suspect the same on 7.

It could be this is true (also) for PCI but I haven't tested that yet.

Overlay technology is the "Sticky" bit. DXVA is DirectX Video Acceleration. DirectX begain in 9 with it being totally in the software side of things, but as GPUs got more powerful, DXVA1 and DXVA2 pushed more and more of it into the GPU hardware driver side offloading the responsibility. So in later DirectX generations Overlay support began demanding your GPU support more and more Overlay functions. I am not sure if its even possible in 7 and 10 to revert that to software. -- all that to say, modern DirectX Overlay support is [highly] dependent on your Video card hardware drivers supporting overlay functions so that DirectX can use them. A cheap video card is unlikely to offer good (or any) Overlay support.

I also don't know how much ATI software simply offloads Overlay support to DirectX.

The ATI software is unpredictable in design.. some features they did not rely on DirectX, some they did.. at this point I think the only way to know is just (try) and see what happens.

Sad.. but it means it just takes a lot of work to find out.. if something will work.

I suspect the newer ATI MMC 9.x versions like 9.14 and above will have better support under 7 or 10.. but its only a guess.

I wanted to get the older 9.03 and 9.08 versions working first.. mostly (childishly) because I wanted to see the out of box experience work on Windows 7 and to see Video SOAP working on Windows 7 x86 (and it does work.. yeh!)

I think I should stop for a moment and test VirtualDub Overlay support on Vista and 7 just to "know" and will probably do that this evening.

[jwillis84]

English (Canadian) = French Canadian keyboard

Canadian languages settings


Geez..

en English
en-us English (United States)
en-gb English (United Kingdom)
en-au English (Australia)
en-ca English (Canada)
en-nz English (New Zealand)
en-ie English (Ireland)
en-za English (South Africa)
en-jm English (Jamaica)
en English (Caribbean)
en-bz English (Belize)
en-tt English (Trinidad)

[jwillis84]

Tested Vista with ATI MMC 9.08 installed, then installed the VirtualDub FilterMod from the link you provided.

I had to download the VC runtime from microsoft for VS2008 x86 before VDub would startup.

After that, it seems to work flawlessly except it doesn't capture audio.. which is weird because ATI MMC does capture audio... and plays it while viewing.

The Overlay function stays on during capture, it does not disable when capture begins.

I'd post a silly video of the interface I captured with my cell phone.. but it sort of felt childish posting a shaky cam video.

The video captures through VirtualDub with no frame loss (zero).

It is remarkably stable on Vista x86

Moving on to try it on Win7 x86

I have them backed up on a thumbdrive so restoring to working conditions is a Macrium restore that takes about 4 minutes.

[jwillis84]

Tested Win7 with ATI MMC 9.08 installed, then installed the VirtualDub FilterMod from the link you provided.

I had to download the VC runtime from microsoft for VS2008 x86 before VDub would startup.

Worked flawlessly (and) it captured audio, but did not play the audio during capture.

On playback in Windows Media Player the audio was there.. so I don't know if Vista was a fluke, or I toggled something I should not.. but it works perfectly with the Overlay mode under Win7 x86

If possible.. it even seems even "more" stable under Win7 x86.. the picture seems "more" stable in a way crisper than I thought it did under Vista.. and I thought the Vista picture was really good.

[lordsmurf]

Pretend I know nothing.

Give me the steps to recreate installing the ATI AIW USB in Win7 x86.

Right now, it seems to be:
- install WinVista
- copy some ATI CD files to the temp directory
- install ATI drivers from CD, install MMC from CD
- upgrade Vista to Win7

And done?

I want to replicate what you've done. Let's go ahead and do the USB first, since I have one.

[jwillis84]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

Pretend I know nothing.

Give me the steps to recreate installing the ATI AIW USB in Win7 x86.

Right now, it seems to be:
- install WinVista
- copy some ATI CD files to the temp directory
- install ATI drivers from CD, install MMC from CD
- upgrade Vista to Win7

And done?

I want to replicate what you've done. Let's go ahead and do the USB first, since I have one.

Only missing (one) step.. which you would run into anyway.

Installed with Vista x86 SP0 (no service pack) then did as you said (after) ATI MMC is installed and working.. need to do that TV tuner initialize step while still in Vista, then apply Vista SP1 "before" Upgrading to Win7. -- it would have stopped you and said you had to install Vista SP1 anyway.

The big take aways (a) copy WDM drivers to c:\windows\temp "first" before using the normal driver setup routine (b) be sure to setup the TV Tuner while in Vista.. I "think" Win7 lost some DirectX tools that let it properly default setup the TV Tuner.. if you try it after Upgrading.. it probably won't work.. or will be flakey.

1. Copy the (cdrom) D:\Install\TV_USB2\WDM contents into C:\Windows\Temp

2. Then methodically went top to bottom through the cdrom through File Explorer to right click - Compatibility - XP SP2 on "every" application file, I sorted the files using the file explorer file type and all the executable application files floated to the top

3. Then ran atisetup.exe from the cdrom using Run As Administrator

4. finally while I could just do a default install, I got around to untagging the unnecessary stuff.. let it install the TV_USB2 drivers.. it prompts for you to plug it in.. detects it and flys right through without a single error

I do plan to make the steps much more detailed.. but I "think" I can get most of this automated with a cmd.bat file to perform the install without doing everything manually.

Right now I'm struggling with a WinX 1607 x86 install to try the similar steps on Win 10 (I think the only diff will be importing "sane" regsitry settings from Vista into the registry to get it working).

Eek! I forgot I did some "sane" stuff in Vista too.. disabled UAC for example.. I made copious notes.. coming soon.

Let me get this Win10 trial out of the way first.

[lordsmurf]

"untagging the unnecessary stuff."

Yes, I think that's important -- only install what's needed. I do that.

For example, for MMC, only TV. Not DVD, Eazylook, guide, etc. I don't even remember what some of that stuff, just that it's useless and not to be installed. Waste of time.

So when we discuss installing stuff, let's now overlook the cherry-picking.

Win10 is a horrible OS for everything aside from tablets. The main reason I still use Windows is for video. I use Linux and Mac quite a bit, too. I would expect 10 to fail miserably, and is just wasting your time.

[jwillis84]

Finally.. got Win10 1607 installed

Every driver is showing up working and compatible.. finally

Taking a before snapshot backup of it now.

Its getting late.. but I should be able to at least see if the drivers install with the copy to C:\windows\temp first trick.

I have a long meeting starting early tomorrow so I will have to stop there tonight.

[jwillis84]

Mixed results

Pre-copying the WDM driver files "did" let the driver install package install the drivers.

Windows 10 acknowledges seeing them.

But three of the critical drivers are not "fully" loaded, they have little yellow trouble cones next to them in the device tree and say "Object not found" "Device requires further installation"

I've seen something similar before.. it usually means a missing CLASSID in the registry for a subsystem that Microsoft has decided to rename, deprecate or remove. -- in short a "dependency"

Specifically the drivers that didn't fully load are:

ATI TV Wonder USB2.0 Video & Audio
ATI TV Wonder USB2.0 TV Tuner
ATI TV Wonder USB2.0 AV Crossbar

Those usually plug in with ksproxy.. or rather I should say.. usually ksproxy "probes" these user space drivers for interfaces for information to construct and activate the video proc amp panel among others. They started redesigning or constricting them in Windows 7.. I don't know what they did in Windows 8.. by now it looks like they just removed them.

But I have not installed the ATI MMC software yet.. got to go get some sleep.

The ATI MMC software continued to work even though the video proc amp panel stopped populating in Windows 7.

I did try to fire up VirtualDub and it couldn't find a video source for the ATI USB2.. that tells me the ksproxy isn't working enough to let it use the video driver.

Its a lot of information really fast.. so close

I don't know whether to be depressed, or jubilant in just knowing the status on Win 10.

Only throwing this out there.. but DirectX12 could have renamed the CLASSID for these "types" of driver.. maybe modifying the INF file or decorating the registry directly with the DirectX12 for video capture device CLASS would make them work.. i don't know.. that's a wild idea.. going back to document the Vista to Win7 path tomorrow night.

almost.jpg

[lordsmurf]

Force-installing the drivers isn't hard, though it may still be rejected. The easy way is to look at the hardware ID.

- If you don't see the name of the device, you're fine.
- If the device name shows with a yellow (!), then you're usually screwed. It took it, but will not work.

^ At least that's been my experience.

Overlay has (at least?) two methods/modes. I mentioned this earlier.
- With my PCI card, 2nd system with XP problem, using VirtualDub 1.5, overlay works, but is soft. The ATI MMC is crisp. No 1.9 overlay at all.
- My main capture system has both crisp overlay in 1.9 and MMC. AGP Asrock dual-core build.

[jwillis84]

Huh.. annother idea

SHA1 vs SHA2 driver certs

The signing costs for Windows 10 hardware drivers have been going up and up.. its now like over $1000 per year just to get a signing cert for drivers.. and Microsoft has separate (validate) and (verify) steps when loading drivers.. example: is it SHA1 or SHA2, is it a self signed cert or a private or public cert... policies prevent self signed loadable unless your in test mode and unverified mode. but that doesn't mean it doesn't have to be signed.. even if badly signed it has to be signed.

Not to mention the signing certs used to sign the ATI drivers expired a really long time ago.. so while signed.. by the new enforcement standard, they would validate but fail because the certs were expired. These new enforcement standards are being ramped up since Windows X started using 4 digit version numbers.. I miss the Windows 2 digit version numbers.

I forgot how [bad] Microsoft has made it for any programmer to get software or hardware to run on Windows 10.. its really become super bad in the last year. the AU and Cartoon Updates have made it almost un-runnable.

You can try the F8 disable verify, validate, behavior if fails either.. and loadable test signing steps.

I use to run usb snoopy on Windows 10.. and it was really really hard.

It could be simply.. very simply be that Windows 10 is failing one of these steps and "preventing" a verified and validated driver from being "loadable".

Its a real circus these days.

I really need to remember to try all this when I get home.

[jwillis84]

Last night performed [both] an install and an upgrade from Win7 to win10.

Both had same result, the software appears to upgrade in a functional state but in both cases the hardware device drivers seem to say they are missing some operating system component that is inaccessible or has gone away in win10.

But otherwise the software appears functional, ATI launcher, configurator, TV App, Player App, Library App all start without error.. except for not being able to find the TV Tuner.

The Cypress chip bus driver for the ATI device loads.. its the logical components that are directly connected to DirectX that start to load and then say something is missing.

So Win95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7 (all x86, 32 bit versions.. none of the x64, 64 bit versions have been attempted) are known to work with these drivers.. if wacky to install

On win10 ATI software is known to install, but not complete the connection to DirectX

I do not know about Win8, 8.1

[jwillis84]

I also have a StarTech Empia 2860 - USB2 capture device

SVID2USB23

It works really well under Windows 10 x86/32 with no problems.

One of the things I admire about the Empia 2860 and the device drivers is that its INF file is (beautiful) and fairly easy to read. The chipset is from 2004 as well and it very widely known, the datasheet is readily available. Sometimes people find the decoder chip in cheap knock offs, or combined with dubious AC'97 or other audio encoder chips.. the knock offs aren't well known for stability or good signal handling.. but the computer side of things for windows or mac, twain or directx is very stable.

I might see if the INF can act as a template for re-writing the INF for the ATI TV Wonder USB2.0n

I don't know its an INF problem exactly, it could be a coding problem in the ATI drivers. But the Win7 Empia drivers and INF file work really well under Windows 10 without modification.

Startech generally offers some generic hard to find stuff.. but there are always datasheets.. which I like about their stuff.

I can only guess that the ATI USB drivers weak point is the INF file.. its only a guess.

The few times I've peaked at it.. it looked.. unfinished? beta.. in a state of flux? I really don't know if that's fair.

The hardware is solid, the Theatre 200 chip had a long life in many products.. but the software side of the drivers was perplexing.

[jwillis84]

gleened a little bit from the inf setup file

it says these are the drivers and what they do:

atinyuxx.sys ; ati ntsc ; TV Tuner
atinysxx.sys ; ati ntsc ; Sound Crossbar
atinyvxx.sys ; ati ntsc ; Video Crossbar
atinypxx.sys ; ati ntsc ; Parental Decoder
atinymxx.sys ; ati ntsc ; Macrovision Decoder
atinyttx.sys ; ati ntsc ; Teletext Decoder

atinymvx.ax  ; ati ntsc ; MVDetection activex filter
atinytmx.dll ; ati ntsc ; MVDetection function driver

atinyc20.cod ; ati ntsc ; DSPminicode (VideoSOAP maybe)

Only the first three are really related to AV capture, the others enable more features in the ATI MMC software.

Each has its own little stanza that builds up an interface that DirectX or another program could use.

As far as I can tell the inf file was used as a scratch pad for ideas and certain parts are commented out or look like they were "beta".

But since it was based on the use of DirectX and WDM its fairly similar to the inf for the empia 2860 capture device. I can definitely see where a little text formatting problem could be tripping it up from working well under Win7 or Win10.

This could be a dead end.. along with a modified inf file is a security .CAT (catalog) file which is suppose to be signed and act as a token to validate a driver package as valid and verified by a developer.. that's what costs a lot of money to sign and keep up to date. I am not sure how to get around that yet.

But it is interesting to read the plain text file and compare and contrast to the same plain text file from a different but similar driver.. its very educational, if academic.

p.s. One other thing

The USB device driver is in a separate driver inf and driver file completely. That driver gets loaded upon detecting a Cypress USB controller that identifies itself as an ATI TV Wonder USB2.0 with a VEN and DEV id, when that loads it enumerates the other logical devices attached to it.. which appear as the "three" hardware devices above, tuner, video xbar, sound xbar which then automatically build their interfaces and plug into the DirectX plugin gallery ready for use.

I presume the protocol then is to send USB packets of data labeled or "addressed" to one of the three devices with instructions or commands to perform. The rest of the device drivers are "virtual" devices which carry out their orders in virtual logical devices that examine the data stream coming into the operating system from the other USB devices.

amazingly

uxx is 63 kbytes
sxx is 78 kbytes
vxx is 171 kbytes

total 311 kbytes

that's the difference between a 32 bit or 64 bit driver to keep this hardware going

[lordsmurf]

Update:

Direct Win7 x86 install, no Vista start (ie upgrade Vista > 7 not done here).

Win7 x86 + AIW PCI + MMC = good!
The contrast/bright/color/tint/etc was 0 by default (0-255), so completely black. Changed to 128 in registry, all is well.

Win7 x86 + AIW PCI + VirtualDub with overlay = does not work
Only the laggy preview, which sucks, and I consider to make a card unusable, due to not being able to see output 100% motion quality.

Currently capturing VHS retail tape, with AVT-8710, at 20mbps in MMC for testing dropped frames.

This system is unstable, and refuses to shut down. Must hard power off, ignore warnings at boot that it didn't shut down correctly.

Will reformat, try again soon. Will see if direct Win7 repeatable, and hopefully without shutdown error.