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nate: 2012-05-26 12:48:10 pm
nate: 2012-04-16 07:24:40 pm
nate: 2012-03-04 12:26:27 am
nate: 2012-02-27 09:25:10 am
nate: 2012-02-17 07:33:21 pm
nate: 2011-11-21 04:01:18 pm
nate: 2011-11-21 02:06:46 am
nate: 2011-11-02 07:34:44 pm
nate: 2011-10-30 12:12:48 am
nate: 2011-10-19 08:33:31 pm
nate: 2011-10-16 02:42:29 pm
nate: 2011-10-14 06:27:50 pm
this project has been canceled. see this post for why.

windows: http://nate.quandra.org/norichan_b12.exe
mac: http://nate.quandra.org/norichan_b12.zip

samples: D1F1 (script); D4F1 (script)

i'm seeking feedback on norichan, my new analog video capture program for windows xp+ (32- and 64-bit) and mac os x 10.5+ (intel only for now) designed to work only with the easycap, a $5-10 US usb 2.0 capture device.

note that there are at least two kinds of easycaps out there: those with high-quality audio and those without. unfortunately it's impossible to tell the difference without opening the case and looking at the electronics (the ac97 codec is missing on the ones without high-quality audio). if the audio sounds terrible, just go to the audio menu and switch to line-in; you'll probably need a y adapter for your audio cables to go into your line-in port on your computer.

i'm planning on buying up a bunch of easycaps with high-quality audio and sending them out to people who request them.

do not buy any of the easycaps currently listed on the american amazon.com. i've received several of them and they're all without high-quality audio. i will update this thread when i've found a source of easycaps with high-quality audio if you don't want to wait for me to send you one.

note that the driver norichan installs under windows (which comes from my day job - that's why it's not called norichan) is incompatible with the common "stk1150" and "stk1160" easycap drivers. you will need to uninstall those before you install norichan. unfortunately the uninstaller doesn't uninstall the driver and afaik it's not possible under xp to get rid of it without hacking the registry. under vista and 7 you should be able to go into device manager, right click on the easycap, go to uninstall, and check "delete the driver". alternatively, you can try plugging the easycap into a new/different usb port than you've plugged it into in the past. windows will prompt to install the driver and you should have a choice at that point if you've installed norichan. also note that uninstalling norichan does not yet uninstall its driver (i'm working on that), so you will need to repeat the same procedure if you wish to switch back to the 1150 or 1160 driver for that particular usb port.

you will need to install the cccp (windows) or perian (mac) to play back the captured videos or, in the case of windows, to import them using anri.

finally, please remember that this is a beta test. having said that, i guess you can try to capture the best run ever as long as you don't blame me when norichan crashes.

specs/features

- outputs interlaced yuy2 (4:2:2) ffvhuff avi, 48 khz 16-bit stereo audio. you will need about 600 megs of disk space per 1 minute of video recorded. this sounds like a lot until you realize that 2 tb externals are < $100 US and you can fit over 48 hours of video on there.
- auto-increments output filename. norichan is incapable of overwriting a file.
- autosplits at ~5 hours to avoid problems with audio length. norichan should be able to do this without dropping a single frame. you can use anri to recombine the files when encoding your run.
- preview display is field-split (f1), resized to d1. perfect for d4 stuff, less so for d1. for d1 stuff try f2 display.

notes/caveats

- norichan will never drop frames just because the hard drive is being slow. this means that norichan's memory usage will go up until the backlog is cleared or your computer runs out of memory or norichan hits 2 gb and crashes, whichever comes first.
- closed source for now. yeah ... i know.
- the norichan driver has nothing to do with directshow. at first glance this seems to rule out streaming, but actually all it means is you have to pretend that the norichan window is a pc game window and stream that way. this method works on macs too - just download ustream producer.
- you will have to decide for yourself whether you can play using the norichan window. there is some lag, but it may not be significant for certain kinds of games. i haven't had the time to measure the exact amount on my computers yet.

thanks in advance for helping me test this out.
Thread title:  
SEGA Junkie
Quote from nate:
one thing i need help with in particular is pal-60. i suspect that the easycap may support it but i don't have anything to test with. try selecting "ntsc" ... we may get lucky and the color will be right. otherwise i can try to hack it.


Well, certain models do. The DC60+ (not DC60) supports PAL-60, others just have NTSC/PAL settings.

I guess there are ways you could modify the driver to make it recognise PAL-60 but you have a much better idea of that than me.
Let the music play!
Interesting timing, I just happened to purchase the ezcap DC116, which is the next version up from DC60+, so I can test that when it arrives. Word of advice: ezcap is the real deal, easycap is the fake knock off (the company changed their name on purpose to avoid confusion)
i actually have a dc60+ and the primary video chip is not an stk1160 so i would have to reverse engineer its driver to add support for it to norichan. it's not clear to me how many of those are out there, and if i can find a reliable supply of dc60s then i can just send them to people who need them. i doubt there's any difference in terms of quality. is the dc116 white? if so then i've seen that but i don't have one yet so i can't comment on the hardware.

about pal-60, norichan is already my own driver, so i can do whatever i want. right now color is set to autodetect under both ntsc and pal so that's why i suspect that we may already have pal-60 support. however it just occurred to me - does anyone know whether pal-60 is 60 fps or 59.94? if it's 60 then i might need to make a dedicated pal-60 menu option.
Oh wow, this is pretty awesome. Those easycaps (yes, I'm talking about the cheap-cheap-cheap-cheap knockoffs) really are an incredible piece of hardware as far as price/performance goes, and now with decent software/drivers, I suppose we will be able to more fully realize that. Also for those of us with easycaps without ac97 codec, will it be possible for nori-chan to capture audio from different audio devices (eg. line-in)?

Anyway, I will be giving this program a spin later today.
that's a good point about recording from line-in. the answer, afaik, is yes. i will investigate this more and get back to you hopefully with a beta 2.
Edit history:
UchihaSasuke: 2011-10-14 05:27:01 pm
UchihaSasuke: 2011-10-14 05:23:53 pm
Stand: Devil's Call in your Heart
my device is crappy. it wasn't even necessary to open it to tell.

later, when there's support for line-in audio, i'll give the program a test.
updated the first post with b2, now supporting audio recording via line-in (it uses whatever you have set to the default audio input device).

i noticed while testing that, under windows, the bad easycap audio is not properly detected, so you hear the horrible audio until you switch to line-in. unclear right now how i am going to detect it under windows ... checking for 48000 hz support doesn't work because the os reports that it supports it - probably because it upsamples on-the-fly.
Edit history:
Tranquilite: 2011-10-14 06:35:32 pm
Hmm I cant get nori-chan to run. It seems to install fine, but when I try to run norichan.exe I get this error that libusb0.dll is missing (screenshot attached). This happens with both b1 and b2.

I'm running windows 7 x64.

...Reinstalling the program does not fix the problem.

Attachment:
did you plug in the easycap to cause windows to install the driver? opening the program won't work before that, sorry, should have mentioned that.
Edit history:
Tranquilite: 2011-10-14 06:58:10 pm
Tranquilite: 2011-10-14 06:56:29 pm
Tranquilite: 2011-10-14 06:56:13 pm
Tranquilite: 2011-10-14 06:56:06 pm
Does this mean I should uninstall my current easycap drivers?

EDIT: Ok, I right clicked on "stk 1160 grabber" in device manager and selected "update driver" had it search automagically, and it installed your driver. The program is now running.

EDIT2: Woo! new problems, just a moment while i descibe.
check the first post for more info about that.
Alright I have two more issues. First, nori-chan now opens, but I don't get any video preview. Second, when I go to Audio -> Mute Audio Preview, the program crashes.
are you in ntsc? if so you need to switch in the menu.
Edit history:
Tranquilite: 2011-10-14 07:14:26 pm
I switched it to ntsc, still no preview.

EDIT: Well anyway, I got to run, I try later to further trouble shoot this.
annoying ... have you checked composite versus svideo?
Quote from nate:
about pal-60, norichan is already my own driver, so i can do whatever i want. right now color is set to autodetect under both ntsc and pal so that's why i suspect that we may already have pal-60 support. however it just occurred to me - does anyone know whether pal-60 is 60 fps or 59.94? if it's 60 then i might need to make a dedicated pal-60 menu option.

Same res and framerate as NTSC, so 59.94 (60000/1001).
Let the music play!
My device arrived today. However, norichan apparently cannot detect the hardware. I think I have it all set up correctly, I can at least get signal from the capture program that came with the device.
when you have the easycap plugged in, what do you see in device manager?
Let the music play!
USB 2861 Device. Also has a separate device for the audio - USB EMP Audio Device.
ok, that device isn't supported unfortunately. i think it may be what some people call a dc60+ but don't quote me on that because i don't have mine in front of me right now.
Let the music play!
Will it be supported in the near future? I hate to think I've purchased the wrong device. But, on the plus side, it can capture PAL 60 and NTSC, which my Dazzle cannot manage, so it isn't entirely useless for me.
very hard to say. i work on a day-by-day basis it seems. i have an idea about what it would take to support it but it would be much less expensive for me to just send you a good easycap once i obtain many of them.
Let the music play!
Alright. I can at least keep hold of this for now, will finally be able to record in 60 Hz PAL
Well, this seems like a good idea. Now if only the easycap did HD...

Sadly, I don't have an easycap, but this will be useful to a lot of newer skeptical runners who don't want to have to spend $50+ on a capture card.

I have to laugh, the avatar mixes are almost perfect for this.