This document includes updated information for Release 2.9.0 of the Osprey-1000 software and drivers.
For more information on the Osprey-1000 and other Osprey products, visit the ViewCast.com home page.

Contents

• New for Release 2.9.0
• Bugs and Conflicts Fixed in Release 2.9.0
• General Information
• Current Known Bugs and Conflicts
• Windows NT Specific Information
• Windows 95/98 Specific Information
• Application Specific Information
• Old Release Notes

Drivers and Firmware Updated for Rev 07 Boards
A new hardware version of the Osprey-1000 required updates to the firmware and drivers for the Osprey-1000.  If you have an older version of the board, the functionality is the same as the new board.  Minor design changes necessitated the software change.

Osprey-1000 User's Guide in Adobe Acrobat format
The Osprey-1000 User's Guide is now installed in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format.  If you do not have the Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download it for free from http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html.

H320 no longer in standard release
H320 support is no longer available as part of the standard Osprey-1000 driver release.  Current customers will still receive support via our Dallas office.  You can call toll-free 800-250-6622 (or 972-488-7200) or send email to [email protected].

Bugs and Conflicts Fixed in Release 2.9.0

Windows 98 Installation Issues
There were some cases where installs under Windows 98 would fail.  This has been fixed in this release.
 

General Information

Video Capture Driver:
The Video Capture Driver supports CellB (ICLB), two packetizations of H261 (IP64 and H261) and several uncompressed capture formats (RGB 24-bit, RGB 8-bit, RGB555, RGB565, YVU9, YUYV). Switching between them is done using the Setup option on the Drivers applet of the control panel or the Format menu. The "H261" packetization support is still experimental, does not support hardware decode, and probably should not be used.

H.261 self-view is supported with Overlay, Preview, or through PIP support. The Source menu can be used to enable Picture-In-Picture to provide a self-view during H261 decode. PiP is active when both sending and receiving video. When only receiving video, the self view PiP box will appear blank.

H261 Bitrate and Max Quantization can be changed dynamically while the driver is open through the Format menu, or through the Drivers applet. Frame rate can be changed dynamically through standard Video for Windows interfaces. Other parameters (size, compression, etc) require stopping the video driver and restarting it (e.g. under Communique, this means closing the TV Tool and reopening it).

To counteract packet drop in lossy networks, the period at which H261 macroblocks are replaced with intra-coded blocks can be set through the Format menu or through the Drivers applet for the Video Capture Driver via the setting: "Intra Block Refresh Period". The shorter the refresh period, the sooner bad video blocks will be updated (at the expense of compression ratio).

With the Osprey G2 Codec, G2 hardware compression with a ViewCast.com provided version of the RealProducer G2 is supported.

With Iterated's ClearVideo Live, the CVLive Fractal codec is supported.

H263 has been updated in Release 2.7.2 for improved video quality and performance.  PAL support has been added.

H261 CIF and QCIF sizes are supported.

CellB CIF and QCIF sizes are supported.

Uncompressed CIF and QCIF sizes are supported.

PAL support has been added in release 1.1 (Windows 3.1/95 only).

Installable Compression Manager (IP64)
The ICM supports playback of IP64 bitstreams.

The ICM supports displaying IP64 in either the true aspect ratio (default) or stretching it to fill the entire 288 lines. This parameter can be changed through the Drivers applet.

The Osprey-1000 can only decode one stream at a time. In order to provide multi-way conferencing, you must use a SW decompressor supplied by another vendor. Under Communique, this SW decompressor is called IP64_32.dll and can be entered through the IP64 Selection program, or the configuration box for the ICM available through the Control Panel's Drivers applet. If you use HW only decompression, and try to decompress multiple streams, the video bitstreams will be interleaved and you will see blocks from both streams in each window.

Insoft's Communique! does not provide a H.261 software decompressor for Windows 3.1.

Demos
The Osprey-1000 demo shows H261, H263, and passthrough video. In Release 2.2 and greater, the Osprey-1000 demo under NT now defaults to 16-bit mode. You can also set bit rate and quantization for the H.261 and H.263 formats.

Osprey RAM Configuration program
SPECIAL NOTE:  As of Release 2.9, the Osprey RAM Configuration program no longer exists.  The drivers will auto-configure for the amount of memory on the Osprey-1000 board.

The Osprey RAM Configuration program allows the user to configure the Osprey software to properly utilize the amount of RAM on their Osprey-1000 board. The standard Osprey-1000 board comes with 1MB of on-board RAM. You can purchase an Osprey-1000/2 board with 2MB of on-board RAM. The program prompts for the amount of RAM, and then configures ini files (and a registry setting under Windows NT).

As noted in the program, do not select the 2MB configuration unless you are certain you have an Osprey-1000/2 board. Doing so with a standard board with 1MB of RAM can have an adverse affect on the functionality of the Osprey software.

Audio/Video Mixer
The program oti1kctl.exe has been installed into the directory chosen during installation. For audio, you can use this program to select input and adjust volume, gain and mixing (mixing sends the audio input directly to the audio output). For video, you can control contrast, brightness, hue, video input, and video gain. In addition, you can use the mixer to send the video output to the NTSC output jack on the card. Output can not be sent to NTSC out and the computer monitor simultaneously. The mixer may also be used to select PAL instead of NTSC input.

The mixer stores settings in the current user's section of the registry. The Osprey-1000 will load the settings the next time an application opens the drivers. The mixer will also dynamically control the Osprey-1000 if any application is currently using it.

If an application opens the Osprey-1000 and does not close it before shutting down, the Osprey-1000 will continue to run, but the mixer will not dynamically change the settings on the Osprey-1000. For example, our demo program will loop through audio whenever raw video or H.261 is displayed. However, our demo does not close the Osprey-1000, so audio will continue to loop through after the demo application is closed. After the demo has been closed, the mixer will not affect the Osprey-1000 until another application opens the Osprey-1000 again.

Video Output Selection
H261 video capture and decode viewing (both CIF and QCIF) may optionally be redirected to analog NTSC video at the "Video Out" connector of the Osprey-1000 card. The Osprey-1000 Control Panel applet provides a Video Output section which allows toggling of video output between an application window and analog NTSC video output. The application program must be restarted for a change to video output to take effect. When video is redirected to NTSC, the application window may continue to display a frozen view from its video input source, or it may simply show a plaid test pattern.

Some video capture devices may not be able to gen-lock to the analog video output produced by the Osprey-1000 (the SunVideo card, for example). If you experience this problem, try editing the H261.INI file: replace the contents of the [VIDOUT.BT.NTSC] and [VIDOUT.BT.PAL] sections with the contents of the [VIDOUT.BT.NTSC.MASTER] and [VIDOUT.BT.PAL.MASTER] sections, respectively. This will cause the Osprey-1000 to generate interlaced video output with sync. timings which may be more acceptable to some video capture devices.

H.263 video capture also supports NTSC video output.

Raw video capture under the Osprey-1000 Demo does not support analog NTSC video output.

The Osprey-1000 does not support simultaneous PAL capture and analog NTSC video output.

Video Input Selection
H.261 and Cellb capture and compression may be obtained from a PAL source instead of NTSC. The Osprey-1000 Control Panel applet provides a Video Input section which allows toggling of video input between NTSC and PAL. The application program must be restarted for a change in video input to take effect.

SW and HW decoding
An applet is provided to swap between a software IP64 decoder, a HW/SW strategy, and the HW only decode provided by the Osprey-1000 card. A user needs to use the SW decoder or the HW/SW version to enable a multiway conference.

Passthrough (Raw) Video
The width of passthrough video has been changed to 320. When running the Osprey-1000 Demo in passthrough mode, you may notice a black or green bar on the right side of the image. This is due to the new size of passthrough video and the fact that the Osprey-1000 Demo is set for a CIF-size width of 352.

Audio Compression Manager
The audio compression manager supports PCM (8-bit and 16-bit), G.711 (mu-law and A-law) in mono and stereo at sampling rates from 8kHz to 44.1 kHz. It also supports G.722 and G.728. Support for G.711, G.722 and G.728 may be enabled/disabled through the Control Panel's Drivers applet. All audio parameters (compression type, sampling rate, number of channels) must be the same when performing simulataneous recording and playback.

G.723 is new for Release 2.1, and is available for all versions of Windows. G.723 and G.722/G.728 are mutually exclusive. The ACM Configuration Dialog box by default has G.722/G.728 enabled. Enabling G.723 disables G.722/G.728.

G.723 has two formats, 5.3 kbps and 6.3 kbps. The Microsoft format box will list them as 0.667kHz, 8 bits per sample, and 0.800kHz, 8 bits per sample, respectively. It is recommended that you use the 6.3 kbps format.

PCI Info
In order for the Osprey-1000 to function, PCI bus mastership must be enabled on the slot that the Osprey card is plugged into. On some platforms, the user must enable this themselves via the boot bios setup of the host machine. Also, you may need to disable bus mastership on other PCI bus slots.

If you get a parity error in booting with the Osprey-1000, please check your BIOS settings for a setting that allows disabling parity on the PCI slots.

Performance
Note that performance is highly dependent on the video drivers and video card used. We suggest contacting your video card manufacturer to see if they have updated drivers for your card. We have seen a 20% difference in performance between the S3 compatible driver installed under NT and the Diamond supplied driver on their Web Site. We have also seen a significant difference between video cards when trying to perform scaling.

Additionally, graphics performance in NT 3.51 and current versions of NT 4.0 is very poor. Thus, in some respects, video performance of the Osprey-1000 on NT is limited due to limitations in the NT graphics subsystem itself. Raw NT graphics performance should improve considerably with the addition of DirectDraw under Windows NT 4.0 and beyond.

Current Known Bugs and Conflicts

2/14/2000:
Video may stop during transistions from one H.261 setting to another with overlay (for example, switching from H.261/H.261 to H.261/IP64).  This problem is due to the fact that overlay is locked/in sync with video capture that feeds compression when the hardware is also asked to decompress as well.  As an example, this is what happens with the included VidCap program.  When VidCap starts, it requests a single frame capture from the video capture driver and then opens the ICM driver to decompress the frame.  However, VidCap does not close the ICM when it's finished, and thus the ICM is not aware that no further decompress requests will be coming through.  The result is that the hardware is stuck in decompress mode when no further compress operations are occurring.  This is what causes the overlay updates to stop.  The work around is to restart the application when changing H.261 settings.

The H.261 FourCC code for M261 will draw a black screen.  The M261 format was added in an older release to allow users to use the Microsoft code with the Osprey-1000.  Since that time, Microsoft has altered their H.261 codec such that the M261 FourCC code will only work with NetMeeting.  This FourCC code will be removed in later releases of the Osprey-1000 drivers.

In some cases, playback of an H.261 AVI file may show the image initially inverted left to right.  After a fraction of a second, this will correct itself.

There may be a problem transitioning from QCIF to CIF in H.261.  This may result in a half-image with a green bar, or a black image.  The work around is to restart the application when switching sizes.

CellB overlay has a thin colored line at the bottom.

Under Windows 98, CellB may not display properly, or the user may get the error "Unable to draw this data format".

Under Windows 98, H.261 and H.263 in VidCap show only the local view, not the decoded view.

VidCap overlay mode does not update the display with the H.263 format.

PAL CellB is not supported.

Changing from H.261 or H.263 to a new format requires restarting the application.
 
 

Application specific problems may be listed below under the Application Specific Infomation section.

There is a problem with audio playback via the Osprey-1000.  If your Osprey-1000 is used for playback, there may be a delay between the audio and video streams, causing an audio lag.  This does not occur during record, and if you are using a standard sound card for playback, there will be no audio lag.

YUYV video format has some display problems.  In some cases, it may appear that the red and blue components are swapped.

Under Windows 95, the installation directory must use a short pathname.  This is detailed during installation, and the install script should force the user to assign a destination directory less than 12 characters in length.

G.723 audio does not work if you pass it unusually large buffers.  It will stream data, but the data will not contain audio.  Unusually large buffers are buffers larger than 600 bytes, which translates to over 1 second of data.  Normal buffer sizes for G.723 are 40-120 bytes.

If you have echo cancellation turned on and you overdrive the input, the audio will sound very bad, with a sound somewhat like a beeper going off in the background.  Without echo cancellation turned on, overdriving sounds as expected.

With the change from 1MB to 2MB onboard memory standard on Osprey-1000 boards, a change was made to the firmware to handle double-buffered images in the extra memory. Because of this change, local views after a single image decompression do not update properly. Thus, the local view may appear to be stopped in some applications, such as VIDCAP32, when displaying local overlay views. The local view will resume updating when compression is resumed. If you must display overlay views while performing single-frame capture, then you may reconfigure the Osprey-1000 to utilize only 1MB of onboard memory via the Osprey-1000 RAM Configuration Program (osp2cfg.exe), found in the bin subdirectory of the Osprey-1000 software installation. Note that with onboard memory set to 1MB, video decompression may proceed at a slightly lower frame rate.

Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC) is for use with voice data only. If it is used on music, it can cause distortion problems.

Currently, the demo and the IP64 decoder set up the Osprey-1000 hardware to constantly DMA video out to a memory buffer which is then copied for DrawDib operations. On one machine with old video drivers, this has been shown to cause problems with the entire display (random color speckles). If this problem appears, try running the demo with the draw on demand option selected (under the MISC menu). This will cause video to be dma'd from the Osprey-1000 only when desired for a DrawDib operation.

If DCI is enabled, decompression to a memory buffer is not supported. This means that some programs (AVIClip in VFW development kit, for example) will only work when DCI is disabled.

The IRQ used by the Osprey-1000 is assigned by the Power-up & Self-test (POST) sequence of the BIOS when the system is booted and is not reassignable by the user. The assigned IRQ may conflict with some PCI Ethernet cards which assume a certain IRQ asignment, typically causing failures in either or both cards. This problem may usually be resolved by doing one or more of the following: (1) reassign the Ethernet card IRQ via the Adapter Card Setup in the Control Panel Network applet; (2) obtain updated I/O drivers from the Ethernet card manufacturer; or (3) swap Ethernet card and Osprey-1000 card expansion slots.

See the Osprey 1000 User's Guide Troubleshooting Section for more information on IRQ conflicts.

Occasional & random failures have been observed when the Osprey-1000 card is installed in a system with an ATI PCI graphics adapter card. This problem has usually been resolved by doing one or both of the following: (1) obtain updated graphics adapter I/O drivers fromn ATI; (2) swap graphics adapter and Osprey-1000 card expansion slots.

If you have another audio device installed (such as a Sound Blaster) and your application does not allow you to choose which audio device to use, select the Osprey-1000 as the preferred device via the Control Panel Sound Mapper or Multimedia applet (depending on OS). If you still have trouble mapping to the Osprey-1000 device, then also check the "Use Preferred Device Only" check-box.

H.263 Issues
These are problems that are only related to the H.263 video format.  If you do not use H.263, these problems will not affect the usage of the Osprey-1000.

H.263 is limited to 192kbps, even though the video capture driver will allow higher bitrates (up to 1024kbps) to be set.

Overlay video is not supported with H.263 in this release.

For Windows 95/98, H.263 supports streaming video only, no preview or overlay.  If you run the VidCap application, you will be able to capture an H.263 stream, but you won't be able to preview it.  The VidCap window will be black.

For H.263 decode, the local view initially may be displayed for a short time before the hardware switches to decoding/displaying the far view.  The user may also notice an inverted frame displayed initially before the video appears.

H.263 decoder in the hardware currently requires an H.263 intra frame before it will start to decode H.263.  until this intra frame is found, the hardware will not start decoding H.263.  This is an issue for broadcast of H.263 data in which the initial key frame is lost.

H.263 currently does not support software codecs.  The H263 Selector mentioned in the User's Guide is non-functional and may not be installed with Release 2.4.
 

NT Specific Information

Multiboard Support:
Release 1.3 added support for multiple Osprey-1000 boards installed in the same computer, but with the restriction that each board had to be associated with a single separate process. Release 2.1 removed the restriction - a single process may simultaneously access all Osprey-1000 boards present.

The software has been tested with eight Osprey-1000 boards. No special installation procedure is required; the Osprey-1000 kernel driver detects multiple boards at startup. The boards are numbered "Board 1", "Board 2", etc., in the order in which NT detects them. You must empirically determine which board has which number.

A simple way to verify a two-board installation is to run start two copies of the DEMO applet. DEMO now includes a menu selection called "Board 2" to associate the given copy of the applet with the second board. Enable "Board 2" for one of the two copies. Each DEMO will display video from its associated board.

The low level audio and video parameters that are controlled by the Osprey control panel applet are individually settable for each installed board. When multiple boards are installed a board select combo box appears in the applet, and your selection determines which board the current settings apply to. You can run two DEMOs as above along with one copy of the control panel applet. You will be able to control brightness, contrast, etc., separately for the two boards, and the final settings will be saved separately to the registry. It should also be mentioned that the registry keeps this information on a per-user basis as well as a per-board basis.

The Video Capture Driver, Installable Compression Manager, and Audio Compression Manager all support multi-board installations. All of these these have a board select combo box in their configuration dialogs (accessible through the system control panel ... drivers .. setup function) so that different settings can be saved for different boards. Higher level multimedia applications that attempt to simultaneously access more than one Osprey system will successively access board 1, then board 2, etc.

NOTE: On some systems, after installing the Release with multiple boards, the system may hang during reboot without any error messages. If the system is reset (via the reset button), it will reboot and come up properly. This may happen only after the first reboot after the software is installed, or it may occur on all subsequent reboots. The workaround is to press reset if the system does not come up.

Installable Compression Manager (Other)
ICM decompressors have been added in 1.3 for ICLB and YUYV formats, and in 1.4 for H.263 formats.

Performance
Note that performance is highly dependent on the video drivers and video card used. We suggest contacting your video card manufacturer to see if they have updated drivers for your card. We saw a 20% differerence is performance between the S3 compatible driver installed under NT and the Diamond supplied driver on their Web Site. We also saw a significant difference between video cards when trying to perform scaling.

Additionally, graphics performance in NT_3.51 and current versions of NT_4.0 is very poor. Thus, in some respects, video performance of the Osprey-1000 on NT is limited due to limitations in the NT graphics subsystem itself. Raw NT graphics performance should improve considerably with the addition of DirectDraw under Windows NT 4.0 and beyond.

DirectDraw
With Release 1.4, hardware drawing from the Osprey-1000 directly to the graphics adapter via Microsoft's DirectDraw is supported on Windows NT 4.0. DirectDraw provides for optimal data transfers directly from video capture and codec devices to the display device, but is not supported by all graphics adapters.

To successfully use DirectDraw with the Osprey-1000, you must have a graphics adapter and related I/O driver that support DirectDraw. The Windows NT 4.0 distribution provides drivers with DirectDraw support for many major brands (we have tested the ATI Mach64, Diamond Stealth64 Graphics 2000 & Video 3000, and the Number Nine 9FX Motion 771). In some cases, you may need to obtain the latest I/O driver from the adapter manufacturer to enable DirectDraw support (for the Diamond Stealth 3D 2000, for instance). Your graphics adapter must support 16-bit color (65536 colors at the desired screen resolution). You will need a minimum of 2MB of onboard memory to properly support hardware drawing from the Osprey-1000, and at least 4MB for 16-bit display resolutions above 800x600.

The Win32 SDK and the DirectX 2 SDK from Microsoft provide a tool (DXVIEW, the DirectX Viewer) to display the DirectX capabilities of your system (DirectDraw is a subset of DirectX). As a minimum, your display adapter must show support under the DirectDraw Devices / Primary Display Driver folder for BLT under General Caps, OFFSCREENPLAIN & PRIMARYSURFACE under Surface Caps, and SRCCOPY under ROPS. BLTSHRINK & BLTSTRETCH under FX Caps are also desirable capabilities (supported by the 9FX Motion 771, for one).

If your graphics adapter supports the above minimum requirements, then you may enable it for video capture and decompression by the Osprey 1000 device by checking the "Use DirectDraw" check-box on the Osprey-1000 Control Panel. You must also set your Color Palette to 65536 Colors via the Settings tab of the Display Properties on the Windows NT 4.0 desktop. With these settings, the Osprey-1000 video capture driver, decompression portion of the video codec, and misc. demos. will attempt to use DirectDraw for their display window output. DirectDraw support will thus also be made available to those applications that query for and utilize Video-for-Windows hardware drawing capabilities. Stretch & shrink capabilities will also be made available if supported.

We suggest that you try running and observing the Osprey-1000 Demo. in 16-bit mode with DirectDraw enabled as described above to determine whether your configuration meets the minimum requirements for DirectDraw. If the demo. is not successful in obtaining the necessary DirectDraw resources, you should see a pop-up message box describing the failure. After you OK the message, the demo. will fall back to DIB drawing mode and continue. The pop-up message will also appear for other applications using the Osprey-1000 under Video-for-Windows if they fail to initialize when DirectDraw is enabled. Fall-back behavior in those cases will be as implemented by the application. You may suppress the pop-up messages for DirectDraw failures by resetting the "PopupOnError" variable in the Software/Osprey/Osprey1000/Device0/DrwDll/Settings folder in the Windows NT Registry key for the current user.

Some support is also provided for 8-bit color (256 colors), but the display adapter color palette may not be properly loaded by the Osprey-1000 libraries in some cases. We suggest that you try running and observing the Osprey-1000 Demo. in 8-bit mode (256 colors) with DirectDraw enabled to determine whether color palettizing is properly supported for your display adapter.

Due to hardware and software limitations, the Osprey-1000 cannot gracefully support hardware and non-hardware drawing modes simultaneously. Thus, when hardware drawing is enabled, all non-hardware decompresses WILL FAIL. If you do not see proper video in your application when you have hardware drawing enabled, turn off hardware drawing.

DirectDraw is not currently supported by the Osprey-1000 on Windows 95 and Windows NT 3.5x.

Miscellaneous
Some initialization is still done through global .ini files instead of the registry. Parameters controlled by the mixer are set on a per-user basis.

To draw to the display the Osprey-1000 kernel driver needs to acquire a block of non-paged memory. It acquires this when NT boots. The installation script modifies the registry to increase the non-paged pool size to allow DMA of video data from the Osprey-1000. In the demo, if you get the message "OpenMemDMA Failed" it is because the driver was not able to acquire enough memory to dma video data from the hardware. Try rebooting your system if this occurs.

During an uninstall, it is possible that some registry settings may not be removed. The install will not reset values that were changed while the software was installed. For example, if you modified the audio settings from the Osprey Control Panel, uninstalled, and then reinstalled, it's possible the changes you made will still be shown in the Control Panel. To ensure a clean install, you can go through the registry and search for the key "oti1k" and "osprey", and delete any references you find.
 

Windows 95/98 Specific Information

DCI
Using DCI can provide a significant performance boost. However, some machines/driver combinations do not work properly. If you have enabled DCI and encounter any problems with video lockups or bad video, turn off DCI.

Due to hardware/software limitations, it is impossible to support DCI for video overlay and decompression to a memory buffer simultaneously. In order to provide the best speed support for applications which can benefit from DCI, we do not support decompression to a memory buffer if DCI is checked. This means that some programs (AVIClip in VFW development kit, for example) will only work when DCI is disabled

Audio Compression Manager
The audio compression manager supports 8-bit and 16-bit PCM and G.711 (mu-law and A-law) in mono and stereo. Currently, compression and decomporession formats must be the same. G.711 support may be enabled/disabled through the Control Panel's Drivers applet.

New 32-bit Application
With Release 2.4, the Windows 95 version of the Osprey software has updated drivers to handle the mixture of 16-bit and 32-bit applications.  The new H320 Demo is the only true 32-bit application that we ship with the Windows 95 software.  The other demos, because they use Video for Windows, are 16-bit.  Therefore, if you did not purchase an H320 package from Osprey and are not planning on using the H320 demo, the Windows 95 software will essentially be the same.

The main change that will be obvious to users is that there will be two Osprey-1000 Control Panels installed.  One will be a 32-bit version for use with H320, and the other will be the standard 16-bit version.  This is necessary because you can not have the 32-bit H320 Demo running and open the 16-bit Control Panel.  This holds true in reverse, you can not have one of the 16-bit demos running and open the 32-bit Control Panel.  The Control Panels will be clearly marked.  If the wrong one is selected, you will simply be warned via an error message.

If you are running the H320 Demo, make sure you use the 32-bit Control Panel.  If you are running any other Osprey demo, use the 16-bit Control Panel.

Known Problems
During uninstall, an entry for vao.386 may not be removed from the WINDOWS\system.ini file. Also, an entry for the file oti1kdrv.vxd may not be removed. After uninstalling the Osprey software, you may have to remove these entries by hand.
 

Application Specific Information

In Release 2.0.1, NetDemo (version 2.0.4) has been updated to use seperate threads for audio and video socket streams. In exchange for this performance modification, this version of NetDemo will not work with previous versions.

The Audio pull-down menu has also been modified to include an "Enabled" selection for enabling or disabling audio.

The "Send Only" and "Receive Only" options are now working in Release 2.2.

Picture in Picture (PIP) has been added to the Video pull-down menu so you can enable PIP and select its location in the video window.

When running the Network Demo (NetDemo) under Windows 95, the Video Format pull down menu does not work. To select a video format, you must go to the Windows Control Panel and select Multimedia. From there, go to the Advanced folder and look under Video Capture Devices for the Osprey-1000. Select it, and the select "settings" to get the video format window. Once you've selected the desired format, click OK and exit Multimedia. Now you can run NetDemo with the format you've selected.
 
 

You can now select 24-bit RGB as a video format for the Osprey-1000. For RealVideo encoding, use 24-bit RGB or RGB555 as the video format. Set a custom size of 176 x 144, and the Aspect Ratio to SQR (Square).

You may also use audio from the Osprey-1000 with RealVideo.
 
 

Use YVU9 or RGB555 as the capture format. Precept will convert this to 4cc H261 format video.

4cc H261 hardware support is still experimental and should not be used.
 
 

Before installing Netmeeting, set the Osprey Video Capture Driver to RGB555 or RGB 24-bit format, size QCIF. Then install Netmeeting. By setting the driver format first, Netmeeting can accurately test the video capture card. If you do not set this format before installing Netmeeting, it may not be able to get the proper video from the card and may report that it can not use the video capture device.

During installation or when running the Audio Tuning Wizard, Netmeeting may report that the Osprey-1000 is not a supported audio device and that audio may not work. You may ignore this error as audio does work between the Osprey-1000 and Netmeeting. If you are having problems getting audio to work, go to the Tools menu, select Options, and go to the Audio tab. Check the box for "Enable full duplex audio...", and then click the Advanced button. Select the compression option "Microsoft ADPCM, 8.000 k", and click the "Up" button to move it to the top of the list. Exit this setup and try audio again.
 
 

There are no special requirements in terms of setup for the Osprey-1000 to run the NetShow player. However, in order to run the ASF Realtime Encoder, you will need to configure the Osprey-1000 for RGB555 or RGB 24-bit video format before running the Encoder. By default, the Osprey-1000 software installs with H.261 as the video format. There is a bug in the Osprey driver that causes the ASF Encoder to crash if it is run with H.261 as the video format when it is set for HW-only compression. The crash will only occur once, and on subsequent runs of the Encoder, it will work fine. Setting the Osprey-1000 to RGB555 or RGB 24-bit avoids this initial crash.
 
 

Video Settings

Use RGB 8-bit, 16-bit, or 24-bit (RGB 8-bit, RGB 555, or RGB 24-bit) as the capture format. Check the cuseeme.ini file in the windows directory. Under [Compressor Settings], make sure CompressorType is set to SFMC. Under [Capture Settings], make sure CaptureDepth is set to 8, 16, or 24 depending on the RGB format selected.

The Cornell version of CU-SeeMe requires RGB 8-bit capture format, 256 grays, and the Invert Palette option.

Audio Settings

Recent updates have been made to improve audio with White Pine's Enhanced CU-SeeMe. Osprey recommends selecting the Delta-Mod compression codec in the CU-SeeMe Audio Preferences. Full Duplex should be checked, and Echo Reduction should not.

Known Problems

If the video codec format is not set to RGB before running, the White Pine version of CU-SeeMe may have difficulty running and the process may cause a page fault. To set the video format before running CU-SeeMe, bring up the Control Panel, and select drivers. Double click on the Osprey Video Capture Driver and it will give you the format panel. Change to the desired format and close. CU-SeeMe should then run without problems.

To change the video format using Windows 95 or NT4.0, bring up the Control Panel and select Multimedia. Go to Advanced (or Drivers) and select Video Capture Drivers and then the Osprey-1000. Click on Settings and it will give you the format panel.
 
 

SW and HW decoding (NT/95 only)

The proper setting for SW decoder is IP64_32.DLL. Best results can be obtained by using the HW/SW combined strategy.

Recommended Registry Settings

/HKEY_CURRENT_USER/SOFTWARE/Insoft/Communique!/CurrentVersionAudio/OutputWaveDeviceBuffersEnqueued = 2

If you experience significant audio dropouts, also set

/HKEY_CURRENT_USER/SOFTWARE/Insoft/Communique!/CurrentVersionAudio/OutputWaveDeviceBuffers = 0x18

Insoft Mic Settings

On Insoft Mic: Mic Switch Settings: 1 0 0 0 1 0 1
Mic Gain at min
Using Osprey 1000 Audio Control Panel:
Osprey Input set to Mic
Osprey Gain set 1/3 up from min

Known Bugs

After starting TV Tool with H.261, the self-view image may have a green band along the bottom of the window. After starting a conference, switching the self-view mode to either preview, overlay, or no self-view will remove the green band.

With audio and video running in a two-way CIF H261 conference at 10 fps, almost the entire CPU of a 90 MHz Pentium is used. Moving the mouse into non-Communique windows can cause enough additional CPU utilitization that audio dropouts occur. On any class machine, if the CPU utilitization reaches 100%, audio starts to drop out.

On any class machine, if the CPU utilitization reaches 100%, audio starts to drop out. Sometimes, when CPU utilitization reaches 100%, it stays there even if the video and audio are stopped. You must leave the conference to get back to normal.

Currently, the demo and the IP64 decoder set up the Osprey-1000 hardware to constantly DMA video out to a memory buffer which is then copied for DrawDib operations. On one machine with old video drivers, this has been shown to cause problems with the entire display (random color speckles). If this problem appears, try running the demo with the draw on demand option selected (under the MISC menu). This will cause video to be dma'd from the Osprey-1000 only when desired for a DrawDib operation. Also try obtaining and installing the latest device drivers for your video card from its manufacturer.

During mixed mode conferencing (QCIF - CIF, CIF - QCIF) overlay does not work properly. However, the remote view will be fine, and preview works fine as well.

During mixed mode conferencing (CellB - IP64), the person sending CellB must start Video Tool before receiving video from the IP64 sender. Otherwise, the card will already be busy decoding H.261 and be unable to generate CellB.

Don't use Auto-Send for Video.

For Audio Auto-Start:

Do not auto-start receive only (Communique bug);

If you auto-start audio, and no firmware is currently running on the card, then it takes approximately 5 seconds for the audio to start. During this time, the buttons on the Audio Tool are active, but should NOT be pressed. Pressing them may cause a device open error. To avoid this problem, start TVTool before starting audio.

If using HW only decoding, then the video can swap for a single frame whenever a preview grab is done.