To SonicDennis re: Satish's request re: his Frameserver plugin for VF

briggins wrote on 5/28/2003, 9:28 PM
SonicDennis,

Satish asked me to post a message on the forums. I hope I'm doing this right.

I have found a problem with his FrameServer plugin when used in a VideoFactory environment. If the plugin is installed in the correct location to enable its use from within VF (C:\Program Files\Sonic Foundry\Shared Plug-Ins\File Formats\PluginPac) it causes video capture to fail. That is, with the plugin installed, as soon as I attempt to 'Capture Video' or 'Capture Tape', VF returns with the pop-up form as if video capture is complete (with the message 'no video captured' or something to that effect).

Here's the test: I installed the Frameserver, with the result that two dll's were placed in the Windows/System32 directory and the plugin, dfscVegasOut.dll, in the above referenced location. Doing so causes video capture to fail. If I move dfscVegasOut.dll to any other location I can again capture video correctly, but, as you would expect, I cannot render to the FrameServer (is is not available in the drop-down list). I also checked to see if moving the dll's in the System32 directory made any difference and it did not. The problem only occurs when the dfscVegasOut.dll is placed in the 'C:\Program Files\Sonic Foundry\Shared Plug-Ins\File Formats\PluginPac' directory.

Satish asked that I post a message to you on the SoFo forums.

For completeness, I am running Windows XP Pro (no service packs), 512 MB RAM, 2 disks, the second one a 130GB disk used solely as my video capture disk, on a Dell Precision 220 Workstation with a 1GHz P3. I am also using the VideoFactory demo that I downloaded last week as I am waiting for my purchased copy to show up. I do not think the fact that I am using the demo version has anything to do with this since I can capture with no problems as long as the offending dll is not located in the PluginPac directory.

I do not want to post my email address here but Satish has that if you need it. I'll be glad to run any further tests to help nail down this issue, as fixing it would allow me to use TMPGEnc, which I would like to do.

Bruce

Comments

JimClark wrote on 5/28/2003, 9:43 PM
I also had the same problem recently though i didn't realize it was the framserver. I uninstalled itbecause it kept popping up when i wasn't using it and became very annoying plus it was really slow. i ended up reinstalling VF.
Jim Clark
satish wrote on 5/28/2003, 10:15 PM
SonicDennis, i asked Bruce to post here since i do not have a tape setup to test this out and figure out what was going wrong. The Frameserver is just built on top of the sample plugin so it would be great if you could try in your golden spare time to point out what is going wrong (i suspect the FS may be doing something wrong, but dont know where). Any help appreciated. Thanks
briggins wrote on 5/28/2003, 10:24 PM
I never had to reinstall VF and I can move the dfscVegasOut.dll in and out of the PluginPac directory at will to enable/disable video capture and enable/disable rendering to the FrameServer. -- Bruce
SonyTSW wrote on 5/31/2003, 11:40 PM
From those symptoms you describe, it sure sounds like the FrameServer plugin must be conflicting with the avi plugin for VidCap. That error message can happen if VidCap cannot find the NTSC DV (or PAL DV) AVI template. Most likely VidCap is trying to use the FrameServer plugin instead of avi, and thus it cannot find the needed template for capturing.

You could also rename the dll (to something like dfscVegasOut_bak.dll) when you want to disable the FrameServer plugin so you can capture video.

If this is indeed the problem (which I think it is), your only workaround is to do something that disables the FrameServer plugin (such as renaming or moving the needed dll) when you need to use VidCap.
satish wrote on 6/1/2003, 1:46 AM
Thanks SonicTSW, that should be the precise issue since the Frameserver registers itself as a .AVI handler and it could be used by VidCap for capturing. But the FS plugin will return an error in that case causing VidCap to terminate immediately... So as you suggest, moving/renaming the FS plugin dll temporarily would be the only solution.

Thanks
briggins wrote on 6/3/2003, 9:49 AM
Thanks to everyone for their help. Moving the FrameServer dll is pretty easy and won't need to be done very often so that should work.

Bruce