This guide is intended to help explain some common questions concerning the MV-500 and its use. Please refer to this document and the included Troubleshooting Guide before contacting technical support.

Q.       What are the system requirements for the MV-500 board?

          Pentium II or Pentium Pro processor

          3.3 volt line on PCI slot

DirectDraw compatible VGA card and VGA driver for real-time display

DirectDraw installed for real-time display

          The MV-500 can transfer the image data in the following formats;

          YUV Overlay Surface

In this mode the MV-500 transfers each frame directly to the VGA card using DirectDraw. The image is displayed in real-time with no processor loading. In this mode the image does not get transferred to system memory.

          VIP surface

This mode requires a VGA card that supports VESA VIP (Video Interface Port). By connecting a ribbon cable between the MV-500 feature connector and the VGA card feature connector, the image data can be transferred directly to the VGA card for real-time display. In this configuration, there will be no processor or PCI bus loading. The image is not transferred to system memory in this mode.

          System Memory (DIB)

This mode transfers the image data direct to system memory then uses the standard Windows device independent bitmap method of display. As this is a fairly slow display method, there is no guarantee that real-time display can be achieved although transfer to system memory will always achieve 25 fps (PAL) or 30 fps (NTSC). DIB display is the most compatible display method and will display with all VGA cards but adds a lot of processor loading.

          System Memory (DDraw)

Similar to System Memory (DIB) mode in that the image is transferred to system memory. In this mode, the image data is displayed from system memory using the more efficient DirectDraw method resulting in 25 fps (PAL) or 30 fps (NTSC) display and transfer to system memory. As DirectDraw is very efficient there is very little processor loading in this mode. DirectDraw is VGA card dependent so not all VGA cards will support this mode.

DirectDraw is part of the DirectX suite of components provided by Microsoft to offer  enhanced Multimedia performance.DirectDraw is a mechanism to control Video Display boards and display data in an efficient manner. DirectDraw is composed of three parts: the DirectDraw software interface, the DirectDraw Hardware Abstraction Layer, and the software emulation layer. The MV-500 Video Capture board attempts to use DirectDraw capabilities to display captured video in the fastest way possible.

The DirectDraw software interface is provided by Microsoft. It provides the basic API functions to inquire about the capabilities of the display board and to draw on the display (VGA) board. You must have at least version 3.0 for using the MV-500 DirectDraw interface and at least version 5.0 to use the VIP interface.

The DirectDraw Hardware Abstraction Layer is provided within the VGA driver provided by the Display Adapter vendor. It carries out the specific requests made by the application and maps them to the hardware on the VGA card. The abstraction allows VGA boards to have different capabilities and to be designed in very different ways, yet be driven by the same application program.

           Windows 95/98

If the DirectX suite is installed there will be a C:\Program Files\directx directory present on your system. From there, enter the ‘setup’ directory then run ‘dxtool.exe’. This will display a status of the DirectX components installed on your PC along with the current version.

Windows NT 4.0

Service Pack 4 contains version 3.0a of DirectX. This is the latest version of DirectX supported under NT. There is no convenient way to interrogate the system to see what version of DirectX is installed, however if you have Service Pack 4 installed you will have DirectDraw version 3.0a installed.

Windows NT 3.51 or Windows 3.11

DirectX is not supported under these operating systems

An Overlay Surface is an area of memory allocated on the VGA card. Overlay Surface is implemented through DirectDraw and provides a fast and efficient mechanism to transfer the image data to the VGA card for display. To implement this the MV-500 demonstration program needs an adequate amount of VGA memory available to allocate a 16 bit per pixel image buffer. If this is unavailable, an error message stating ‘unable to create Overlay Surface’ may be displayed

         Yes, A special version of the MV-500 is available with 2 S-Video inputs. In sacrifices two of the           composite inputs to achieve this.

        Only a single board is supported at present