Information on Yawcam video hooks needed

[wlbragg]

I have searched the internet to no avail trying to solve this problem.
I don't think this is necessarily a Yawcam problem. I have seen other posts on here that touch on this problem in that default resolution change. What is happening in Yawcam might help me troubleshoot this problem if I can figure out why Yawcam is acting different than it used to.

System
Yawcam Version 0.3.3 built: 2010-02-28
eMachine (AMD 2204) (hand-me-down frorm the kids)
WinXP Pro SP3 Build 2600
device Kworld ASTC 315U (usb) TV box (USB 2883 driver)
Printer is USB with pass through USB and card reader. (mentioned because it might be an issue)

The problem was intermittent but is now permanent.
Whenever I try to select the TV Tuner from certain programs (TotalMedia3 or virtualDub) the system reboots.
What's so frustrating is I've had it do this before and been able to fix it (without knowing exactly what fixed it like rebooting a couple times after unplugging other USB devices, maybe).
It appeared that it would happen after I used one of the following devices, my usb printer or usb card reader. Which led me believe (and still do to some extent) it might be corrupt logical drive data left behind somewhere causing the reset when the problem software was switched to the TV mode (which uses a form of DVR). It was TotalMedia3 that first caused the crash when I tried to access the boxes TV mode. TotalMedia3 defaults to the TV Tuner that uses DVR tech.
Here is where I think this forum (with all it's brainpower) might be able to help me at least look in the right direction.
When this problem didn't exist Yawcam would start up default of 640x480 and be in a sharp, reasonably high res mode. When this problem exists it only starts up in 320x240 low res. What is really interesting and may be the key for me to solve this is Yawcam is the only program that can still access the TV tuner without rebooting, but it isn't really functioning as I don't get any channels even after using auto tune. I know my TV channels (antenna) are all over 100 and it appeared that the auto tune only went up into the 60's. I'm not sure what question to even ask. I think the default resolution that Yawcam uses without the problem and what it uses during the problem might be the key though.
The minimum I am looking for here on this board is some enlightenment on what hooks Yawcam uses to capture the video that may be different than the programs that all crashing my system. It may help me figure out what is going on. The most I can hope for is one of you very smart people knowing exactly what is going on and explaining it to me.

Thank you for any help or enlightenment, even if it is in the form of a link to info that might explain some of this to me.

[wlbragg]

I see by the lack of response my problem isn't going to solved easily.

I tried going back to ver 3.0 using forcevideoformat.txt and all it reported with this device was a max resolution of 320x240. It appears to me it may be the camera driver is stuck in this mode for some reason. I am going to try a fresh install on another machine and see if the camera can still do its native res of 640x480 as I am totally stuck on this.

[malun]

As you say, this sounds like a tricky problem...
Yawcam uses the ordinary video hooks for accessing the video device. I can't see why it should handle a problematic driver differently than other software.

I'm afraid that I don't have any good clues.

/malun

[wlbragg]

Thank you your reply.

I put the box on a different computer and it still causes a re-boot when TotalMedia3 tries to access the TV tuner. I'm sure TM3 is trying to switch the resolution to at least 640x480 and probably more. It is capable of hi-def. So I guess the box is broke. That would account for its intermittent problem and now its permanent problem.

Anyone know of a forum for hardware repair? Unless someone knows what would cause the hardware to get stuck in the lower mode?

I guess this thread is closed. Thanks again for the info!

[kvrajan]

Hi..

One thing that comes to my mind from my experience with such multiple connections on the USB for various devices, is that, the bandwidth allocated by the CPU/Memory mgmt. in the computer for the USB port[s] is far exceeding the capacity and when this happens, the system is likely to reboot or make programs behave differently like low resolution etc.

Try to remove one by one the devices connected to check this out and some systems also send a warning message, USB bandwidth exceeded.

One way to overcome this is to have a PCI USB card plugged into the motherboard than overloading the available usb slots.

Hope this helps.