I may get to the 640 x 480 bug at some point, it's reasonable but I have some other things. Someone else can have a go as well.

The codebase has seen some fundamental reimplementation, and since the work I do is focused around the features and limitations on Linux, I'd say basing the Windows version directly on the Linux codebase is no longer trivial. Very doable, but you have to get familiar with the code to implement some core Windows-specific functionality that doesn't exist otherwise.

An easier way for whoever maintains the Windows version may be to cherry-pick bug fixes etc.

Hello, I would like to get the Datapath VisionRGB-pro card.
Is this software and its drivers compatible with Windows 7 (32 or 64 bits)?
Regards

mrgreen wrote on 2023-08-18, 07:57:

Hello, I would like to get the Datapath VisionRGB-pro card.
Is this software and its drivers compatible with Windows 7 (32 or 64 bits)?
Regards

Currently, no. It's available for Linux, which the VisionRGB-PRO has no drivers for. Earlier versions of VCS support the PRO and Windows XP and upwards, they're available as source code but are deprecated. Someone's maintaining a Windows version of VCS as a separate project.

Eventually I got the Datapath VisionRGB-PRO (DGC103C) and Windows XP installed along with 7.14 driver.
Capturing with Datapath software generates black videos using Datapath Vision Player software...and it's a weird format.
Using VLC client only a part of the screen is displayed.
I end up to play the video with RGB software and capture the desktop with VLC...crappy system to capture videos.

It's good hardware but needs good software.

I managed to use it VideoLAN client to capture the images: DOS and BIOS screens (after trying a lot of settings) with Vision RGB-PRO on Windows XP SP3 (english) 32 bit.
Now I have only to flip vertically the recorded video because VLC captures it flipped. Playing instead of capturing it's fine, not flipped (for unknown reason).

So I use last public drivers which are 7.14. (using Archive.org to get http://www.datapath.co.uk/DRIVERS/vrgbpro.zip)
Then I follow the procedure on the Read Me html file of the driver bundle to install them.
The New Hardware Found Wizard will pop up a total of three times and when the New Hardware Found Wizard asks something about Vision RGB-PRO I gave it the path to the vrgbpro.zip\DGC103\ extracted folder.

As during capturing I can not see anything on VLC, I keep a window of Datapath Vision RGB-PRO software open to check if the VGA output is ok.
Capturing it's easy...after getting the correct settings. The most important is the video size that I put as 720x400 (dshow-size=720x400), this field must be filled because default setting (null) is bad. After this, I succeded in getting the screen centered.

I hope this can be useful to someone.

Whoever kept bringing up the bug about video preset keyboard shortcuts not working, it's a simple fix: https://github.com/leikareipa/vcs/commit/a5cf … 55dd53e31615cc7. I didn't test it on actual capture hardware but should be straightforward enough to backport into whatever Windows version someone is or isn't maintaining.

Version 3.0.0 is out for Linux, source-only distribution via GitHub.

There was a bug someone was pushing to have fixed where setting the analog horizontal size to 800 wouldn't work right. I had a look into it and it's independent of VCS to the extent I can reproduce it with v4l2-ctl. Since it's also been reported on Windows my guess is Datapath drivers or firmware.

ooh I was looking forward to this, but wasnt able to build it (i posted on github).. looks very cool tho.

It's been pointed out before but VCS is modular and can support capture sources other than Datapath's. Recent changes have made it more extendable again and the UI is now more customizable as well, less tied to Datapath idioms. Support for non-Datapath capture is still an afterthought but progressively less than before.

For example, you can add support for UVC webcams:

Basically any capture source that exposes a C++-compatible API should be supportable. There's no documentation on how to do this, other than actual code in the repo, but probably I'll write something at some point.

Thats still Linux only, right?
Is there any way to wrap it into something to make it run in a Windows environment?

If it was hard to find someone to port it to Windows a few versions ago then it'll be harder now, I'll say that much. You could run it in a virtual machine if your version of Windows supports passthrough.

what sucks is the datapath driver no longer compiles under linux kernel v6 that distro's are shifting to 🙁 aaaargh. I tentativly poked it and fixed a couple of things, other things I've no idea about (aka dma in kernel drivers)... ugh 🙁

Yeah, the driver support has a tendency to lag behind sometimes. So far they've eventually gotten around to catching up.

Maybe it would be a viable solution to have a small capture PC, like a NUC, which then runs the program, outputs via HDMI, and then you use the main PC to actually capture it. ^^
But that would mean I would need to add a fifth PC to my setup ^^

For a capture PC, get one with PCI and PCIe support and put in the VisionRGB-E and VisionRGB-PRO capture cards. Use Linux so you can capture the E natively and the PRO in a virtual machine without needing to dual boot. Capture DOS stuff with the PRO and higher res with the E, best of both worlds.

A basic workaround for the driver-related bug of a video preset with a horizontal size of 800 (i.e. for capturing 640 x 480) not taking effect: https://github.com/leikareipa/vcs/commit/3e81 … ce4e4333e057827. This bug has been brought up here many times.

Basically whenever a preset has a horizontal size of 800, the workaround applies all other preset settings and then toggles the horizontal size to 799 and back, so the other settings take effect. It's a silly thing but seems to work at a glance and I don't immediately know that there's another way around it.

Yeah, elegant or not - as long as it works. 😀
Could anyone add that into an Windows-exceculable version?

Consider offering money if the work is valuable to you and nobody does it for free. A typical software consultant over here will cost you in the region of 100 e/h, a reasonable compensation might be 50% of that. Otherwise you may be waiting a long time by the looks of it.