Need help with color artifacts in B/W picture

[Nimrod 0]

I have tried the demo of active webcam using a good quality black and white camera, an Ever Focus EQ150A/EN with a Tamron 8 to 30 mm F 1.1 DC drive iris lens. With the camera connected directly to a monitor it looks fine. When the camera goes thru Active Webcam I get color artifacts in the picture. I have tried tweaking all camera settings on the camera with no luck. In Active Webcam I have tried all the video codec settings,

RGB24

RGB32

YUY2

YVU9

UYVY

Y41P

YV12

I420

RGB555 (16BIT)

RGB565 (16BIT)

and various NTSC resolutions like 320 x 240 and 640 x 480. Nothing seems to make a difference in the picture. I am using a 4ft long BNC cable to connect to the camera amd BT878 card (cheap 4 input). And just because I am PaRaNoId, I tried a 10 foot piece of RG6, with the same results. I also tried the other 3 inputs on the capture card with no change in the picture.

 

I also tried using AmCap to view the camera and not surprisingly it looked exactly the same. And the reason I was not surprised is that Many of the AmCap menus look exactly the same as the Active Webcam windows. Clearly they share the same code base.

 

http://www.barcodediscount.com/pdf/EverFocus/eq150.pdf

Ever Focus quick specs.

 

http://www.everfocus.in/downloads/manuals/EQ150_manual.pdf

Ever Focus Manual.

 

Does anyone have an idea on how to fix this problem.

[Nimrod 0]

Update to color artifact problem. I tried a name brand PV-140 4 input bt878 card with exactly the same results. What I am finding is that any ware there is a sharp focus on a vertical line I get the color artifacts. As a test I tried different types of lighting and all I found out was the brighter the light the brighter the artifacts.

On this picture I focused on a box that was 3 feet from the camera and the lighting was a little brighter there. Notice how the color artifacts follow the vertical lines on the box

[Soundy 1]

This is very common with software-compression capture devices. The software is processing the signal as if it's a color picture; it doesn't know the camera is B&W. Find the Saturation setting (should be in with brightness/contrast/etc.) and dial it all the way down (some software also has an option to set the camera as a B&W type).

[Nimrod 0]

Soundy, I tried to change the saturation level but it is grayed out in all 3 programs, AmCap, Active Webcam and Blue Iris. And as I said before all 3 programs have the same menus. I looked around to see if there was some way to enable the menus but no luck. And I did look for B/W only settings I could not find any.

 

I do have 1 idea but need some guidance on how to do it. Blue Iris has an option to install video filters, I suspect if I find the right one it will give me the control I need. But at the moment I am unsure exactly what or where these video filter programs are. I will start googling after I post this message.

[Soundy 1]

That's a limitation of the capture driver, then, and/or of the software itself. Most "true" DVR software will have those settings internally... obviously these apps just use the WDM control options, which in this case are limited.

 

What is your capture device?

[Nimrod 0]

Capture card is a 4 input 1 chip bt878 type, currently have a PV-140 installed.

 

http://www.provideo.com.tw/manual/En/VPRO/VPROInstallManual_V2_7_1102.pdf

[Nimrod 0]

OK guys, now I need the computer experts to help. I have contacted Blue iris and they tell me the bt878 card should have its color menu enabled. AmCap also has it disabled. I talked to another blue iris user who is using a bt878 card and he does have a color menu enabled. I now think this is a windows problem. Can anyone think of a reason windows would prevent the color menu in Amcap from working.

 

Windows 7 32 bit ultimate

P35 chipset

Pentium duel core

2 gig ram

Nvidia 8500 GT

Pro Video pv-149 bt878 4 input card. Using recommended open source drivers.

 

I tried updating video card drivers. Taking every windows update, different PCI slots for bt878 card, moving Nvidia card to 2nd pci express 16 slot. Uninstalling and reinstalling bt878 drivers. Checking device manager for any errors. Tried all 4 inputs on bt878 card. Tried color and black and white cameras. Tried whistling Dixie twice. No change. Windows media player works perfectly also.

 

I am stuck.

[rory 0]

Have you put the BW camera on channel 1 yet?

Switched PCI slots?

Run the app as Admin?

Run the app in XP Compatibility?

[rory 0]

What you could do is search down your device in the registry and see if there is a settings section there. For example I have a capture card here and was using AmCap (card removed now), and I have a decoder settings section and that includes saturation etc.

 

You can get the ID from the hardware properties then search in the registry, should be somewhere like this:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{6BDD1FC6-810F-11D0-BEC7-08002BE2092F}

 

ID will differ based on your hardware.

[Nimrod 0]

What you could do is search down your device in the registry and see if there is a settings section there. For example I have a capture card here and was using AmCap (card removed now), and I have a decoder settings section and that includes saturation etc.

 

You can get the ID from the hardware properties then search in the registry, should be somewhere like this:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{6BDD1FC6-810F-11D0-BEC7-08002BE2092F}

 

ID will differ based on your hardware.

 

Were is this "hardware properties", I looked in device manager and system information and could not find any hardware ID. I tried all other sugestions with no luck.

[Soundy 1]

I tried updating video card drivers. Taking every windows update, different PCI slots for bt878 card, moving Nvidia card to 2nd pci express 16 slot. Uninstalling and reinstalling bt878 drivers. Checking device manager for any errors. Tried all 4 inputs on bt878 card. Tried color and black and white cameras. Tried whistling Dixie twice. No change. Windows media player works perfectly also.

 

I am stuck.

This is your problem: the Brooktree company (the "bt" in "bt878") was started by Yankees - direct descendants of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, in fact - and the card is now not working just to spite you.