ImpactVCB

Video capture board with live video overlay

The ImpactVCB is a new low cost family of video capture boards which can be used as the heart of a live video display, video capture, streaming video or video conferencing solution.

Video Capture
Video from any analog source (composite or S-Video) can be captured as either still frame video images or motion video. Composite video inputs are provided as female RCA jacks, while S-Video uses standard 4-pin DIN connectors. The ImpactVCB comes with a VFW capture driver (Video for Windows)for Windows 95 and Windows NT, and a WDM driver for use with WindowsXP, Windows98SE, Windows Me and Windows 2000. Typical capture rates range from 15 to 30 fps depending on system configuration.

Live Video Display
The ImpactVCB can display live video from NTSC or PAL video sources in a resizable window on the PC screen. The digitizing of the analog video signal and the resizing of the video image is performed by hardware on the ImpactVCB, thereby not slowing down the CPU. After video is digitized and resized, the digitized video image is drawn by the ImpactVCB directly into the memory of the PC's VGA card. This uses a feature of Windows called Direct Draw, and the ImpactVCB can be used with most VGA cards which support Direct Draw 5 or higher. This technique is used on Windows95, Windows98, WindowsME, Windows2000 and WindowsNT 4.0

Serialization
Some ImpactVCB models have a unique serial number burnt into an EProm on board. The serial number is read either through the Hauppauge WinTV Programmers Toolkit or can be read via Windows Control Panel. In addition to the serial number, these models of ImpactVCB have its I/O configuration burnt into the EProm.

Hardware requirements
The ImpactVCB capture board is designed for all Pentium PCs running WindowsXP, WindowsME, Windows2000, Windows 95, Windows98, and Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3 installed. A public domain Linux driver is also available for the ImpactVCB.

The ImpactVCB requires a bus-mastering PCI bus slot.

Your PC’s VGA graphics adapter must have WINDOWS Direct Draw support. All NVidea, 3DFX and ATI graphics cards have this support. Some common adapters are: S3 Trio64+, Trio 32/64, Vision 968 and ViRGE Cirrus Logic 5446, Matrox Millenium and Mystique, ATI Mach 64 and Rage series of graphics display adapters, Hercules Dynamite 128 (and other ET 6000 based VGA cards) work well.

The ImpactVCB board also requires 2MB of free hard disk space, and 2 MB of RAM (Windows 95 or Windows98) or 4 MB of RAM (Windows NT 4.0, Windows2000 or WindowsXP).

For Audio Capture

Audio is not processed on the board. Audio can be input directly to the sound card for digitizing and furthur processing.

For Video Conferencing

The ImpactVCB can be used for Internet video conferencing using the supplied Microsoft NetMeeting. Also, most other video conferencing applications which require a Video for Windows capture driver to digitize video can be used with the ImpactVCB. Since all of the digitizing and image movement are done by the ImpactVCB without requiring the systems CPU, you get the maximum performance from your PC.

Hardware required for video conferencing:
In addition to the ImpactVCB, a video camera, NTSC or PAL (power is available from the board or optional AC power adapter), is required. A 16 bit, 8 KHZ full duplex codec sound card is required for digitizing the audio. A microphone and speakers are also required.

The ImpactVCB driver CD-ROM includes:

Drivers: A WDM driver for WindowsXP, Windows2000, WindowsME and Windows98SE is included. Video for Windows capture drivers for Windows95, Windows98, Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3 are available. WHQL certified drivers for WindowsXP are available.
Accessory applications included: Hauppauge's SnapShot (single image frame grabber program) and Hauppauge's Capture application for creating AVI movies. On-line Installation Guides and Quick Start Guides are also available.

Compliance:

EMI treatment for FCC Class B and European CE (EN55022, EN55013 and EN55024) and is UL listed.

Product Availability:

Hauppauge has a variety of ImpactVCB boards, cameras and kits available to support your image capture, video image display, industrial image processing and video conferencing applications worldwide. Please note that our technical support organization is available to provide technical information you require to support your applications. Special models are available which use BNC connectors.

All ImpactVCB models Support both PAL and NTSC compatibility (referred to as "dual crystal").

Here are some common models (please order by model number or product code):