Visual Instruction System
Troubleshooting Video Capture Problems

The Visual Instruction System utilizes Microsoft’s Video for Windows standard to interface with your video capture board. If you are having problems getting this interface to work, check the following items.

  1. Ensure that the video capture board is properly installed per the manufacturer’s instructions. One common problem with the ComputerEyes RT board is that the default IO address for the ComptureEyes board (220 hex) conflicts with the default setting for the SoundBlaster audio board. If you have this conflict, you must change the jumper on the ComputerEyes board to use a different address. See page 14 of the ComputerEyes manual.

  2. Test your video capture board with another application to ensure that the board works correctly. For the ComputerEyes RT board, the WEYES program should allow you to preview your video source and capture single images. Check the setup menu option to ensure that your choices for video source and IO address are correct. The ComputerEyes board requires that a video source be present in order to work. The WEYES program does NOT use a Video for Windows driver to interface with the ComputerEyes board, so while success with the WEYES program verifies that the board is installed correctly, it does not ensure the VFW driver is installed correctly.

  3. Ensure that your video source is coming into the computer. If possible, temporarily attach a TV to the VCR output that you are using for input to the video capture board. Some types of VCRs have switches to switch between multiple inputs and outputs. Make sure your VCR is working as you expect it to.

  4. Make sure that you have installed the Microsoft Video for Windows runtime disk that was included with the VIS software. You must restart Windows for this installation to take effect.

  5. Check that the Video for Windows driver for your video capture board is installed. To do this, open up the Windows Control Panel (located in the Main Program Manager group). From the Control Panel, open the Drivers icon. This should display a list of drivers. One of the drivers should be a video capture driver. For the ComputerEyes RT board, the driver is named ComputerEyes/RT Video Capture Driver. Selecting the video capture driver and pressing the Setup... button should display a dialog box with setup and version information. If you get an error doing this, or there is no entry for your video capture board, then the driver is not present or not installed correctly. Refer to the documentation for your video capture board for instructions on how to install the VFW driver. If the entry for the video capture driver is present but not working correctly, be sure to remove the old driver before re-installing. You must restart Windows for this installation to take effect.

  6. If, after you have installed the VFW driver and the Control Panel/Drivers check described above tells you that the driver is not installed correctly, you may have to install it by hand. Simply copy the following two files from the ComputerEyes/RT Windows floppy disk to your Windows system directory:

    COPY A:\RTVIDEO.DRV C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM
    COPY A:\WEYESRT.DLL C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM

  7. Ensure that you have the latest version of the VFW video capture driver. For the ComputerEyes/RT board, the latest version is 1.0.0.2. See the previous step for how to check the driver version.

  8. For the ComputerEyes RT board, ensure that the I/O Port Address setting as seen via the Control Panel/Drivers/Setup is the same as the DIP switch settings on the board. Note that the ComputerEyes/RT board can be set to a wide range of I/O addresses, but only three addresses are valid when using the Video For Windows driver. You must use one of these three addresses: 0x220, 0x230, or 0x240.

  9. Make sure that no other application is using the video capture board. You can get a list of all running tasks by double clicking in the background of the desktop.

  10. If, in VIS, you click on the camera icon (or choose the Video/Video Capture On/Off, or press F2), and you get a preview window and the VIS Capture Preview and VIS Video Capture dialog box, but do not get a video picture, then you either don’t have a video signal coming in or you have not selected the correct input (usually composite or s-video) from the Video Setup Source button.

  11. If you happen to have a video capture board that does not provide a Microsoft VFW driver, a workaround is to use the Auto Paste from Clipboard option located under the VIS Image menu. Refer to section 2.1.4 of the VIS documentation for more information.

  12. The Visual Instruction System works best when capturing in 256 color mode. If you have a video capture card that will only capture in true-color mode, then you need an updated version of theVisual Instruction System. Contact Visual Technologies for more details.

  13. One user reported that his problem with a non-working ComputerEyes/RT video capture driver was solved by adding the ComputerEyes software directory to the DOS path (usually set in AUTOEXEC.BAT). This is not documented in the ComputerEyes manual, and should not be necessary, but worth a try if all else fails.

  14. To install the ComputerEyes VFW driver under Windows 95, follow the steps listed below.

  15. To verify the installation of the ComputerEyes VFW driver under Windows 95, follow the steps listed below.

  16. Another check for the correct installation of the VFW driver under Windows 95:
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