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1. Note Some VCRs output a bright blue screen when not playing Do not con fuse this screen with a problem screen Check the tape and hit the play button to make sure the VCR is playing Note On Intel based Macs with built in iSights a Purple video window may appear The built in iSight is a USB camera and tries to consume all of the USB bandwidth You will need to either turn off the iSight or reduce its size to 320x240 XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Trouble shooting Capture window shows a solid color instead of video Interpret the color as follows __ Red No XtraView USB device Make sure a XtraView USB device is plugged in and that it is not being used by another application En Orange Connected to USB 1 1 XtraView USB devices need a USB 2 0 port in order to operate al Yellow Low power connection XtraView devices need a USB powered port in order to operate Green No video feed The XtraView USB is okay but the software is not detecting a video feed to the device Plug a video source into the XtraView USB device and make sure it is playing Purple Not enough USB bandwidth available This will occur if a XtraView USB device is unable to allocate the USB bandwidth that it wants See the trouble shooting section I get a purple screen instead of video for more information General Support Questions get a red screen instead of video This is usually the result of unplugging the de
2. QuickTate Mac universal Real time full size video from any camera into Mac OS X QuickTime EI f User Manual INSTALLATION and USE Table of Contents XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual About XLR8 XtraView USB ccccessssesseesseeesneesseeeesessneessessaes 1 Types of video sources SUPPOTted eee eeeeeeeeteeeeeee 1 Video from tunelis ic2iccdetanceteeenerieniened teeter 1 Video from cameras and camcorders 1 Video from tapes and diSkS asssesssscsrnserererrererrnnirennnn 1 QuickStart 9 Steps to Recording sssenssunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn 2 Before you Install vcccsccscctececsnicneecevcessseseenecceccseterseeessuensennstectencieeees 3 Update Your Software 10 3 5 or later is required 3 Verify that your system is fast enough cceeeee 3 Verify that you have USB 2 0 00 eeeceeeeeeeeeeeteeeeeeeenees 3 About XtraView USB Capture Software cccssecseseeeseeeeeeeees 4 QuickTime and Third Party Software 4 Installing the XtraView USB Softwar e ccsseseseeeeseeesseeeeees 5 Launch the IMStall ts cccccecsss ease cadsecSescsstie cbeseaddevadestesceddsese 5 FROSUAM E lees eae bts ln ceedetubecycia E E 5 Connecting the XtraView USB Hardwat e sscssseeseeeeseenes 6 Attach the XtraView USB DeViCe ecceeeeeeeeereeenees 6 Using XtraView USB Capture ccccccccseeceeseeeeeseeeesseeeeeseeenseeenes 8 Launch Xtra
3. Save Changes i e the original movie on the disk will be updated Note that this only changes the movie scaling It does not reduce the amount or nature of the data in the movie To correct large numbers of movies drag and drop all of them at the same time on to the XtraView USB Exporter icon You will only be asked once what to do Only movies at one of the following sizes will be corrected width 704 and height 480 or height 576 width 352 and height 240 or height 288 width 176 and height 120 or height 144 width 88 and height 60 or height 72 However if the option key is held down while opening the movie any movie can be made 4 to 3 Under some circumstances it may be desirable to deliberately record movies at the largest natural size and then use XtraView USB Exporter to scale the movie This will ensure that the largest amount of data pos sible is retained within the movie For most purposes however capturing the movie at a 4 to 3 ratio in the first place is the simplest thing to do Page 22 of 42 XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Using Multiple Devices The XtraView USB software will allow up to eight XtraView USB devices to be run simultaneously on one computer Multiple devices are primarily useful in applications that can handle multiple video streams Two applications that do this are Ben Bird s SecuritySpy and SubRosa Soft s HomeGuardian Another application that can handle mul
4. DV cameras which have A V support via RCA composite or S Video Video from tapes and disks VCRs all varieties of camcorders LaserDisc players and DVD Page 1 of 42 Video Settings xy Sound Settings xs Record Video v Record Sound Quarter Size Half Size Full Size Double Size a0 x 60 lt 1 160 x 120 2 320x 240 x3 640 x 480 x4 Custom Size Full Screen xF Record mR Record Duration VER Record Setup xT Compression For Capture amp Editing XLR8 recommends using Photo JPEG for capture and editing PJPEG has excellent compression and playback on all Macs YUV422 Delivers full RAW uncompressed quality but requires 1GB per minute and extremely fast drive setups Compression For Delivery H 264 is perfect for final delivery with its small size and high quality It struggles on real time capture though due to high CPU require ments for encoding XLR8 Xtra View USB User Manual QuickStart 9 Steps to Recording If you prefer to just jump in then the QuickStart below will get you up and running fast But should you have any problems review the whole manual 1 Update Your Mac OS Software and Video Applications Although 10 3 5 and up is supported we recommend updating to the abso lute latest software and OS by running Apple s software update 2 Install the XtraView USB Software Run the XtraView USB installer on the CD then restart 3 Install the optional Videolmpressio
5. User Manual Connecting the XtraView USB Hardware The XtraView USB device requires built in USB 2 0 support Some third party USB 2 0 upgrade cards may work but Apple s support for these cards is not universal and results may be unpredictable Attach the XtraView USB Device 1 Plug the USB end of the video capture device into a powered USB 2 0 port Powered USB ports can be found on the computer itself on some monitors or on hubs that have an ex ternal power supply Non powered ports are often found on key boards If you are not sure just plug the Pro View USB device in If the port is not powered a message will come up telling you so Note Capturing video requires significant bandwidth If you plug any other high speed device into the same computer without using a PCI USB expansion card there is a high likelihood that one or both of the devices will fail to work This most commonly occurs when two XtraView USB de vices are plugged in To resolve this problem it may be necessary too adjust the video frame size and the bandwidth consumed by one or both devices See the section Using Multiple Devices for more information Plug the Video connector into your video source Connect a video source to one of XtraView USB s video in sockets You need to choose between using the standard RCA composite connector or the S Video connector The black connector is for S Video video in for XtraView USB S Video provides
6. encoding scheme is based on a standard developed by the International Multimedia Assocation for pulse code modulation PCM audio compres sion QuickTime uses a slight variation of the format to allow for random access IMA is a 16 bit audio format which supports 4 1 compression It is defined as follows IMA is a cross platform audio codec which offers 4 1 compression and is built into QuickTime 2 1 and later It only works on 16 bit audio and pro vides very good sound quality The compression allows a 16 bit 22 kHz audio soundtrack to fit into half the space of a 8 bit 22 kHz soundtrack but sounds better But since IMA is only 4 1 compression it is not great for Web video Also strong low frequency sounds such as drumbeats may not be accurately repro duced ALaw 2 1 amp ulaw 2 1 The uLaw mu law encoding scheme is used on North American and Japanese phone systems and is coming into use for voice data interchange and in PBXs voice mail systems and Inter net talk radio via MIME In uLaw encoding 14 bits of linear sample data are reduced to 8 bits of logarithmic data The aLaw encoding scheme is used in Europe and the rest of the world Page 41 of 42 Contacting Daystar Please Feel Free to Contact Us As Needed Note E mail always provides the fastest response Corporate Information Daystar Technology 5012 Bristol Ind Way 108 Buford GA 30518 USA Phone 770 614 5400 Fax 678 547 3163 E mail info Da
7. All iMac G5s Mac Mini MacBook and MacBook Pro systems and later include USB 2 0 The Power Macintosh G4 PowerBook G4 Titanium PowerBook G3 Firewire upgraded to G4 Power Macintosh G3 upgraded to G4 will all require a USB 2 0 expansion card in order to run XtraView USB Page 3 of 42 About XtraView USB Capture Software QuickTime and Third Party Software The XtraView USB For Mac OS X software presents a standard Quick Time Video Digitizer interface to the system This means that any OS X native QuickTime savvy application that supports digitizers will allow the XtraView USB device to be selected and will allow video to be captured from it Video editing packages as well as web streaming and video conferencing packages are examples of the kinds of applications that support digitizers Proview VSA Caprere ape Any QuickTime savvy application that can play back or edit QuickTime movies can make use of the movies captured using the XtraView USB software XtraView USB movies can be easily imported into Apple s iMovie multi media editing package Information about how to do this is provided in the section Importing XtraView USB Movies into iMovie The following is a list of just a few of the compatible third party applica tions For a more detailed description of compatible third party applica tions please visit the EchoFX website Note that as the Mac OS Quick Time and these applications evolve over time it is possib
8. Video Issues Reference http neuron2 net LVG interlacing html Introduction Interlaced video is a common source of confusion for beginners in the world of digital video It requires a person to realize that how a video ap pears on television and how it is actually made up are quite different All video that is captured at full vertical resolution 480 or more horizontal lines is susceptible to the effects of interlacing Thus an understanding of interlacing is essential when dealing with full resolution video A famili arity with interlaced video is also necessary when dealing with telecined video Frames and Fields In basic terms a video can be thought of as being made up of numerous snapshots called frames The frame rate or the number of frames dis played each second is 29 97 in the United States and other NTSC based countries For the sake of simplicity we can round this number to 30 frames per second fps In many European countries they use a PAL or SECAM video system that displays exactly 25 fps For this article will base my explanations on 30 fps but you can replace the number 30 with 25 for PAL SECAM video and the same principles will hold true A television however does not deal with video in terms of frames In stead it displays a video using half frames called fields Each frame contains exactly two fields One field is made up of the odd horizontal lines in a frame This is called the odd field or th
9. a higher quality picture and is usually only supported by higher grade equipment The yellow connector is the compos ite video in Use it for connecting to standard RCA style video connector from your VCR or camcorder Using the video extension cable that came with your camcorder VCR or tuner connect either the composite RCA yellow connector or the S video black connector Note Only one input connector S Video or composite should be used at any time Plug the opposite end of the video source s A V cable into the video out port of your video source This is often hidden on most cameras so refer to a your camera manual o if necessary asas ie es ee ef 5 Page 6 of 42 XtraView USB Audio Video Capture Device XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Connect the audio source of your camcorder VCR or tuner to XtraView USB s Audio connectors using the A V cable that came with your video equipment Using the audio extension cable often the same cable as the A V or video extension cable that came with your camcorder VCR or tuner connect the audio plugs to the plugs on XtraView USB s Audio connector For stereo sound plug XtraView s Audio right red RCA connector into the right red RCA connector on your audio extension cable Plug XtraView s left white connector into the left white or black connector on your audio extension cable For mono sound plug XtraView s audio adapter s lef
10. based according to the QuickTime specification To make things confusing you sometimes see Motion JPEG A and Motion JPEG B also allowing frame based compression This is the case in Adobe Premiere for instance Planar RGB This is similar to the Animation codec in that it is effective for images that use large areas of solid colors PNG A lossless RGB format It compresses more efficiently than Ani mation but does not use predictive frames so video with long stretches of unchanging content may be better compressed with Animation Best for RGB content Sorenson Video 3 This is a very good codec for general video and is great for playback from CD ROM the web It is similar to Cinepak but provides better picture quality and smaller file sizes at the cost of lightly longer compression times It also supports dynamic playback that auto matically adjusts to available bandwidth and CPU resources Sorenson Video 3 comes in two flavors Basic and Pro The Basic ver sion is included with the Quicktime installer and only provides basic con trols such as data rate keyframe rate and frame rate The Pro version provides many more options and better quality but costs several hundred dollars Its quality is competitive with the best AVI and Windows Media codecs Sorenson Video 3 s achilles heel is its compression efficiency Huge files result when its settings are maxed out and it can be difficult to squeeze the file down to a comparable siz
11. captured by XtraView USB Capture are saved in the format specified in the Video Settings compression panel Occasionally it may be desirable or necessary to alter the format of a movie This could be for space reasons e g Motion JPEG or Photo JPEG uses less hard drive space than YUV422 or for deployment reasons e g you would like to scale a movie down to 320 x 240 and optimize it for web playback To export your XtraView USB movie open it in the application XtraView USB Exporter The current movie format and frame size will be noted underneath the movie Select Export from the File menu Choose a location for the exported movie and select Movie to QuickTime Movie from the Export popup menu Click the Options button In the Video section click the Settings button Select a compressor to use from the Compressor menu All the compressors in this list are supported by recent versions of QuickTime However the best choices are going to be Photo JPEG Motion JPEG or MPEG 4 Video These produce very high quality very small files The various JPEG for mats will provide some of the greatest compatibility overall There are many other settings available when exporting your movie however the compressor choice is the most important Once the com pressor has been selected click OK and then click the Save button When the movie has finished exporting it will be opened If you have QuickTime Pro it is possible to exp
12. deinterlaced video has twice the frame rate of the original video Playing back such a video will require more computer power Additionally you ll need to reinterlace the video returning it to the original frame rate if you want to properly play it back ona television Page 31 of 42 XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual 2 Resize the video If you reduce the vertical resolution of your video by resizing it you can eliminate the interlacing artifacts You also have to reduce the horizontal resolution to maintain the correct aspect ratio There are two manners in which you can resize a video to remove interlacing artifacts A You can simply remove one field all of the odd or even lines from a video and then squish the image horizontally This works be cause interlacing is only present in video that has two fields When you cut out one of the fields the video frame now represents only a single instant in time Without the 1 60th delay between fields since there is now only one there can be no interlacing artifacts This method of resizing is very similar to method A of deinterlac ing The only difference is that instead of interpolating the remain ing field to fill in the gap caused by removing one field it simply produces an image that has half the vertical resolution of the source video After doing this the resizing function also has to squish the image horizontally to maintain the correct aspect ratio The disadvantages
13. helpful in accomplishing this Movie playback is jerky If the movie plays back well on faster equipment you can export the movie to an alternative format for faster playback performance on the affected equipment See the section Exporting QuickTime Movies for more information But be aware that the problem could be that frames are being dropped dur ing recording See the item I can t capture at 29 97 frames per second for advice on this issue can t see video unless fast forward my VCR Try nudging the video slightly up or down in the Video Settings panel This can help synchronize the signal with the decoder in the device If the problem persists please contact EchoFX technical support can t see video when fast forward my VCR This is normal Trying to open the Video Settings panel causes a crash This is almost always due to the presence of Maccam drivers in the Library QuickTime folder Remove these drivers and try again The Video Settings Panel and Audio Settings Panel keep getting smaller and smaller can t adjust video settings am missing codecs and or settings that were there before This is possibly a bug in QuickTime or corruption requiring a reset Hold ing down the option key while opening the panels will fix the problem XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Page 26 of 42 Appendix 1 Video Sources NTSC PAL XtraView USB supports NTSC PAL or SECAM standard video sources Generall
14. more information on different compression choices see Appendix 3 XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Record Menu Use the Record menu to make recordings of the video Video Settings The Video Settings dialog has 4 or more panels Generally speaking the only adjustment that will have to be made is to the compression format in the compression panel described below All other settings will usually remain the same The screen shots shown below were made using Mac OS 10 4 8 and QuickTime 7 1 1 The panels may look somewhat different on other combinations of system software but all the information is basi cally the same Video Settings Adjustments Panel The sliders in here control vari ous video parameters including hue saturation brightness and contrast Note that sharpness black level and white level are not sup ported by XtraView USB de vices Video Settings Compression Panel The Compression Panel allows you to configure the type of codec comression decompression settings that will be used for the video within your captured movie Note that depending on the compression type chosen the subsequent settings such as quality keyframes depth may be grayed out or non existing Compression Type Choose the QuickTime format of the captured file here YUV422 Video is the native uncompressed raw format of XtraView USB devices However the files generated using this format are enormous approximate
15. size of the files involved Key frame rate If the selected compressor supports it key fram ing can be used to lower the overall data rate of the captured video Key frames contain enough information to display an entire frame Non key frames only contain the differences between a given frame and the previous frame Non key frames are much smaller than key frames thus reducing the overall data size significantly Web cam operators and web conferencers may wish to leave this field blank Some web cam applications handle non key frames very poorly Limit data rate Some compressors will allow the compressed data rate to be capped at a specific level This is usually accomplished by dynamically increasing or decreasing compression rates on the fly It is better to leave this blank unless you are sure that this is what you need Compressor Note that not all selections are available with all Com pression Types Depth menu Color is the only option available here The Xtra View USB software always produces the best color depth that it can This option is only visible in early versions of QuickTime Quality Setting This setting affects the compression rate of the incoming video frames The lower the quality setting the higher the compression rate Lower quality results in smaller file sizes nois ier video and higher frame rates Higher quality results in bigger file sizes cleaner video and lower frame rates Additional Settin
16. to this method are the same as those for method A of deinterlacing You lose resolution and the video plays less smoothly due to the missing field There is nothing you can do to make up for this B Instead of removing one of the fields you can blend the two fields together as you shrink the image to half its original horizontal and vertical resolution This is known as resampling the video to a lower resolution and it is very similar to method B of deinterlac ing The advantage is that since the fields are blended instead of removed the video plays more smoothly The disadvantage is that ghosting artifacts will be present in areas of motion This is caused by the blending of the two fields and cannot be fixed 3 Capture in 1 2 vertical resolution This is the easiest way to prevent interlacing artifacts When you capture video at 1 2 vertical resolution 240 lines for NTSC 288 lines PAL SECAM you are only capturing one field of video Since interlacing arti facts are the result of differences in the two fields in a single frame there cannot be any interlacing artifacts if you have only one field Page 32 of 42 XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual When Should De interlace As mentioned earlier each field in an interlaced video comes from a different point in time Therefore interlaced video can be thought of as running at 60 fields sec or 50 fields sec rather than 30 fps or 25 fps An interlaced display is capable of
17. used with DirectShow applica tions Page 37 of 42 XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual MPEG 4 Video The MPEG 4 video codec is designed to provide the highest quality across a wide array of data rates over the Internet Unfor tunately the standard MPEG 4 codec is not as alwasys good as Soren son 3 or the various MPEG 4 and pseudo MPEG 4 AVI codecs Blocki ness is visible at even moderate data rates Not as good as other MPEG 4 codecs out there It is comparable to Sorenson Video 3 s size at most data rates Ridicu lously large at higher data rates this is also a CBR codec It does not provide the tiny file sizes that the AVI MPEG 4 codecs are somehow able to achieve Not as idiot proof as the other MPEG 4 codecs You ll just have to do some math to figure out the bit rate you need to get your de sired file size before you do the encoding Encoding time is noticeably slower than other MPEG 4 codecs and a little slower than Sorenson Video 3 Photo JPEG The PhotoJPEG codec is a highly compressed codec that s ideal for offline quality edits This codec implements the Joint Pho tographic Experts Group ISO version 9R9 algorithm for image compres sion This codec is generally used for storage of still images but can also be used for editing and storage of high quality video files It is often rec ommended as the default standard for real time capture due its high compression and relatively low CPU draw It is frame
18. A The frame rate is awful If captured movies appear to be missing significant numbers of frames it may be due to the format selected in the Video Settings Compression panel If YUV422 is selected QuickTime may simply be unable to record the data to the disk fast enough This can happen even on a dual 2 5 GHz G5 machine On the other hand if H 264 is selected on a slower processor there may not be enough time to compress all the data and again frames will be dropped In the latter case try using a faster compressor like JPEG This should strike a balance between the amount of space consumed and the amount of CPU power needed to compress the data on the fly Also be aware that the frame rate displayed by QuickTime Player in cludes lag times at the start of a capture and rarely shows a completely accurate frame rate even if the vast majority of the movie is captured without any frame loss which it usually will be QuickTime Player will usually under report the frame rate by 0 1 or 0 2 frames per second Try Motion JPEG on the Better settings Also try setting the keyframes to 16 Video Settings won t take They return to their original values each time launch an application This is almost always due to a corrupted preference file for the host ap plication For XtraView USB Capture throw out the file yourHomeFolder Library Preferences Daystar Preferences XtraView USB Capture Preferences Don t throw out the other fi
19. Soe ta woe faves Qos ed De tee torre wwe y wi i ai mY Ki p LE Page 9 of 42 XtraView USB Capture Menu Commands r ProView USS Capture Edit Snapshot Record Digitizers tragan Snapshot Menu renter Use the Snapshot menu to take snapshots of the video Magha ep N Standard Snapshot Menu Takes a snapshot at the current frame size You will be asked where to save the resultant file This option is available for all devices Large The device is reconfigured and a high quality large snapshot is taken Reconfiguring the device is time consuming so the video frame that is captured will be one that occurs one or two seconds later This option is unnecessary and is not available for XtraView USB devices Snapshot Setup If Auto name is checked you may specify a destination folder a base file name and a format for snapshots This information will be used to save snapshots automatically without the need to specify the location or format each time The first snapshot taken will have the name base name_ 0000 the second will be basename_ 0001 etc Vea ete Dawe aere were we w ene tee ere were wow we amp ee ee arie XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Page 10 of 42 Jeter errmsg y vew rey teed yH tote bee pew bee w wee a Lee Nowe De ss Miyiz LE E o oe xi tan a am LE ve wow lose me te et i oo ne t gt l Pre B None me For
20. View USB Video Capture 8 XtraView USB Capture QuickStart eeeeeeeeeeeeenees 9 XtraView USB Capture Menu Command csseceseeeeeees 10 Snapshot MenUs ciirsa ristade akeni 10 Record Menu is eiior otarini 11 DIGITIZOFS MG MU yeas dicae ces ceszercasevbtpecedss aust iseancediatecsvaseatesed 17 Using XtraView USB Movies in iMOviec sseceeseeseeeeeeees 20 Using XtraView USB Exportel ccseccsseeceeseceseneeeeseeeesseeenseeees 21 Exporting QuickTime Movies 21 Correcting the Aspect Ratio Of Movies ccssseessseeesseeees 22 Using Multiple Devices cccceseeccceseeseeeeeeseeeeeeesseneeeeeeneeeeeeeetes 23 Trouble ShOoting ssecccceceeeeeeeeseeeeeeeeseeneeeeeneseneeeeeneeeeeeeenseeneenens 24 Capture window shows a solid color instead of video 24 General Support Questions ceeeeeeeeeeeeeseteeeeenees 24 Appendix 1 Video Sources NTSC PAL ssccssseeeesseeeeseneneees 27 Appendix 2 Analog to Digital Video ISSues cceee 28 Appendix 3 Comparing Video Image Codecs cccesse 35 Appendix 4 Comparing Audio Codecs cccssseeneeesseeeees 40 Contacting DayStal ccccsecceseccesseeeesseeeesseeeeeseeeesseeeenseeeeesneeensees 42 Page 2 of 42 XtraView USB Supported Devices a p2 ig i al E M XLR8 Xtra View USB User Manual About XLR8 XtraView USB The XtraView USB delivers full screen real time vid
21. and drop the XtraView USB movie into the pro ject window It will be converted to the required iMovie format and made available in your clips tray Older versions of iMovie do not support standard QuickTime file formats In order to import any QuickTime movie not just those created using XtraView USB it is necessary to use XtraView USB Exporter to export the movie as a DV Stream the same format produced by FireWire cameras 1 Open the movie to be exported in XtraView USB Exporter Select Export from the File menu Choose a location for the exported movie and select Movie to DV Stream from the Export pop up menu Click the Save button The movie will be expanded to full screen and can be imported using Import File in iMovie s File menu However it is much quicker to drop the exported movie into an iMovie project Media folder If you have QuickTime Pro it is possible to export movies as DV Streams using QuickTime Player and the technique described above BTV Pro and some other applications also allow movies to be ex ported as DV Streams without the need for QuickTime Pro Page 20 of 42 ANN Zs ProView USS bLiparto app XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Using XtraView USB Exporter Exporting QuickTime Movies Warning a bug QuickTime will prevent existing movies from being re placed even though the export runs to completion Do not attempt to replace an existing movie when exporting The files
22. as good as Sorenson Video 3 and this is due largely to the fact that its internal resolution is limited to either 352x288 176x144 or 128x96 For any other resolution the codec must scale up which it does rather well especially with motion although edges will usually appear blocky Motion is smooth even at low data rates Its big downside is that edges and non moving objects appear blocky It has better compression than Sorenson Video 3 at higher data rates although as the data rate lowers Sorenson narrows the gap Theoretically better compatibility than other Quicktime codecs due to its nature as a video standard but in all honesty most people are probably not using the players that can play H 263 without Quicktime so Quick time will probably have to be installed anyway It doesn t allow much con trol but it s also fairly idiot proof H 264 This new version of MPEG 4 WPEG 4 Part 10 is a delivery co dec optimized for high quality and efficiency It leverages data that does not change between frames for more efficient compression While Pixlet may require about 40 Mbps for 1920x1080 content H 264 delivers 1920x1080 content at about 8 Mbps This efficiency in H 264 enables delivery to and playback on a wide range of devices from mobile phones to computers to HDTV and beyond H 264 is extremely CPU intensive for compression and will not allow real time capture devices like XtraView USB to capture at full frame rates except on t
23. ayed each second It is pos sible to remove these interlacing artifacts and restore the video to its original 24 fps with little or no quality loss The process can be a bit confusing so I ve written another article that deals specifi cally with Telecining In general PAL SECAM telecining does not use duplicated fields Instead most 24 fps films are simply sped up by 4 to play at 25 fps on a PAL SECAM system In some cases during the conver sion from 24 fps to 25 fps one field of video is shifted by a frame This looks okay on an interlaced display television but it pro duces interlacing artifacts on a computer monitor Finally in very rare cases a 24 fps video is converted to 25 fps for PAL SECAM video by duplicating 2 fields over 24 frames to produce 25 frames Although have never seen this method be ing used believe that it also causes interlacing artifacts Page 34 of 42 QuickTime 7 Supported Video Formats e Animation Apple BMP Apple Pixlet Mac OS X v10 3 only e Apple Video e Cinepak Component video DV and DVC Pro NTSC DV PAL DVC Pro PAL Graphics H 261 H 263 H 264 e JPEG 2000 e Microsoft OLE decode only e Microsoft Video 1 decode only Motion JPEG A e Motion JPEG B MPEG 4 Part 2 e Photo JPEG Planar RGB PNG Sorenson Video 2 Sorenson Video 3 TGA TIFF XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Appendix 3 Comparing Video Image Codecs QuickT
24. ca tions B The second way to deinterlace video is to blend together the fields of the video so that combing effect of interlacing is not visible The advantage to this method is that since none of the fields are actu ally removed you get a smoother playing video The disadvantage is that a ghosting effect will be present in your video during mo tion This is caused by the blending of the two unique fields within a single frame of video Using this method of deinterlacing can also cause a loss of detail due to the blending Once again this problem can be partially avoided by using a the adaptive tools built into iMovie 6 and Cleaner 6 C The third way to deal with interlacing artifacts is through bob dein terlacing Bob deinterlacing is method by which each field of the video is made into a separate frame Because each field has only half the height of a full frame each field is resized to twice its original height when it is transformed into its own frame Bob dein terlacing has the effect of removing interlacing artifacts while dou bling the number of frames in the video Playing a bob deinter laced video on a progressive display is similar to playing an inter laced video on an interlaced display because each field is updated separately However there are a few disadvantages to bob deinterlacing Some horizontal lines in your video may appear to flutter up and down You have to determine the field dominance of a video A bob
25. displaying each field separately Because of this an interlaced video will play much more smoothly than a progres sive video when using an interlaced display Therefore if you re planning to watch your output video on a TV through an SVCD for example it s best to leave your video as interlaced On the other hand if you want to watch your video on a progressive computer monitor it s a good idea to de interlace your video Because a progressive display updates both fields of a frame at once you won t see the increased smoothness of interlaced video that occurs on an inter laced display Instead you ll see interlacing artifacts which don t look very good That s why it s recommended to de interlace your video if you ll be watching it on a computer Field Dominance If you re going to play an interlaced video on an interlaced display it s important to understand the concept of field dominance aka field order As discussed earlier an interlaced display updates each field sepa rately This brings up a question which field should be updated on the display first Field dominance defines the answer to that question Be cause the fields represent series of progressing moments in time there can only be one correct order in which to display them If the order is re versed the video will quickly alternate between going forwards and backwards in time leading to jerky motion The field dominance simply states whether the top odd field or
26. e This should only be necessary the first time a new standard is used It should not be necessary at all if only NTSC is ever used Note that the Format menu may not be present The technique just described will still work however If you wish to see or manipulate the Format menu uncheck the Auto Detect Input And Format box in the XtraView USB panel Page 13 of 42 ote or Me Wem st my tet Vere teres Covet Ow XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual x T ae a Sound Settings The Sound Settings dialog has 3 panels Generally speaking the only adjustment that will have to be made is to the gain level described below All other settings will usually remain the same Sound Settings Compression Panel Compressor menu Choose the QuickTime format for the captured sound here Choosing None will result in the best sound quality and will put the least strain on the proces sor If data size is critical you may wish to experiment with some of the other compressors Sound Settings Sample Panel Rate menu Size Choose the highest rate 16 bits and Stereo for general use If data size is critical lower qual ity settings can be used Sound Settings Source Panel Device menu or list Choose the de vice from which sound is to be cap tured If you have a XtraView USB device with sound inputs it will show up as Unknown USB Audio Device Do NOT select this device If it is al ready selected
27. e picture after deinterlaced it by first removing the even lines and then the odd lines As you can clearly see each field of video represents a different point in time In the first picture the man is turning his head to the right and getting ready to open his mouth A fraction of a second later in the second im age the man s head has moved further to the right and his mouth has opened Page 30 of 42 XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual How Do Remove Interlacing Artifacts If you re not going to watch an interlaced video on an interlaced display like a television you ll probably want to remove the interlacing artifacts There are three common methods that are used to eliminate interlacing artifacts found in interlaced video In addition to these methods below applications such as Cleaner 6 iMovie 6 and others have built in tools for removing or reducing comb 1 Deinterlace the video There are three ways to do this A One way is to remove one field of a video the odd or even lines and then blend interpolate the remaining lines The downside to this method is that you lose half of the fields in your video This makes the video play less smoothly because the field that you remove represents a unique point in time Additionally deinterlacing reduces the resolution of a video be cause you are removing all of the odd or even lines Fortunately adaptive deinterlacing is available in most modern editing appli
28. e that you would get with AVI or Win dows Media Anyone with Quicktime should be able to play it Older versions of Sorenson were infamous for being extremely slow but thankfully Soren son Video 3 is rather fast although still slowly than many of its AVI equivalents Page 38 of 42 XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual TGA An image based coded The TGA codec implements the lossless TGA compression decompression algorithm TIFF An image based coded The TIFF codec implements the lossless TIFF compression decompression algorithm Video This is the original Quicktime codec and is hugely out of date it was replaced by Cinepak which is now out of date itself It is inferior to other codecs in almost every way There is no reason to use it YUV422 codec This is an uncompressed codec based on the YUV422 It is the native capture format for the XtraView USB capture device Files generated using this format will huge approximately 1 gigabyte per minute Many hard drives may not be able to keep up with the pace of the data even if there is sufficient space available Using any com pressed formate such as Photo JPEG will dramatically lower the amount of space required Note that if Final Cut Pro is installed YUV422 codec is not listed and Uncompressed 8 bit 4 2 2 is shown instead Page 39 of 42 QuickTime 7 Supported Audio Formats 24 bit integer 32 bit floating point 32 bit integer 64 bit
29. e top field since it con tains the top line of the image The other field is made up of the even horizontal lines in a frame This is called the even field or bottom field Here is an illustration Since there are two fields in every frame a television actually updates the display at 60 fields per second or 50 fields per second for PAL SECAM video Each field is displayed 1 60th of a second after the pre ceding field or 1 50th of a second for PAL SECAM video Page 28 of 42 The following demonstrate the frames of a ball moving from left to right A ito of oo f f A ire of felts Progressive video on a progressive display Since both fields represent the same moment in time the moving ball is complete in all frames v Progressive video on an interlaced display Because an interlaced display only updates half of the image one field at a time the moving ball gets split while field 2 catches up A ito of FiFi A hen of Filis Interlaced video on an interlaced dis play Since each field represents a unique moment in time the two halves of the moving ball never line up A ite of e SI Hi Interlaced video on a progressive display A progressive display must update both fields at the same time However since each field represents a different moment in time the moving ball is split across the fields This effect during motion creates combing XLR8 XtraView USB User Manua
30. ection for details Note that some VCRs output a bright blue screen when not playing Do not confuse this screen with a problem screen Check the tape and hit the play button to make sure the VCR is playing Once video is available you may take snapshots and you may view and record video The following sections provide information on each menu item in Xtra View USB Capture You can start capturing immediately by following the following steps Page 8 of 42 Compression For Capture amp Editing XLR8 recommends using Photo JPEG for capture and editing PJPEG has excellent compression and playback on all Macs YUV422 Delivers full RAW uncompressed quality but requires 1GB per minute and extremely fast drive setups Compression For Delivery H 264 is perfect for final delivery with its small size and high quality It struggles on real time capture though due to high CPU require ments for encoding XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual XtraView USB Capture QuickStart Once you have launched XtraView USB Capture 1 Verify your Video Settings 2 Verify your Sound Settings 3 Make sure Record Video and Record Sound are checked 4 Select your Video Size 5 Review your Record Setup 6 Select Record or command r 7 To stop recording simply click in the small aiar na m pop up window that started with the re s mi rey cording Oot be Pes bee nee aA hee Dawe Dae wae ee l I oe Te Poal aam Cato
31. ents a line of the other field In reality the ball would be made up of many lines but I ve reduced it to two lines for simplification purposes In the second type of recorded video called interlaced video each field represents a unique instance in time More specifically each field of video represents a point in time 1 60th of a second later than the preced ing field Because of this a single frame of video does not correspond to a single instant in time Rather half of a frame shows an object at one point in time and the other half of the frame shows the object 1 60th of a second later I ve created some more animations to help demonstrate how interlaced video looks on an interlaced display television and a progressive scan display monitor Once again the top half of the ball represents a line of one field and the bottom half represents a line of the other field In real ity the ball would be made up of many lines but I ve reduced it to two lines for simplification purposes Page 29 of 42 If you look closely at the right side of the man s head you will notice a series of horizontal lines These horizontal lines are an artifact of interlacing This is often referred to as the combing effect be cause the lines look like the teeth of a hair comb Image deinterlaced by removing the even field Image deinterlaced by removing the odd field XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual So What Is Interlacing If you lo
32. eo capture to any USB 2 0 capable Power Macintosh or Intel based Mac system The XtraView USB package includes the XtraView USB video capture device with built in USB audio support and the XtraView USB driver and capture software for Mac OS X Types of video sources supported Your XtraView USB device supports the widest array of video input sources possible XtraView is designed to provide the maximum flexibility for video capture The only requirement is that your device is equipped with video out and audio out connections if you want to record sound XtraView USB receives video from the video out connector on these de vices using standard video extension cables Via the standard RCA composite video yellow connectors Via the professional S Video connectors black on higher grade video equipment It receives audio sound from the Audio Out connector on these devices using standard audio extension cables The extension cable plugs into XtraView USB s red and white audio connectors Mono sound via the standard RCA composite video left white connec tor Stereo sound via the standard RCA composite video left white right red connectors Video from tuners DSS Dish Direct TV and other satellite tuners Cable tuner boxes and direct from the TV s video out port Video from cameras and camcorders Standard and digital video camcorders with video out support Digital
33. floating point AAC MPEG 4 Audio ALaw 2 1 AMR Narrowband e Apple Lossless Encoder IMA 4 1 e MACE 3 1 e MACE 6 1 MS ADPCM decode only QDesign Music 2 Qualcomm PureVoice QCELP e ULaw 2 1 XLR8 Xtra View USB User Manual Appendix 4 Comparing Audio Codecs QuickTime 7 and up provides a variety of codecs compression decom pression choices Each choice has its advantages The following information is not meant to be the end all comparison but does provide information allowing you to make better guesses When in doubt just use None None Uncompressed Audio AAC MPEG 4 Audio AAC was developed by the MPEG group that includes Dolby Fraunhofer FhG AT amp T Sony and Nokia companies that have also been involved in the development of audio codecs such as MP3 and AC3 also known as Dolby Digital The AAC codec in QuickTime builds upon new state of the art signal processing technology from Dolby Laboratories and brings true variable bit rate VBR audio encoding to QuickTime When compared side by side AAC proves itself worthy of replacing MP3 as the new Internet audio standard MACE 3 1 amp MACE 6 1 Macintosh Audio Compression and Expansion According to the QuickTime Developers Reference These are 8 bit sound codec formats and not currently in use obsolete MACE 3 1 and 6 1 QDesign Music 2 The QDesign Music Codec QDMC is one of the best technologies available for enc
34. gs Options Certain codecs will provide additional settings and or options in the Compressor area You can seek more information about these settings in Appendix C Page 12 of 42 ae y wal gan te so te gt gt ipe t sa F tee m 7 i irs a Tr Ki ban a ont ipe vere teres ae Covet Owe a t gt E d XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Video Settings XtraView USB Panel USB Bandwidth Use this slider to reduce the USB bandwidth con sumed by the XtraView USB device When using multiple XtraView USB devices it may be necessary to use this slider to get all the de vices working See the section Using Multiple Devices for more in formation Horizontal Offset Vertical Offset Use these sliders or the arrow keys for better precision to make adjustments to the horizontal and vertical placement of the video frame Watch the preview on the left to see how far the image has moved If the video is nudged too far it may stop playing altogether Nudge it back until it starts playing again Auto Detect Input and Format The XtraView USB software has the ability to detect when video is present what format it is s video or composite and what standard itis NTSC or PAL SECAM It should never be necessary for the user to have to directly ma nipulate these settings How ever if auto detection is not Di desired then clear this check box Once it is cleared it will be neces
35. h time The first recording made will have the name base name_0000 the second will be basename_ 0001 etc de wt wy ee verev owe ee te ew mene Page 16 of 42 id Digitizers Menu es Use the Digitizers menu to control which device is the frontmost If you close a device s window it will stay closed until it is selected again in this menu even if you quit XtraView USB Capture and relaunch it XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Page 17 of 42 Using AppleScript with XtraView USB XtraView USB Capture has AppleScript support Here are the available commands and parameters and examples of their use y Basic commands open close start recording stop recording take snapshot Parameters window windowname e g window XtraView USB Specifies which device by name to open or close or from which to start recording stop recording or take a snapshot If this parameter is not specified the front most window is used with the exception of the open command as file filename e g take snapshot as picture1 e g start recording as movie1 e g start recording as file Hard Drive Pictures movie2 Specifies the destination for a recording or snapshot In the examples above picture1 will be saved to the desktop movie will be saved one folder above the desktop the root of the hard drive in Mac OS 9 or your personal folder in Mac OS X movie2 will be saved to the folder Pictures on the hard drive Ha
36. he DVCPRO50 codec has a fixed data rate of 7MB sec and is used to capture video digitally from FireWire enabled DVCPRO50 compatible camcorders and decks Like the DV codecs DVCPRO50 is imported as YUV encoded video and de livers considerably higher quality video since it uses less compression The DVCPRO50 codec is used to capture video digitally from FireWire enabled cameras and decks Graphics As the Animation codec is intended for animation the Graph ics codec is intended for graphics Well only 8 bit graphics unfortu nately so its use is limited Like animation this codec is betting on you having long lines of the same color otherwise you won t get much compression There are no quality controls and it s always lossless in 8 bit color at least The compres sion ratio is low which means that it might not be well suited to playback from CD ROM or the web H 261 This is an early codec designed for video conferencing at low data rates and may not be suitable for general purpose video The H 261 requires twice the bandwidth to achieve the same video quality as in the H 263 Page 36 of 42 XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual H 263 This codec is actually a standard for videoconferencing but has been used for video as well The appeal of it is that since it is a standard it can be played back by some non Quicktime players for example all MPEG 4 compliant players also support H 263 In general the quality is not
37. he fastest Macs It may also have issues with real time capture and broadcasting via QuickTime broadcaster JPEG 2000 This is an image coding system that uses JPEG compres sion techniques based on wavelet technology JPEG 2000 can operate at higher compression ratios without generating the characteristic blocky and blurry artifacts of the original DCT based JPEG standard It also al lows more sophisticated progressive downloads Motion JPEG A amp Motion JPEG B These codecs are designed for many video capture cards which provide hardware acceleration for JPEG compression They are variable data rate codecs and are the ones to use if you need to deliver more heavily compressed material to keep files small Motion JPEG M JPEG is a variant of the ISO JPEG specification for use with digital video streams Instead of compressing an entire image into a single bitstream Motion JPEG compresses each video field sepa rately returning the resulting JPEG bitstreams consecutively in a single frame According to the QuickTime specification MJPEG A and MJPEG B are both field based like Photo JPEG i e each of the two interlaced fields making up a video signal is compressed individually using the JPEG algorithm The difference between MJPEG A and MJPEG B is that MJPEG A supports markers in the bitstream whereas MJPEG B does not None Uncompressed RGB The only advantage it has is that it is stan dard for DirectShow as well so it can be
38. ime 7 and up provides a variety of codecs compression decom pression choices Each choice has its advantages It should be noted that many of the codecs are image based and not necessarily suitable for video or real time fram capture The following information is not meant to be the end all comparison but does provide information allowing you to make better guesses When in doubt just use Photo JPEG it s fast and gets the job done on any speed drive and CPU Animation Developed for computer generated imagery As the name implies this codec is best used on animation although it does all right on video as well It primarily compresses long lines of identical horizontal pixels which is why it s good for animation Animation also has an alpha channel This codec works well for images that use large areas of solid colors and is great for SketchUp images that have no textures or background gradients It is lossy but a compression setting of 100 is lossless Apple Intermediate Codec An i frame based video codec Best for edit ing in Final Cut Pro available with Quicktime Pro only The Apple Intermediate Codec is a high quality video codec that Apple developed for use as an alternative to native MPEG 2 HDV editing in an HDV workflow Instead of editing the MPEG 2 HDV data directly you can capture video from the tape source and then transcode it with the Apple Intermediate Codec to optimize the video data for playback
39. l Progressive Vs Interlaced Computer monitors and television screens do not display video in the same fashion A computer monitor updates the image only once for each frame of video Because of this both fields that make up a video frame are shown simultaneously Thus a computer monitor displays video at 30 fps This is called a progressive scan display A television on the other hand updates each field of a video frame sepa rately Because of this the television must update its display twice to show a complete frame It first updates the odd field and 1 60th of a second later it updates the even field It continues to alternate between the odd and lines 60 times each second Thus a television displays video at 60 fields per second This is called an interlaced display The field based nature of video also allows a video to be recorded in one of two ways In the first method called progressive video the two fields that make up a frame represent the same instant in time This means that each entire frame also represents a single instant in time This is the preferred format for watching video on a computer screen because un like a television a computer monitor displays both fields of a frame at the same time The images to the left demonstrate how progressive video looks on a progressive scan display monitor and an interlaced display television The top half of the ball represents a line of one field and the bottom half repres
40. le in that folder or you will have to reinstall the XtraView USB software The preference file for other applications is likely to be in the yourHomeFolder Library Preferences folder Captured sound sounds bad Check the gain setting in the Sound Settings dialog It should be set to 100 or less Note that early versions of QuickTime occasionally reset the gain value to 150 causing obvious distortions in captured sound Recordings stop automatically after about 30 minutes but I have ample disk space available for more footage Versions of QuickTime earlier than 6 5 limited captured movie sizes to 2 GB Upgrade to the latest version of QuickTime to overcome this prob lem Page 25 of 42 Stopping recording takes a very long time Movies in excess of 15 minutes can take a significant amount of time to close QuickTime is writing large amounts of movie data to the file during this interval Be patient it will finish It takes about 30 seconds for each hour of footage captured get a purple screen instead of video A purple screen indicates that the VideoGlide device could not obtain the bandwidth it requested The most common reason for this is that some other high speed device typically another video capture device is using the same USB 2 0 con troller In general it will be necessary to reduce the bandwidth consumed by one or more of the offending devices Some of the guidance in the Using Multiple Devices section may be
41. le that incom patibilities may arise If problems are encountered please contact EchoFX and we will endeavor to resolve them XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Apple Computer Inc Apple Computer Inc Apple Computer Inc Arcsoft ArKaos S A Ben Bird Boinx Software Channel Storm Ltd cycling 74 Econ Technologies Inc iVisit LLC Manfred Schubert MGH Poubelle Software Inc SubRosaSoft com Ltd Vara Software Ltd Wave Three Software Yahoo Inc QuickTime Broadcaster Final Cut Pro iMovie HD via import Video Impression 2 0 ArKaos VJ bTV bTV Pro SecuritySpy iStopMotion Live Channel Pro MaxMSP Cyclops and Jitter ImageCaster iVisit Video Viewer iChalk Oculus HomeGuardian Wirecast Videocue Session Yahoo Messenger www apple com www apple com www apple com www arcsoft com www arkaos net www bensoftware com www boinx com www channelstorm com www cycling74 com www econtechnologies com www ivisit com www schubert it com www mathgamehouse com www poubelle com www subrosasoft com www varasoftware com www wavessoftware com www yahoo com Page 4 of 42 Proview USB OS X pkg XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Installing the XtraView USB Software The XtraView USB software requires a XtraView USB device to operate You will install the software before the device But then you will connect the device before opening the software Launch the Installer To install the XtraVie
42. ly 1 gigabyte per minute Using any com pressed format will lower the amount of space required i Photo JPEG is recom mended since it provides real time capture on any compatible system Note that if Final Cut Pro is installed YUV422 codec is not listed and Uncom pressed 8 bit 4 2 2 is shown in its place Page 11 of 42 ven Sree y vem st my a tried Vee te I gt pee he bee lt w wee 1A hee a gt is ea ies a Eo oe mY tan a oe H See a vue loved ae Covet D 6 at t gt l g el Compression For Capture amp Editing XLR8 recommends using Photo JPEG for capture and editing PJPEG has excellent compression and playback on all Macs YUV422 Delivers full RAW uncompressed quality but requires 1GB per minute and extremely fast drive setups Compression For Delivery H 264 is perfect for final delivery with its small size and high quality It struggles on real time capture though due to high CPU require ments for encoding XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Video Settings Compression Panel Motion Note that not all selections are available with all Compression Types Frames per second Leave this set to Best in most situations Web cam operators and web conferencers may find it useful to lower the frame rate to reduce the network bandwidth required Anyone posting finished clips to the web may also wish to experi ment with lower frame rates to reduce the
43. n Editing Capture Software ArcSoft s Videolmpression 2 software is included to provide easy capture and editing within the same application Run the installer if you desire to use Videolmpression 4 Plug the XtraView USB cable into your system s USB 2 0 port Once you have rebooted plug the XtraView USB device If your sys tem is limited to USB 1 1 Upgraded PowerBook G3 Power Macin tosh G4 you will need a USB 2 0 expansion card Note do not plug into a hub In most cases a direct connection to your system is required 5 Connect your Video Source to the XtraView USB Choose from the composite video or S video Note If you use the S video connec tor switch the video settings to S video in the XtraView USB Cap ture video settings 6 Connector your Audio Source to the XtraView USB Simply plug audio direct into the XtraView device s red and white connectors 7 Launch XtraView USB Video Capture You will be prompted for the serial number XVU located on the back of the device and on the CD envelope 8 Check the Preview You should be able to see the image be ing captured If not select XtraView under the Digitizers menu 9 Adjust your Recording Preferences in the XtraView USB Record Menu Select the Video settings and choose Photo JPEG and High for quality This is a low power works well with slower CPUs high quality choice to get up and running fast Select the Sound settings and
44. n there is only 190 megabits of bandwidth available Either one or both streams need to be reduced in size A stream reduced to 320 x 240 will consume only 35 megabits of bandwidth If this is done to every stream it is theoretically possible to drive up to 4 devices at 30 frames per second Unfortunately some older XtraView USB devices do not support low bandwidth settings properly While it is always possible to drive two devices it may be more difficult to get three or more working on the same controller Changing the frame size for a XtraView USB device reduces the amount of bandwidth the device needs It does not however reduce the amount it consumes Even after reducing all the frame sizes to 320 x 240 all the devices except one will still display a purple screen To change the bandwidth being consumed by each device open the Video Settings panel for each one switch to the XtraView USB panel and reduce the bandwidth to the first or second setting above 0 If the device is fairly modern the lower bandwidth will be applied After all devices have been set to the lowest bandwidth necessary they should all start streaming video It may be possible to use PCl based USB 2 0 cards to increase the number of USB 2 0 controllers available in the system However a great many USB 2 0 cards exist that are either not implemented correctly or not supported correctly by the Mac OS so the options are somewhat limited at this time Page 23 of 42
45. ne red light in the left and or right channels as shown in the illustration Page 14 of 42 jet wg Wen st ey A a E XLR8 Xtra View USB User Manual xi T ae a Record video When Record Video is checked video will be captured during record ing If you only wish to capture sound uncheck this item Record sound When Record Sound is checked sound will be captured during re cording See the description of the Sound Settings dialog for more in formation about capturing sound Sizes based on the device defaults Quarter Size Half Size Full Size Double Size settings are aligned with the devices natural video frame size XtraView USB s natural frame size is 640 x 480 Quarter Size will therefore be 160 x 120 Half Size will be 320 x 240 Full Size will be 640 x 480 and Double Size will be 1280 x 960 Sizes based on exact pixel dimensions 80 x 60 160 x 120 320 x 240 640 x 480 selections will capture a mov ies at the correct width to height ratio of 4 to 3 The default size is 640 x 480 and will be selected when XtraView USB Capture launches Note that 640 x 480 is the highest proportionally correct frame size supported by XtraView USB devices eon ies Select Custom Size to de fine an arbitrary frame size Jx Some sizes may not be sup ported and video may disap pear or be clipped in unex pected ways Z Full Screen Use this option to switch to full screen viewing mode No
46. oding music at very low data rates It does an outstanding job on instrumental music allowing very high quality reproduction even when streaming over a 14 4 or 28 8 modem The QDesign Music Codec is also very good at vocal music although more complex clips may require slightly higher data rates Even though the codec s name refers to music it can reproduce any type of material For anything other than simple speech clips QDesign Music Codec is the best low data rate QuickTime codec It is important to point out that QDesign Music Codec is not like MIDI Rather than require mu sic to be stored as a series of notes it works with sampled audio files just like IMA or other QuickTime codecs This takes more data rate than MIDI but avoids the need to transcribe the music and produces higher quality audio Qualcomm PureVoice PureVoice compresses voice data very effi ciently meeting or exceeding telephone land line quality at approximately 1 kilobyte per second 24 bit Integer 32 bit Integer Works best when audio data must be stored using 24 bit or 32 bit Integer encoding Commonly used by hard ware and software engineers 32 bit Floating Point 64 bit Floating Point Works best when audio data must be stored using 32 bit or 64 bit floating point encoding Com monly used by hardware and software engineers Page 40 of 42 XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual IMA 4 1 Works best for cross platform audio for multimedia The IMA
47. ok closely at the four illustrations on the previous page you ll see that only one of them doesn t split up the ball during motion progressive video on a progressive display In the other three the ball is split apart during motion However when watching video on a television interlaced display the split isn t noticeable by human eyes This is because among other things a television doesn t produce as crisp an image as does a com puter monitor Therefore in only one of the four setups will the split be noticeable interlaced video on a progressive display monitor This split in the image across fields due to motion is what is known as an inter lacing artifact The even lines in this picture which are what you see on the right side of the man s head make up the even field of the video The odd lines which you can see on the left of his head make up the odd field In this picture the man is turning his head to the right The even field that you see on the right of his head represent a point in time 1 60th of a second after the time represented by the odd field The lines are visible because there was motion in the 1 60th of a second be tween the two fields To demonstrate how each field represents a different point in time you can remove one field of video and blur together the lines of the remaining field This process called deinterlacing removes the interlacing artifacts Below you will find images of the abov
48. or quantization VQ to perform its compression It has built in data rate limiting making it ideal for bandwidth limited appli cations such as delivering multimedia video from CD ROM It uses both spatial and temporal compression This was the dominant codec for many years which lead to it being in stalled on almost every computer and giving it excellent compatibility but from a technological viewpoint it is obsolete MPEG has replaced Cine pak as the new standard for universal playback Although not as advanced as modern codecs videos compressed using Cinepak will work reliably on any platform play smoothly from CD ROM and will provide decent file size compression Cinepak is asymmetrical and lossy Component Video An uncompressed codec This one is 4 2 2 and should be used with YUV content This codec provides relatively little compression which means files can get large It s useful for archiving or temporarily storing video DV PAL Used by PAL digital video hardware such as camcorders DV DVCPRO NTSC amp DVCPRO PAL The DV DVCPRO codec is used to capture video digitally from FireWire enabled DV or DVCPRO compatible camcorders and decks It is imported as YUV encoded video and delivers considerably higher quality video since it uses less com pression The DV DVCPRO codec is used to capture video digitally from FireWire enabled cameras and decks that do not support DVCPROS50O DVCPRO50 NTSC amp DVCPRO50 PAL T
49. ort movies using Quick Time Player and the technique described above BTV Pro and some other applications also allow movies to be exported without the need for QuickTime Pro Exporting QuickTime Movies to iTunes and to iPods iTunes 6 and higher and some iPods are capable of displaying movies XtraView USB Exporter can be used to export any movie to the iTunes iPod format If you have not done so already install QuickTime 7 0 3 or higher Open the movie to be exported in XtraView USB Exporter Select Ex port from the File menu Choose a location for the exported movie and select Movie to iPod 320x240 from the Export pop up menu Click the Save button To add the new movie to iTunes drag it to an iTunes playlist To add the new movie to an iPod first add it to iTunes and then synchronize your iPod with iTunes XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Page 21 of 36 Page 21 of 42 Note that XtraView USB movies are already at a 4 to 3 ratio at the larg est natural size XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Correcting the Aspect Ratio Of Movies XtraView USB Exporter will check the width to height ratio also known as the aspect ratio of the source movie If the movie is not in the cor rect 4 to 3 proportion you will be given an opportunity to correct the problem You can correct the prob lem temporarily i e only TN apap oh tee ope te while XtraView USB Ex porter remains open or permanently by checking
50. performance and quality Apple Pixlet Video Pixlet is focused on workflow designed for digital filmmakers animators and effects artists to easily review high resolution image sequences on a standard PowerMac or PowerBook Pixlet plays every frame of a sequence without frame to frame dependencies so that a media professional can scrutinize every detail of a sequence Pixlet enables high end digital film frames at 960x540 at about 20 Mbps to play in real time with a 1GHz G4 or faster Macintosh while 1920x1080 frames at about 40 Mbps will play in real time on a dual 2GHz G5 or faster This capability eliminates the need to invest in costly proprietary hardware for the professional review process Apple VC H 263 This codec is a modified version of H 263 for iChat BMP A standard bit mapped image format used in the Windows envi ronment Page 35 of 42 Compression For Capture amp Editing XLR8 recommends using Photo JPEG for capture and editing PJPEG has excellent compression and playback on all Macs YUV422 Delivers full RAW uncompressed quality but requires 1GB per minute and extremely fast drive setups Compression For Delivery H 264 is perfect for final delivery with its small size and high quality It struggles on real time capture though due to high CPU require ments for encoding XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Cinepak A lossy block oriented compressor originally developed by SuperMac It uses vect
51. rd Drive Note that s are required to separate folders not s means up one level If this parameter is not specified XtraView USB Capture will ask for the file name or auto name the file if autoname is enabled with large e g take snapshot window XtraView USB with large If the digitizer supports it take the largest picture possible If this pa rameter is not specified the current frame size is used XtraView USB devices ignore this parameter duration duration e g start recording duration 20 Specifies the length of time to record a movie in seconds If this pa rameter is not specified the movie will be recorded until stopped XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Page 18 of 42 XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual AppleScript Examples Open the application Applications AppleScript Script Editor Type in the following and click Run tell application XtraView USB Capture take snapshot window XtraView USB as thepicture start recording as file 40GB mymovie mov duration 20 end tell XtraView USB Capture will launch a snapshot will be acquired and thepicture will be saved to the desktop XtraView USB Capture will then record 20 seconds of video to the file mymovie mov on the hard disk named 40GB Page 19 of 42 iMowle HD 205 XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Using XtraView USB Movies in iMovie Using XtraView USB movies in recent versions of iMovie is very easy Open an iMovie project
52. sary to return to the Source Panel to select the de sired settings Video Settings Source Panel Digitizer Menu or List This lets you select which digitizer to use If digitizers other than XtraView USB devices are available you may se lect them here If you have alternative digitizers connected to your ma chine some applications may prefer those over XtraView USB devices Use this menu to switch to a particular XtraView USB device If you have more than one XtraView USB device the second device and higher will have a number at the end of the name to help distinguish them Input menu or sub list This lets you select which input to digitize from s video or composite The XtraView USB software is smart enough to auto select the input if there is only one active video source However if you have active video sources attached to both the s video connector and the composite connector it will be necessary to use this menu or sub list to choose between them Format menu This menu lets you choose between PAL SECAM or NTSC video The XtraView USB software chooses the standard auto matically and you should never need to use this menu However QuickTime will usually become confused when using a non NTSC standard for the first time or when switching from one standard to an other It will be necessary to open this panel at least once click OK and relaunch the application so that QuickTime can be made fully aware of the standard in us
53. select None for compression Select Record from the Record menu and type the name you want to use for the new movie To stop recording click the window that appears after the recording has started Page 2 of 42 XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Before you Install Update Your Software 10 3 5 or later is required XtraView USB is designed to work with the latest version of Mac OS X software While it will work with versions of Mac OS X starting with 10 3 5 and earlier versions of QuickTime and iMovie advances in the handling of analog to digital conversions have improved significantly In short your end product will look better if you use the latest versions of Mac OS X QuickTime and the editing applications Verify that your system is fast enough Video capture and editing is extremely processor intensive It is not rec ommended on G3 systems 550 MHz G4 or faster is rec ommended Verify that you have USB 2 0 XtraView USB will not work with USB 1 1 USB 2 0 was introduced beginning with the iMac Flat Panel 1 GHz eMac 1 25 GHz iBook G4 PowerBook G4 Aluminum and the Power Macintosh G5 In general all Macs built in the second half of 2003 or later have built in USB 2 0 support If you are not sure open Applications Utilities System Profiler switch to the USB section and look for a USB High Speed Bus If present then the machine has either built in USB 2 0 support or a USB 2 0 upgrade card installed
54. select some other audio source even if there is nothing attached to it Attempting to use Un tor neve me Vv i s e ft _ Sat a Ter 4 s Warr t Hce a a m gt aa mun cas known USB Audio Device as an audio source will result in corrupted QuickTime movies Use the built in microphone port on your Macintosh instead if it has one If your Mac does not have a microphone port a Griffin USB iMic is a highly recommended alternative If there are no other choices in this panel it will be necessary to disable sound cap ture using the Record Sound option in the Record menu Input menu or sub list Choose the input associated with a specific device from which sound is to be captured Note that some devices have only one input It will be sufficient to just select the device in that case Sound Settings Speaker Settings In addition to the three panels described above the following sound settings are always available on the right hand side of the Sound Set tings dialog Speaker menu Controls when sound is played The recommended choice is Off While Recording Sound will still be captured during recording just not during capture in order to reduce the strain on the processor Volume Controls the speaker any time sound is being played Gain If sound is coming in loud and distorted or too faintly adjust this setting accordingly Ideally input sound should occasionally peak at o
55. t white RCA connector into the mono white or black connector on your audio extension cable Page 7 of 42 Prova VSA Caprere 2pe XLR8 Xtra View USB User Manual Using XtraView USB Capture XtraView USB Capture located in the Applications XtraView USB folder is a Mac OS X native QuickTime savvy digitizing application You can use this application to take snapshots and to view and record video from one or more XtraView USB devices Launch XtraView USB Video Capture Double click XtraView USB Capture to run it A window will appear If you have attached one or more video capture devices windows will appear containing the video from each device You will be prompted for the serial number PVU located on the Pease personalize your software back of the device and on the CD en Name tr Proview USS Costorser velope Serial Number 7 Devices You can enter the serial number or losion Manufar Mode select Demonstration mode which will ii provide only 10 minutes use per launch and include a Daystar watermark Once you enter the number and click Snn eg OK the application will launch and you should see a video preview window If not select XtraView USB under the Digitizers menu Note Instead of video the window may contain one of a number of solid colors The most common color you will see is green no video source is plugged in and playing If you see any other color refer to the trouble shooting s
56. te that a fast processor and a supported graphics card will be required to achieve acceptable frame rates Type command F escape or hit the space bar to exit full screen mode Record Once all the settings have been selected select Record to record a QuickTime movie A dialog will be presented asking where the movie is to be saved The movie will then be recorded until the mouse button is clicked or the hard drive becomes full If a movie is particularly long greater than 30 minutes for example it may take some time to stop the recording Be patient It will eventually finish The files recorded by XtraView USB Capture can be imported into any QuickTime savvy video editing package Page 15 of 42 ie See oY Wim ste my wi tried yu oih t Ls pes p w ar 1A hee Iae Dae Da H gt i Masir ai nts oe mY ee x nome See a owe loved Ki tno De bee et Sorel wng m XLR8 Xtra View USB User Manual Record Duration The same as Record except that you will be asked to specify the dura tion of the recording session This is handy if you know how long a piece of video lasts and don t want to have to re napas turn to the machine to halt bien serie tree the recording Record Setup If Auto name is checked you may specify a destination folder and a base file name for recordings This information will be used to save recordings automatically without the need to specify the location eac
57. the bottom even field is supposed to be shown first For example a dominance of top field first would mean that the top field is displayed before the bottom field in a frame In general there is no consistent field dominance Each capture card and video source can lead to a different field dominance One way to deter mine the correct field dominance is to play a segment of your video on a TV If the motion is jerky try changing the field dominance so the other field is displayed first dominant If you re working with DV video it s usually bottom even field dominant Page 33 of 42 XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Interlacing in Progressive Video There are also times when a video that seems to be interlaced is actually progressive non interlaced There are two things that can cause this 1 The fields in your captured video are swapped or in the wrong order This is caused when your capture card puts the fields in the wrong order It can occur for example if your capture card starts capturing the odd even lines in the wrong order or doesn t place them correctly into memory The source video was telecined Telecining is a method by which progressive video that runs at 24 fps such as a film is converted to run at 30 fps or 25 fps for PAL SECAM video For NTSC telecining also known as 3 2 pulldown interlacing artifacts are caused by duplicate fields of video that are used to increase the number of frames displ
58. tiple video sources is Econ Technologies ImageCaster webcam software When using more than one XtraView USB device keep in mind that the devices consume considerable amounts of bandwidth and careful ar rangement will be required in order to maximize the performance of each device A USB 2 0 controller can support one or more USB ports on a computer Each USB 2 0 controller provides a fixed pool of bandwidth from which isochronous devices such as XtraView USB devices can draw USB 2 0 equipped Macs come with only one USB 2 0 controller which is shared by all the USB ports built in to a machine All XtraView USB devices that plug directly or indirectly into a machine s built in USB 2 0 port must share from the fixed pool of bandwidth offered by that Mac s single USB 2 0 controller If you see a purple display in a XtraView USB s video preview window that means that there is insufficient bandwidth remaining in the pool to drive the device using its current settings One or more device settings will have to be adjusted to allow all the devices to work within the avail able bandwidth of the USB 2 0 controller A USB 2 0 controller can provide approximately 190 megabits of band width All XtraView USB devices plugged into a Mac s built in USB 2 0 ports must draw from this pool A single 640 x 480 stream at 30 frames per second consumes 140 megabits of bandwidth There is no way to have two streams of this size running at the same time whe
59. vice while using it or trying to connect to the device while it is use by another application can capture video but it won t playback and I can t open it with XtraView USB Exporter This is usually due to the selection of the XtraView USB device as the audio source in the Sound Settings Source panel Open the Sound Set tings panel and change the source to anything else or just turn off audio recording in the Record menu My Mac does not have a microphone port How can I capture audio Apple made a number of machines without microphone ports The most cost effective way to capture audio on these machines is to upgrade to a XLR8 ExtraView USB all in one capture device or use a Griffin iMic USB audio capture Page 24 of 42 Tip You can reset QuickTime settings and clear anomalies by holding the op tion key while opening the XtraView USB video and or sound settings XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual There are thin black bands around the video picture Many video devices do not play frames in precisely the right place Use the Video Settings XtraView USB panel to nudge the video into the cor rect place and eliminate the black bands You can use the arrow keys instead of the sliders if you wish for more precise placement Note that nudging the video too far may stop it altogether If that happens you will have to nudge it back until it starts again can t capture at 29 97 frames per second 25 fps for PAL SECAM A K
60. w USB software for Mac OS X double click the in staller on the CD and follow the instructions Since System level files are installed the installer will prompt you for your admin user and pass word Restart A restart will be required after the installation process is complete ans teree mi ie 9 p Aw f errs m e Comme The following components are installed 1 System Library Extensions XtraView USB X kext Prevents the Classic environment from grabbing the XtraView USB device when it starts up 2 Library QuickTime XtraView USB component A QuickTime module that allows OS X native QuickTime savvy ap plications to use XtraView USB devices to capture video 3 Applications XtraView USB XtraView USB Capture A human interface to the XtraView USB device Run it to capture video from one or more XtraView USB devices Read the section Using XtraView USB Capture for more details 4 Applications XtraView USB XtraView USB Exporter Exports XtraView USB movies to any other available QuickTime for mat See the section Using XtraView USB Exporter for more infor mation 5 Applications XtraView USB XtraView USB Tools XtraView USB Un install This software allows most of the XtraView USB software to be re moved from the system See the accompanying Read Me for more information Page 5 of 42 D XtraView USB Audio Video Capture Device XLR8 Xtra View USB
61. y speaking NTSC is used in North America Japan Central America and Chile SECAM is used in France Eastern Europe and cen tral and western Africa PAL is used almost everywhere else Standard selection is automatic so just plug the video source in and XtraView USB will determine which to use The maximum resolution and frame rate of the captured video depends on the video standard Video captured from NTSC sources is 640 x 480 at 29 97 frames per seconds Video captured from PAL SECAM sources is 640 x 480 at 25 frames per second Video sources can be either composite or s video format If at all possi ble try to connect your video device via an s video cable the black con nector on the XtraView USB device The quality of s video is generally higher than composite Video devices that can be used include VCRs cam corders DVD Players video game consoles etc anything that has composite or s video outputs Many European video devices connect to s video and composite using a device known as SCART However just because a device has a SCART connector does not mean that it supports the higher quality s video for mat Using the s video source when it is not supported will result in a gray picture To receive a color image use the composite connector onrm Oru stcay XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Page 27 of 42 D a ven a m Somplate trams Odd Fral XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Appendix 2 Analog to Digital
62. ystar Tech com iChat AIM daystartech mac com Business hours 9am to 6 30pm Eastern Time Monday through Friday Sales Department For reseller inquiries and pre sales technical information please contact Daystar Sales E mail sales Daystar Tech com Phone 770 614 5400 Customer Service For customers who have already purchased a Daystar products and re quire support technical assistance manuals or software please contact Customer Service Daystar Customer Service E mail support Daystar Tech com Phone 770 614 5400 Marketing amp Press Relations For press and media relations please contact Gary Dailey President 5012 Bristol Ind Way 108 Buford GA 30518 USA Phone 404 625 7432 Fax 678 547 3163 E mail gary Daystar Tech com Daystar Online Store To inquire about online orders or contact online store customer service Online Store Customer Service E mail support Daystar Store com XLR8 XtraView USB User Manual Page 42 of 42

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