HELP!

Here's the problem:

The card works straight off, but my system doesn't see the video inputs yet.

I do not care about the TV/FM tuner, 3D performance, or any other functionality of this card. I got it purely for the RCA (composite) Video input on the 3dfx Dongle.  I have no desire to use an external video device such as a Dazzle (hate them, HATE them, slow, ugly, backwards designed, cumbersome crap).

I don't need to use the RF jacks or anything else on this video card, all I need is to capture video (to ANY file type, don't care what) as it comes in the composite video input.

I'm running a 3dfx Voodoo3 3500TV-US with WinXP Pro on a 900Mhz AMD system using an Asus K7V MB with 256Mb of slow-a$$ RAM.  I got this 3dfx card from a friend, not realizing how many issues there were with running it under XP.

When I first installed it, my system saw it as a v3 right away and I have not installed ANY drivers so far (if Windows did, it did so seamlessly without any notification or questions for me).  My dual monitor setup is working nicely, but I have no clue how to get the 3dfx Dongle working.

I don't want to watch TV on this thing, I just want to capture a single stream of composite NTSC video (via the RCA jack) to a fair-quality file.  This is mainly for the express purpose of off-hours security-cam and party-cam recordings. (Yes I have plenty of HD space.)

I've DLed the latest VisualReality and XP-modified 3500 drivers, but I don't want to install them till I know whether they will do what I need.

If I can't make this card work, I'm going to have to buy another one, because no way am I putting up with the abominable connection/quality/speed issues inherent in USB-based video input devices.

If you can help in any way, please EMail me at wowbagger_t_i_p@hotmail.com.  Thanks!

Reading through this and other message boards, I've been pretty surprised to find such a lack of interest in the video inputs/outputs.  To me, that's the whole appeal of a card like this.

Why pay extra $$ for a card with a huge cable coming off the back with stereo audio, composite video and S-Video connectors going both in and out, then only take advantage of the RF jack and tuner that's built right onto the back of the card?  I've seen plenty of 2d/3d cards (especially these days) with tuners built in, but cards with inputs AND outputs for video editing are still somewhat less common.

I've got a way to watch TV, it's my TV.  I'm not that into recording mass amounts of TV either.  What I don't have, is a convenient way to record, edit and playback live or recorded video.  Now that's something usefull, and being as modern computers are more than powerful enough, I'd think more people would concentrate on getting the video editing working than finding another way to watch TV.

Q: Is VisualReality designed ONLY for use with the tuner card (RF jacks)?  What drivers/software was originally intended for use with the Dongle connections?

(I can always route through my VCR or Amp to push my composite signal into the RF Jack if I have to, but that means losing signal quality)

BTW: Not to cheese off all the 3dfx fans here, but I've never looked much at 3dfx cards for my own purposes.  ATI was my choice for multimedia, NVidea for 3D power.  The GeForce series really worked well for me, and the Ultra TNT2 32meg served me well for years.  3dfx ALWAYS seemed to have driver issues, and I hate that.  ATI may be crappy, but at least it's consistent.

Rudimentary is good.  All I want the card to do is give me an input so I can save it to a file.  If I can even play it back on screen, I can record it using Windows Media Encoder or another video encoding utility.

Television and NTSC cameras only run at 320x240 anyway.  For that matter DVD does too, DVD is NOT high-res, just has a much much clearer picture.  The usual reason people rip DVD to higher res is because the mpeg compression is so lossy that it looks better with larger formats.  But for playback on a TV, a pixel-for-pixel 320x240 image is ideal.

I just want to encode 320x240 Mpeg 1 (mpg2 will work too) so I can edit it in Adobe Premier or other software later.

The VisualReality menu allows me to select AVI, MPG1 or MPG2 to encode via the "VCR" function.  Not that I would know if that works yet.

Dunno what you mean by Realtime, but if you can record a 30fps video signal, that's effectively realtime for me.  I'm not planning on stopping and starting much either.  I'm gonna record hours at a time, then edit the files later with more powerful software.

BTW: Surveillance cameras in the US are generally NTSC, 320x240x60hz, they're just B&W sometimes.  Anyway by security-cam I meant that I've got a videocamera mounted on the dock that I can view my front door with.

Oh, and don't worry about file sizes.  I've got about 40-gigs free to throw around.

Thanks for the tip.  Using VirtualDub is a good idea.

Unfortunately, I don't think it'll work, because my system can't FIND the "composite" input, so I can't select it for use.

My system doesn't seem to see the new inputs/outputs at all, much less the tuner card.

Are the 3DFX tools just totally unworkable with my system?

I think this could be moved over to Tech Talk, unless my post is off-topic, in which I will start a new one in the other area.