I’ve been attempting to record our presentations at the Inland Empire .Net Users Group for a while now. epiphan graciously donated one of their VGA2USB products to help us capture the presenter’s live screen without having to install any software. It’s been really helpful.
I just upgraded to an HP dv7t 3000 core i7 laptop running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. Apparently epiphan’s 64-bit driver doesn’t seem to work on Windows 7 Ultimate 64. While their bundled video recording software captures the input just fine I have not been able to capture anything other than a one second black video using Windows Media Encoder 9 64-bit, Microsoft Expression Encoder 3, Camtasia Studio 6.0.3, VirtualDub 32-bit or VirtualDub 64-bit. Ugh.
epiphan has a stable version of their 32-bit driver along with a beta version that reportedly works with Windows 7. Neither were able to correctly install on my laptop. Their 64-bit driver was able to install and recognize the device just fine but I can’t capture video with anything other than their built-in program. Unfortunately their built-in program does not capture audio. When you capture just video, most of the codecs have a variable framerate which causes the audio and video to go out of sync throughout the entire presentation. Recording them together on Windows XP using Windows Media Encoder worked like a champ.
Oh well. While their website offers little in the way of support they have usually responded to me within about 24-48 hours when I email them. Hopefully we can get this resolved before the next user group meeting.
I’m having the same problem. If only their software did audio.
I am very eager to hear what you discover. I saw your post on Adobe forum as well. I was having same problem on my Vista 64-bit machine and tried most or the same troubleshooting steps you’ve gone through. I am planning to get several Windows7 machines soon, but not til this is resloved! thx.
Just spoke with George at Epiphan tech support. I also downloaded most recent ver3.24.3 64-bit drivers.
Still getting black screen when recording in WME9 64-bit. I am using a Dell StudioXPS desktop with an i7 processor, Vista 64-bit.
George did give me a helpful tip about “pixel format” default in the WME Properties menu, under the “processing tab”.
By default, pixel format says default. When I switch this to RGB24, my image popped up in the input box. I was momentarily excited. Once I began recording, both input and output boxes go black and resulting file is just black screen. bummer…
I never had to adjust the WME pixel format property with 32-bit version on WindowsXP. Anyway, this just gives me the same result I was getting with FMLE, instead with FMLE the screen is green, not black 🙁
I tried every variation of WMV codec possible, but no success.
Hey Michael, thanks for the great feedback.
Natasha from epiphan contacted me also telling me about the pixel format and asked me to download their vga2usb-3.23.6.0003-amd64.zip driver. Here is what I did:
1) Uninstalled all VGA2USB device drivers from Windows 7 and restarted.
2) Installed the current 3.22.2.0004 driver from the website and restarted.
3) Confirmed could capture using the VGA2USB software.
4) Opened Windows Media Encoder (WME), set the compression to Internet progressive download, screen capture, 15fps, set format to RGB 24 Pixel and left all other defaults.
5) Started recording. Sound recorded great. Screen capture recorded at only ~1.5 fps.
At this point any subsequent recordings simply recorded a black screen with full audio. To once again record video (again at only ~1.5 fps) I had to restart my computer. Changing video compression settings only served to record a black screen.
6) Uninstalled driver and restarted.
7) Installed 3.23.6.0003 driver referenced in your email and restarted.
8) Ran everything again and received the same results. Downloading the new driver seemed to have no change.
Also, I could only test WME. There seems to be no way (that I know of) to set the format to RGB 24 Pixel in VirtualDub, Expression Encoder 3 or Live Photo Gallery.
After telling epiphan this I got an email back from George stating he couldn’t find an issue. He asked me to download the 3.24.3 driver but I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet. He asked about the specs on my laptop stating that many laptop harddrives simply cannot keep up. While this may explain the very low frame rate this doesn’t answer the inability to get video at all. However, I think my laptop can easily handle the VGA2USB.
Here are the specs of my computer. It is a brand new laptop:
HP dv7t Quad Core i7-720QM
Intel Core i7-720QM 1.6GHz
6MB L2 cache
1222MHZ front side bus
4GB DDR3 SDRAM
320 GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
SuperMulti 8x DVD+-RW drive
17.3″ HD LED BrightView Display 1600×900
1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 320M video card
Windows 7 Ultimate
These specs should be more than adequate. In fact, the XP machine this replaced was a 5 year old P4 2.4 GHz machine with 2GB of ram and a 5400 RPM IDE drive. On that machine we easily got 7-10 fps at 1024×768 on WME with the default settings.
I wonder if it has something to do with the processor or chipset.
Hey guys, I have got the device to working with Win 7 drivers. What I had to do first was delete all of my USB drivers from device manager, reboot and it has been working great. I have had success with the Epiphan software, Win Media Expression, and Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder. I’m working on a laptop with a 2,0 dual core cpu with 4 gigs of ram. This process is certainly more cpu intensive than ram. When I go above 15fps my cpu is fully loaded, but only using a little less than 2 gigs of ram. But it works great. I should get a better laptop though.
Matt, i would like to add that the Epiphan software does capture audio. And quite well I might add.
Having a similar problem with using this device in Wirecast, I can see it, but it looks horrible and none of the usual options are available to alter the image.
hey all. I never got it working on my vista machine, but I’ve got to make the jump to Win7 pretty soon because I need to be more mobile and we’re planning to lease some elitebooks from HP. Does anyone know what the latest is on the VGA2USB working with Win7? I never had a problem with the DVI2USB or the VGA2USB LR, but most of what we own is the standard VGA2USB. thx
Hi Michael,
I’ve all but given up on this unfortunately. I’m convinced that our model, now over 3 years old, isn’t supported somehow anymore. I can’t get it to capture video on Win7 or even on our old WinXP laptop that was so faithful.
I will try the latest drivers for Win7 and let you know what I find out. However, if you are purchasing a new unit my results may not be the same ones you get.