Video properties cannot be set in Vista

I wrote a video capture driver for our company's usb webcam device in
Windows 2000 many years ago. In Windows XP, the video capture driver still
works, however, in Vista 32 bit, video properties cannot be set in amcap,
skype, or Yahoo! messenger. The property settings(capture filter) box does
not pop out in these applications, not to mention chaning the properties. MSN
Live messenger works as previous, and I can change brightness, contrast or
white balance for our webcam.

The default usbvideo.sys driver from Microsoft is tested against our
webcam for cross-validation, and it does not have problem mentioned above.
Therefore I know it's our driver's problem.

I think the possibilites of the causes includes:
1. There are some "hidden" SRBs in Vista that our webcam driver does
not handle.
2. MS secretly change the GUID of PROPSETID_VIDCAP_VIDEOPROCAMP in
Vista, thus applications does not know our webcam supports video property
settings.
3. Our driver does not follow new AVStream architecture and DirectShow
does not support it. (I hope not, or I have to rewrite our driver)

However, all of these cannot explain why MSN Live messenger still
works. I wonder what is the true cause of this problem?

Thanks~~~

Geraint
Thu Mar 20 05:24:45 CDT 2008

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 19:17:00 -0700, Lono
<Lono@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

> I wrote a video capture driver for our company's usb webcam device in
>Windows 2000 many years ago. In Windows XP, the video capture driver still
>works, however, in Vista 32 bit, video properties cannot be set in amcap,
>skype, or Yahoo! messenger. The property settings(capture filter) box does
>not pop out in these applications, not to mention chaning the properties. MSN
>Live messenger works as previous, and I can change brightness, contrast or
>white balance for our webcam.
>
> The default usbvideo.sys driver from Microsoft is tested against our
>webcam for cross-validation, and it does not have problem mentioned above.
>Therefore I know it's our driver's problem.

You can still capture from the webcam, if I understood you, so that
rules out most of your possible causes I think. The prop page you are
talking about uses a number of different interfaces and the chances
are that there is some minor error that was overlooked before. Can you
query for the property interface and adjust it from a custom app?

Tim
Thu Mar 20 23:12:53 CDT 2008

Lono <Lono@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
>
> I wrote a video capture driver for our company's usb webcam device in
>Windows 2000 many years ago. In Windows XP, the video capture driver still
>works, however, in Vista 32 bit, video properties cannot be set in amcap,
>skype, or Yahoo! messenger. The property settings(capture filter) box does
>not pop out in these applications, not to mention chaning the properties. MSN
>Live messenger works as previous, and I can change brightness, contrast or
>white balance for our webcam.

You might try:
regsvr32 \windows\system32\kswdmcap.ax

Kswdmcap.ax is the guy that produces the standard property pages from the
driver properties.

> I think the possibilites of the causes includes:
> 1. There are some "hidden" SRBs in Vista that our webcam driver does
>not handle.
> 2. MS secretly change the GUID of PROPSETID_VIDCAP_VIDEOPROCAMP in
>Vista, thus applications does not know our webcam supports video property
>settings.
> 3. Our driver does not follow new AVStream architecture and DirectShow
>does not support it. (I hope not, or I have to rewrite our driver)

None of those things are true. There is some simple explanation.
--
Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

Lono
Wed Mar 26 00:36:00 CDT 2008

I have found the root cause.

I comment out the following line in MyVideoCap.inf:
HKR,PageAliases,"{71F96464-78F3-11d0-A18C-00A0C9118956}",1,21,E8,C2,3D,
13,47, d2,11, 0xba, 0x41, 0x0, 0xa0, 0xc9, 0xd, 0x2b, 0x5

and everything goes fine.

However, I still do not the meaning of this line. Is it ok to remove this
line?( exists in intelcam.inf of WDK sample)


"Tim Roberts" wrote:

> Lono <Lono@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> >
> > I wrote a video capture driver for our company's usb webcam device in
> >Windows 2000 many years ago. In Windows XP, the video capture driver still
> >works, however, in Vista 32 bit, video properties cannot be set in amcap,
> >skype, or Yahoo! messenger. The property settings(capture filter) box does
> >not pop out in these applications, not to mention chaning the properties. MSN
> >Live messenger works as previous, and I can change brightness, contrast or
> >white balance for our webcam.
>
> You might try:
> regsvr32 \windows\system32\kswdmcap.ax
>
> Kswdmcap.ax is the guy that produces the standard property pages from the
> driver properties.
>
> > I think the possibilites of the causes includes:
> > 1. There are some "hidden" SRBs in Vista that our webcam driver does
> >not handle.
> > 2. MS secretly change the GUID of PROPSETID_VIDCAP_VIDEOPROCAMP in
> >Vista, thus applications does not know our webcam supports video property
> >settings.
> > 3. Our driver does not follow new AVStream architecture and DirectShow
> >does not support it. (I hope not, or I have to rewrite our driver)
>
> None of those things are true. There is some simple explanation.
> --
> Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
> Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.
>

Tim
Thu Mar 27 19:47:02 CDT 2008

Lono <Lono@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
>
>I have found the root cause.
>
>I comment out the following line in MyVideoCap.inf:
>HKR,PageAliases,"{71F96464-78F3-11d0-A18C-00A0C9118956}",1,21,E8,C2,3D,
>13,47, d2,11, 0xba, 0x41, 0x0, 0xa0, 0xc9, 0xd, 0x2b, 0x5
>
>and everything goes fine.
>
>However, I still do not the meaning of this line. Is it ok to remove this
>line?( exists in intelcam.inf of WDK sample)

It's declaring a custom property page to replace the standard one. You
almost certainly do not want that line in your INF.
--
Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.