Easycap Install – editing the inf file.
I have an easycap device that refuses to work. I found out that the installation disk they ship with it is wacky and they referred to instructions that are on a blog in Australia that has since been deleted. (The blog may be elsewhere but the url is no longer valid.)
I used the waybackmachine to get the post and I am putting it here. I will try to follow these directions tonight and see if it makes a difference.
Here is a link to drivers: https://blog.lucylou.info/post/40016775/getting-easycap-to-work-in-windows-xp and https://www.konix.cn/product_show.asp?id=1774
We bought one of those video capture devices on ebay. It’s an EASYCAP DC60.
It plugs into your computer through a USB port and is supposed to let you digitise the output from a TV, camcorder, VCR, etc.
These things are all over the place, made very cheaply in China.
They have one big drawback, which we found to our cost. The software stinks. Getting the drivers for the damn thing to install proved impossible, in spite of 3 hours of trying all manner of cunning tricks.
In the end I did stack of searching using the ever-helpful Mr Google. This led me to a bunch of other drivers that might or might not be suitable. I even eventually found the manufacturer of the Easycap – in Shenzhen, China. They even have downloads from their web site!
But nothing at all that I downloaded and tried would work.
Finally, though, I proved I AM THE GEEK. I sorted the damn thing. Well, almost. We have video coming through now just fine, but the audio capture part of it does not work. But we can feed the audio into the sound card on the PC so we have a moderately satisfactory work-around.
So, for those who have the good fortune to buy an EasyCap DC60 that seems to not work when you install the drivers, here is the recipe:
Step 1. Plug the thing into the USB socket on your PC. Windows should identify the new device and burble away a bit, then prompt for where to find the drivers. Cancel at that point. Then open up the Device Manager (you can run devmgmt.msc from Start->Run). You should see a video capture device with a big yellow ? by it, indicating an uninstalled device.
Step 2. Double click the video capture device, to get the Properties page open. Click the details tab. You should see something saying “Device Instance List”. Under that should be something a bit like this:
USB\VID_05E1&PID_0408\5&14FFBCD&0&1
The important parts here are that the number next to VID must be 05E1 and the number next to PID must be 0408. If you don’t see this, give up, I can’t help you any more. The parts after the “\” following the PID number are not so important.
Step 3. Close the properties page, then click once on the video capture device and press DELETE to delete the device. Unplug it. You must delete the device from Device Manager!
Step 4. Take the CD supplied with the device, put it in your CD drive, then BROWSE the CD. Find the folder full of drivers. Copy that folder to your hard drive, into a temporary place (c:\temp, for example).
Step 5. In the folder of drivers, locate the file called OEM.INF. Open the file in notepad. You will find some lines that look like this:
[SYNTEK]
%StkAMiniDescription%=SYNTEK.USBDCAM,USB\Vid_05E1&Pid_0400&MI_00
%StkAMiniDescription%=SYNTEK.USBDCAM,USB\Vid_05E1&Pid_0408&MI_00
The part you are most interested in is this part:
….USB\Vid_05E1&Pid_0408&MI_00
There may be other such parts through the file, so you need to look throughout.
DELETE from the end of the line the portion “&MI_00″, so that the text now looks like:
…..USB\Vid_05E1&Pid_0408
Locate ALL lines in the file that are similar and similarly delete the stuff that comes after the PID number. The file is big and this is tedious. Deal with it.
Step 6. Save the file. The run the setup program that comes with the driver files. Then plug the device into the USB port. When prompted to install drivers, select to install from a location, and give the location as the temporary place where you put and edited the driver files (ie c:\temp\blah, or whatever). There should be some more burbling by windows and it will complete the installation OK.
Step 7. Fiddle about with the supplied ULEAD video studio software and see what you can see. You should have video capture!
Q: Why does this work?
Answer: The supplied driver and installer is trying to match the Vendor ID (VID) and Product ID (PID) of the device, to the Vendor ID and Product ID in the installation file. Normally the bit that comes after the product ID is some kind of revision – used to tell different versions of the product apart.
It looks like the PRODUCT revision is different to the revision expected by the drivers. By deleting the revision part in the driver INF file, Windows does a coarse match instead of a fine match, installs the driver (which it would not previously do on the grounds they did not match). And all is tickety-boo.