Bigpicture Video Products FAQ FORMAT: Topic: QUESTION OR SUBJECT. ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS WITH THE SAME RESOLUTION Solution: ANSWER ADDITIONAL ANSWERS OR ALTERNATIVES ________________________________________________________________________ For support for your Bigpicture Video product, please call: 1-888-USR-4VID ________________________________________________________________________ Question: Why does video not appear immediately when launching RapidComm Video? Answer: RapidComm needs to initiate the video stream. This initiation time is normal for each new session. ________________________________________________________________________ Question: Why does my video phone seem to be ringing longer than normal when making video calls? Answer: There is a detection tone in addition to the regular ring tone of your phone when making video calls. The detection tone is louder than the normal ring and rings approximately 3 times as often. Therefore, it may seem as if your system is taking longer to connect than it actually is. This is normal for the system. ________________________________________________________________________ Question: How can I adjust RapidComm Video's volume so that my other system sounds aren't too loud or too soft? Answer: The best configuration is to keep RapidComm Video's volume at a moderate setting, while keeping your operating system's volume lower and your hardware's (i.e. powered speakers) volume higher. ________________________________________________________________________ Question: What if I see no video at all on the software video screen? Answer: The application may be set to accept video from a nonexistent source. Set the video source option in the software to composite. Your software's video format settings may also be set incorrectly. Change them to 160 x 120 pixels and 15bit RGB. ________________________________________________________________________ Question: What can I do to resolve IRQ conflicts? Answer: Your sound card may be trying to share an IRQ with your modem. Uninstall the modem and change the sound card's IRQ setting in the Windows 95 Device Manager. Then reinstall the modem. ________________________________________________________________________ Question: My PCI capture card installed on IRQ9 and my modem has no low IRQs to use. This means the modem card sets up on IRQ 9 also. Due to this, both the modem and capture card are disabled. I get a Winmodem ERROR dialog box when I start up. Answer: The modem and capture card need to be completely uninstalled. Both cards should be removed from the system. The device manager should be checked for available IRQs. If there are free IRQs above 9, then IRQ 9 should be reserved in the Device Manager under the Reserve Resources section. At this point, the system can be shut down, the PCI card installed in the system, and the system restarted. This should force the PCI capture card to install using one of the IRQs above 9. After successful completion of the PCI capture card install, go to the Device Manager and unreserve IRQ 9 from the Reserve Resources section. Shut down your system and install the Bigpicture video modem. The modem should use IRQ 9 at this point without any problems. After the install is complete, it is advisable that you go into the Device Manager. Under Properties/Resources, for the video modem and the capture card, uncheck the Use Automatic Settings box. This will prevent windows from changing your setup at a later time. If there are no free high IRQs (above 9), the modem and capture card need to be completely uninstalled. Both cards should be removed from the system, and a lower IRQ will have to be freed up. Usually configuring your sound card to share IRQ 7 with the printer port is a good place to start. _______________________________________________________________________ Question: My capture card and video modem appear to install correctly, but my system locks up when accessing video applications within a few seconds of starting the program. Answer: This problem is related to a PNP memory overlap between the S3/968 chip set and the capture card. To fix this problem, you need to manually adjust the memory address of the capture card. Upon completion of the PCI capture card install, go to the Device Manager under Properties/Resources, and uncheck the Use Automatic Settings box. The memory address range of the WinCast/TV capture card is a set of two 8 digit hexadecimal numbers, such as : FFFA0000FFFA0FFF. To eliminate the memory overlap, click on Start/Settings/Control Panel/System/Device Manager. Double click on Sound, video, and game controllers. Then double click on capture card. This will bring up the capture card/TV Properties window. Click on Resources and uncheck the Use Automatic Settings box and Double Click on Memory Range. In the box marked Value, change the Address to 8400000084000FFF. This is a range we have found to work in many cases. If this range of memory is not free, or conflicts with another device, then you can take the original memory range and either increase the second digit by 4, or decrease it by 8 (remember to add & subtract in HEXIDECIMAL) . Example : 8000000080000FFF(original) 8400000084000FFF(increased by 4 hex) Example : 8000000080000FFF(original) 7800000078000FFF(decreased by 8 hex) Note: This problem will USUALLY only occur when you have a Video card based on the S3/968 chip set (Diamond Stealth 64 PCI, etc.). ______________________________________________________________________ Question: RapidComm/Video, while in Video view, answers multiple faxes in quick succession as a Voice call instead of a fax. Answer: It is advisable to try and stay in the view/mode that your incoming call is set to. In other words, if you have a video call coming in, leave the software in Video view. If you have fax or voice calls coming in, use the Speakerphone view. _______________________________________________________________________ Question: What should I do if RapidComm detects an incoming voice call as a video call? Answer: It is possible that the background noise in your environment resembles the tones used by the video modem to detect an incoming video call. If you experience this situation you can go to the Speakerphone View, pull down the Setup menu, and choose the Preferences option. Under Normal Answer, change the default setting Detect video, voice, fax & data to Detect voice, fax & data. Once this is done, the modem will no longer listen for tones which start video mode. To answer video calls, you will need to return the answer mode to the default setting. _______________________________________________________________________ Question: I hear no sound when I'm using VDOPhone. Answer: VDOPhone uses your sound card for audio input & output, and it uses the Windows sound mixer settings for volume control. You need to plug your speakers into the Speaker jack or Line Out of your sound card, and you need to plug a microphone into the MIC input jack on your sound card. To assure proper volume levels, we suggest running a test record and playback using the Windows Sound Recorder in the Accessories/Multimedia program group. The playback & record volume can be adjusted using the Windows sound mixer. This is accessed by clicking the Volume Control icon in the Accessories/Multimedia group. _______________________________________________________________________ Question: I hear no sound when I'm using RapidComm Video. Answer: RapidComm Video uses your video modem card for audio input & output, and the software settings for volume control. You need to plug your powered speakers into the Speaker jack on your video modem. Then plug a microphone (provided with model 1690) into the MIC input jack, also located on your video modem. _______________________________________________________________________ Question: My PCI capture card was not recognized by the Windows PlugNPlay detection routine. Answer: The PCI capture card has to be installed in a PCI Bus Mastering slot. Check your system's manual for information on which of your PCI slots support bus mastering. The PCI slot must be configured to support PCI Interrupt Class A (INTA). The INTA must be assigned to a free IRQ or set to auto in your system BIOS. _______________________________________________________________________ Question: My web browser will not load in VDOPhone when the Who's online? button is clicked. A Failed to run external program error dialog box is displayed. Answer: This is caused by the default browser not being set in Windows. Set the default browser to your favorite web browser. _______________________________________________________________________ Question: I see a Direct Draw error dialog box when starting video applications (RapidComm Video, VDO, DVP, etc. ). Answer: The error is a result of Direct Draw or Direct X drivers not being loaded during the initial install of the PCI capture card. If you see this error, it's likely that your video card is not supported by the Direct X drivers provided on the Video Connections CD. It will be necessary to contact your video card's manufacturer to obtain the required drivers. You can click the OK button at this point, and the application will load and function normally, with the exception of overlay functions. Overlay mode is a way for the application to display a live video window and use a minimum of system resources. _______________________________________________________________________ Question: When I try to install the software off the Bigpicture Connections CD, I keep receiving an error message saying that files are not found. Answer: Try replacing "D:\", where D is the drive letter of your CD- ROM, with "D:\."(D colon backslask then a period). On some systems you have to type this in several times, but eventually the software will install correctly.