Watching TV
When an analog TV tuner is installed in your system, AMCap can work as an advanced TV set. All you have to do is configure the TV programs once and you are set.
Getting Started
The initial configuration of the TV programs is needed to easily select and navigate from program to program like a TV set. This needs to be completed only once but you can redo it at will. Follow the next few steps to configure the programs:
- Select the TV tuner to use in the Devices menu.
- Click the Options > TV Programs menu.
- In the TV Programs dialog box, click the Scan... button.
- In the TV Program Scanner dialog box, select the video standard of the TV programs available in your area (e.g. NTSC in Japan and the USA, SECAM L in France, PAL in most parts of Europe, etc.) in the Standard drop-down list.
- Click the Start button to initiate the detection of the available TV programs. A progress bar lets you know the advancement of the scanning.
- Click the Close button to go back to the TV Programs dialog box once the scanning is stopped and the TV programs are found.
Note: you can select another video standard and start a new scan in case you are near some boundaries and you receive foreign programs in your area. The programs found in every scan are added at the end of the current list and won't replace the current programs.
Now that you have a list of the available TV programs, you can:
- rearrange the order of the programs using the Move Up and Move Down buttons.
- delete duplicate programs or programs with poor quality using the Delete button.
- edit the programs using the Edit button to give them a name.
Click OK to save the current list of programs.
Watching TV
1. Select the video source and set video parameters
- select the video capture source (e.g. a TV tuner card) from which you want to watch TV in the Devices menu. This is not needed if you only have one source.
- if an Options > Crossbar Video Input menu is available, make sure that the tuner video input is selected. It is also recommended to tick Select Related Input in that same menu to automatically switch to the right audio input.
- if your video capture source provides hardware compression, you may tick the Options > MPEG2 menu for better preview and capture performances.
2. Select the audio source (optional)
If the MPEG2 option is not enabled or not supported by the video capture source, you may have to do the following steps:
- select the audio capture source corresponding to your tuner card in the Devices menu.
- select the right audio input in the Options > Audio Input menu.
- if an Options > Crossbar Audio Input menu is available, make sure the tuner audio input is selected.
3. Watch live TV
If you already completed the steps from the Getting Started section above to configure the programs, you are ready otherwise now is the right time to configure the programs.
To watch a program, first make sure the Preview mode is enabled:
- tick the Options > Preview menu if it is not already ticked.
Now you can use either the keyboard or possibly some mouse buttons or the keys of a compatible remote control unit to change the current program:
- press the 0 to 9 keys on the numeric keypad or on the remote control unit to type the number of the program to switch to.
- press the Page Up or Page Down keys on the keyboard to respectively select the next or the previous program. You can do the same from a compatible remote control unit, using the Next Program and Previous Program keys.
- press the Browser Backward or Browser Forward keys on the keyboard (these keys are sometimes mapped to some mouse buttons as well) to respectively select the next or the previous program.
- you can possibly control the volume level of the application, by using the F9 (down) and F10 (up) keys or the mouse wheel.
Note:
- you have to enable the Video Mixing Renderer (VMR) feature if you want the name of the programs (or the channel numbers if no name is configured) to show on-screen when you switch from one program to another. You enable the VMR from the Capture > Setup... menu > Options tab > Video renderer drop-down list.