MediaPortal Wiki 
Software Encoder TV-Card Setup
Prerequisites
System requirements
Make sure your analog TV card without hardware MPEG2 encoder is supported by MediaPortal. Review the list of supported software cards . In order to use these types of cards, your system has to meet at least these requirements:
- Pentium IV 2.8GHz equivalent or faster CPU
Software requirements
Install both the drivers and the software that came with your card. MediaPortal needs a DirectShow MPEG encoder filter in order to work with software cards. Depending on what type of TV card you own, the software that came with it might or might not come with an MPEG encoder. MediaPortal currently supports the following commercial MPEG encoders (in order of recommendation):
InterVideo Video Encoder (trial version)
MainConcept MPEG Video Encoder (demo version)
CyberLink MPEG Video Encoder (trail version)
The software for Hauppauge cards or similar often comes with the MainConcept encoder. If your card doesn't come with a supplied encoder then you'll have to install one of these encoders manually.
"How do I find out if I have one of these encoders installed?" If you're unsure whether or not you have one of the supported encoders installed, you can use GraphEdit to find out. Start GraphEdit, choose "Graph" and then "Insert Filters" (or use CTRL-F). Next, open up "Video Compressors" from the tree and a list of installed encoders should appear. Just look through this list if one of the encoders mentioned above is in that list.
"Do I have to install one of these codecs?" No, not neccessarily. If the software of your TV card comes with an MPEG encoder, then you don't need to install one of the commercial encoders. For example, ?LeadTek cards come with the ?LeadTek MPEG Video Encoder. You can use the same procedure described as above to find out if a specific MPEG encoder is installed together with your TV card software.
Software setup
Configure the software that came with your card and make sure you can view TV with it. Before trying to configure the TV card and perform autotuning in MediaPortal, you have to make sure you have configured the MPEG encoder. To start off, don't use a high resolution and / or high encoding quality (bitrate). I would even recommend setting things to as low quality as possible. Despite the low quality you will find out this way if your system is capable of handling the load. As soon as you've got everything setup you can always increase the quality in small steps.
If you've got the InterVideo Encoder Filter installed, then you can also use the MediaPortal Configuration program to configure this MPEG encoder. Start setup, goto "Encoder Filters" and click on "InterVideo Encoder Filter". Below an example of how to configure it:
MediaPortal configuration
nothing just yet 
Troubleshooting
I'm getting a "no capture card(s) were found" message. What can I do?
Somehow MediaPortal was not able to detect your card. There can be several reasons for this:
- Your TV card is unsupported
- Something is wrong with your system
- Something is wrong with your TV card drivers
Something is wrong MediaPortal's support for your card
"I suspect it's my system or the support for my TV card" If you're sure you card is on the list of supported software cards and you suspect something is wrong with either your system or the support for your TV card, then post a support request in the appropriate support forum section or try to get help via IRC.
"My card is not supported :-(" Don't give up just yet. Maybe support can be added for your card. Check out this thread in the forums. If your software card does not come with an MPEG encoder then just ignore that step, but do remember you'll have to install a commercial MPEG encoder as described in the Software requirements section.
I'm getting an "unable to create graph for this device" message. What can I do?
If you see the following error in the mediaportal.log:
22/05/2006 14:34:27 SinkGraphEx: video codecs installed:24 preferred:4 22/05/2006 14:34:27 SinkGraphEx: try video codec:'InterVideo Video Encoder' 22/05/2006 14:34:27 SinkGraphEx: try video codec:'MainConcept MPEG Video Encoder' 22/05/2006 14:34:27 SinkGraphEx: try video codec:'MainConcept Demo MPEG Video Encoder' 22/05/2006 14:34:27 SinkGraphEx: try video codec:'CyberLink MPEG Video Encoder' 22/05/2006 14:34:27 Exception :System.ArgumentException: Value does not fall within the expected range. at System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.MkParseDisplayName(IBindCtx pbc, String szUserName, UInt32& pchEaten, IMoniker& ppmk) at System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.BindToMoniker(String monikerName) at MediaPortal.TV.Recording.SinkGraphEx.CreateGraph(Int32 Quality) 22/05/2006 14:34:27 Exception :Value does not fall within the expected range. 22/05/2006 14:34:27 site :Void MkParseDisplayName(System.Runtime.InteropServices.ComTypes.IBindCtx, System.String, UInt32 ByRef, System.Runtime.InteropServices.ComTypes.IMoniker ByRef) 22/05/2006 14:34:27 source :mscorlib 22/05/2006 14:34:27 stacktrace: en System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.MkParseDisplayName(IBindCtx pbc, String szUserName, UInt32& pchEaten, IMoniker& ppmk) at System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.BindToMoniker(String monikerName) at MediaPortal.TV.Recording.SinkGraphEx.CreateGraph(Int32 Quality)
then this means you don't have any supported DirectShow MPEG2 encoder filter installed. See the Software requirements section for how to solve this.
If you receive this message but don't see a similar error in the mediaportal.log, then please make sure you actually configured an MPEG encoder. See the Software requirements for more information. If you have configured it correctly then post a support request in the appropriate support forum section or try to get help via IRC.