ATI X700 VIVO capture problems

[ba72]

Hi

I recently switched my old nVidia Ti4800 VIVO card for a ATI X700PRO VIVO card to play newer computergames. I wanted to keep my capture possibilities so I tried hard to get over such a card. However, to my disappointment, the ATI card capture quality is very bad and really unusable for recording my old VHS tapes with.

I have the same setup as when i used the nVidia card, i.e. TV-scart out, scart->svhs converter, svhs cable to videocardadapter (adapter with svhs in/out, composite in/out that comes with the gfxcard) and into graphics adapter. I use Intervideo's WinDVR to capture. This gave me a superb quality with my old card and I've captured a few old vhs tapes, directly from TV etc with great success.

Problems with ATI solution:
- When connecting SVHS into the ATI adapter and into the card, I only get black and white. Have tested various solutions, even SVHS directly out of the DVD. The issue is something with the card. There are also "stripes" or something so the picture is not really clean.
- Using the composite, the picture quality is really bad. Bad colors and really bad sharpness (text etc is really blurry). Kind of grainy picture so to say. Nothing that I would use for archiving my old VHS tapes with. Not really usable for anything to be honest.

This made me really disappointed. Don't know if the quality of the card is really that bad (it's at least 2 years newer than the old one) or if it's something wrong with the ATI adapter. As I said, everything else in the chain is the same so I can't really think of anything to do. The latest WDM/card drivers are also installed. Haven't found any firmware upgrades for the card.

Is the adapter used for svhs/composite in/out a generic adapter that can be picked from any gfx card? I actually tried the nVidia adapter, but the quality was the same... First I thought that there was something wrong with it.

Anyone have some ideas?

[CWR03]

You probably just have the setting for the input wrong - I haven't used my ATI in years so I don't recall where the setting is, but it sounds like a composite/S-video setup issue.

[ba72]

Thanks for your reply! The thing is that I cannot really find any driversettings (using the latest ATI Catalyst driver) for the capturingpart at all. The only settings I have is from within the capture program, where I can select TV standard (PAL/NTSC etc) or input source (SVHS or Composite). None of the settings have changed anything to the better. Did you mean that there would be something similar that comes with the driver?

[CWR03]

It would be in Windows' Display settings - right-click on the desktop (not on any icon) and select Properties, select the Settings tab and click Advanced. Somewhere in there is a setting for input.

[mod]

Hi.
I've been using a Sapphire Radeon 9000 pro Vivo for 3 years, and now I use a 9600XT Vivo, and I never had this problem. The quality is good, I think that is simply a problem of card settings.
Have you tried using VirtualDub?

[ba72]

Thanks for your suggestions! I've been trying VirtualDub and it's given me the same quality as WinDVR. However, I haven't been able to produce any "viewable" videos with VirtualDub, since the videos I've created are choppy when viewing them. Didn't use any compression so I don't know if they are to heavy to play or something. The picture quality was the same anyway.

After fiddling with some settings in the Catalyst driver, I've noticed that the capturepreview and video output seems to depend heavily on the "play videooptions" that I set. Some settings include interlace handling by the driver/card, scaling options etc. It was better after changing some of those options, but still not quite as good as my old card, but that definitly shows that the driver is involved in the problems.

No luck in finding any "input settings" or anything in windows that deals with capturing. The ATI driver replaces some of the tabs in the gfx settings, so most of the settings I can do brings up the catalyst driver (which sux btw, can't even display the text correctly in the resolution i do, resulting in a lot of text being unreadable).

A big problem is why the SVHS input gives me black and white, haven't found any solution or setting to change that!

[mod]

The b&w with svhs is very strange..
I am quite sure that defalt settings in the advanced options of video card must work good.
Could you post a few zipped frames, both b&w and color, just to see how low the quality is?

[CWR03]

Is SVHS a special input, or is it just S-video? Also, what's the card's receptacle, S-video or RCA? Are you using any adaptor to go from one thing to another? I remember using a store-bought dongle to go from S-video to RCA that never worked - I had to use the one that came with the card, otherwise I'd have a video exactly like you've described.

[mod]

I had to use the one that came with the card, otherwise I'd have a video exactly like you've described.

Right. Don't use anything different from the cable included in the bundle..
The input of the video card doesn't use the same pins of the output of the Svideo, also if they seem to work together..

[ba72]

Sorry, I mixed up the terms S-Video and SVHS... Of course it's an S-Video cable I'm using. It's plugged into the adapter that came with the videocard. That was my first thought, that the adapter was faulty, since it only gives me B/W when I'm using an S-Video cable. The composite plugged into the same adaptor gives me color, but less than acceptable quality.

[mod]

Could you post here the settings you use with VDub for the capture? I think it would be useful for a correct help, cause I use VDub and I NEVER had this problem, and (maybe I'm wrong) I suppose that the input parts of both our video cards work in the same way..

[CWR03]

You may have to keep looking, but I can pretty much guarantee that it's an input setting. The fact that you can get the proper color without the adapter proves that.