Help needed - weird problem capturing with ATI

[waldok]

Hi guys,

I have been capturing with my good old ati aiw 128 pro for months with all sorts of problems which always had a solution but now I have a very strange problem that I can't fix.
Here is the case :

I'm capturing old 8mm analog video from camcorder. On some particular sequences, at some particular point, the video is not captured worrectly and playback shows a crazy behaviour. It displays a 50 pixels high strip at the top of the screen, in which you can see the captured process went fine, but the rest of the screen repeats the same half-a-second infinitely. Then, after a few minutes, the rest of the video plays back correctly again. OK this is hard to explain, besides I'm not english, so even harder.
Let me rephrase this : video plays fine until a certain point where it repeats the same portion for a few minutes except in the top of the screen where it continues playing OK.
The problem is not a playback problem, the file is really captured like that, no matter what software is used for playing it back, it's the same behaviour.

I'm using AIW 128 Pro with latest drivers and MMC 7.7, capturing to 352x576 (PAL) directly to MPEG2, bitrate 2.6 mbits/s. The bug can be reproduced anytime with the same tape, it always happens at the exact same location whereas with other tapes it captures the whole stuff without a problem.

Can anybody help me on how to fix this ? What is it related to ?
Is it a bug in the ATI MPEG encoder?
thanks a lot in advance (and sorry if this has already been discussed here, didn't find anything using the search button.

Waldok:confused:

[wing1]

This sounds like some sort of macrovision detection problem with ATI software. If your source is noisy which can produced something close to a macrovision signal; Hence, ATI software will behaved as you have described. Try to install the ATImacrovision remover and re-capture again and see if this problem is resolved for you.

[dvd_maniac]

I just experienced the same problem as you, capture from a camcorder, and I thought "How can it have macrovision protection on it?" but I installed the macro remover and BINGO, the capture is perfect.

[waldok]

Wow guys, I have to try this. I also don't see how macrovision would affect my own camcorder tapes, but dvdmaniac almost convinced me. Where can I get this ati macrovision remover ? At least how is it called exactly so I can search for it ion every single dusty corner of the Web ?

Waldok

[waldok]

I got one file called atimacro.exe date 1-06-1999.
Is is the one ? Readme says it's meant to remove macro on card's TV out. Doesn't exactly seem related to my capture problem, does it ?

Waldok

[waldok]

Yeah, as dumb as I can be...I of course found the appropriate software right here in Doom9.
Can't believe I asked where I could find it and didn't even think about looking for it here..

bear with me guys, I was born like that :D

THanks for your help

Waldok (missing the "go hide under a big rock" smiley here)

[waldok]

I applied the patch I found here and it behaves the same. I tried to capture the very same part of my tape that used to cause problems, and it still does the same looping effect.
I think the driver might indeed be fooled for macrovision since just before the capture starts looping, there is a lowering of light in the original tape (don't know what causes this), very much like the macrovision effect on commercial videotapes.

Any other suggestion about it ?

Waldok

[SansGrip]

Any other suggestion about it ?

Find a video stabilizer unit. These little beauties sell for about US$40, sit between the source device and the destination device, and completely remove the Macrovision from any tape I've tried.

Apparently a TBC unit also works (and corrects a host of other problems with video tape) but they're a significantly bigger investment.

You can see mine at http://www.everik.com/VS8000.htm. I found one at about the 25th local retailer I called ;)

[waldok]

Thanks sansgrip ( pas de grip ? ça glisse) for your suggestion. Anyway, I don't really want to buy a device just for my old 8mm analog tapes, because I won't need it afterwards.
I was thinking about another way to cope with this problem. I will try to first copy the analog tape to my mini-DV camcorder (I have DV-In, it's a Canon mv400i) and then I'll capture from the DV source to the ATI card.
This might get rid of the problem cause I don't think the MV400i will care about luminance variations in the original tape.

I'll let you guys know (unless you all shout "WE DON'T CARE" at the same time) :D

Waldok:cool:

[SansGrip]

pas de grip ? ça glisse

The good Dr Babelfish translated this as "No grip? That slips". I fear something may have been lost along the way ;)

[waldok]

Sansgrip, forget it, that was just a test to see if you were French, as your nick seemed to indicate. Because "sans grip" really means "without grip". No big deal, I'll have two more pills and everything will be ok again (My doctor is not doctor Babelfish, he is a specialist who gives me a nice white jacket where I can put my arms behind my back, so much fun :p

Waldok:cool:

[O Sagaz!]

Hi, my problem is a litle diferent from waldok's but I'm quite sure it's macrovision too because when I try to capture, or just display any vhs tape on m computer monitor (commercial tapes or not) the image shows a lot of luminance variations. I installed the macrovision remover mentioned above but it didn't work. Since I d'ont have a dv cam and buying a video stabilizer would be very very dificult (I live in Rio de Janeiro and still couldn´t find those arround here), I wonder if there other softwares that could do the job, if there are other ways arround this or the best thing to do is to change the capturing card :( .

Here is what I use for the captures:
AIW Radeon 7500, with the latest drivers, MMC 7.7, VDub and Win XP PRO.

I'm still trying stuff like reisntalling the drivers, and when I have the oportunity, the hole system too.

Sorry about my english, I'm working on it;)

Thanks!!

[waldok]

Hi,

I finally found a small piece of software that seems to work for my "image loop" capture problem.
The software is called : atim30s.exe

you can get it here :

http://www.radeon2.ru/tools/atim30s.zip

Just unzip and execute the atim30s.exe file, it automatically patches the appropriate file (I don't even know which one it is in fact, that's the only "not cool" thing with this software) and is supposed to remove macro problems on ATI input.

I just tested with 2 "famous" tapes I had that caused the problem every time, and it works like a charm now.
I hope it doesn't put any mess in any other parts of the drivers, which I can't be sure of right now, but everything seems to work fine, so, I think it's worth a try.
This tool is meant for Radeon, but it works fine on my All In Wonder 128 Pro.

(Maybe some mod can put it in the downloads section here ?)

Good luck

Waldok :cool:

[O Sagaz!]

That software, doesn't realy work for me because it only removes the 30 sec. video capture limit for macrovision protected sources and iit does nothing about the luminace variations :confused: .
I1m still looking for some sofware solution for that (if there is such thing...)

thx

[waldok]

Well this piece of software solved it all for me. I had this luminance variation problem and it really solved it. Did you at least give it a try ? If not, you should. If you did and it didn't help, I'm afraid I can't be of any further help on this issue. Sorry pal.
I assume you already tried the software from the doom9 download section too ?

Hope you'll manage to get it working.

Good luck

Waldok:cool:

[O Sagaz!]

Yeah, I've tried both of them sepratedly and at the same time but they couldn't help me. I've tried XP Plutonium drivers too but it sucks big time, I wasn't able to even load any tv program. I tried to pass the video signal throug my tv set and guess what??? Nothing happened! I'm giving serous thoughts in changing my capture card, maybe buy a dedicated one like dc10, or something like that. My last hope is to try those softwares with other OS than win xp, wich I didn't because I wasn't able yet (does it worth the trouble of installing the hole system??).

ANY sugestion will be wllcome!!!

Thank you.


O Sagaz!