ATI stuff.....don't understand it.....

[gator222]

I can capture pretty well with MyDVD, but when I try and capture with MMC TV 8.8, which is supposed to work with the AIW low profile 9000 card in my machine, I start what I guess is losing frames dramatically after about a minute of capture. I'm running an old beta player through a JVC TBC, and like I said this works ok, but not with ATI TV capture. What I'm viewing while capturing is the sound not sync'd with the video. After maybe two minutes, the sound starts to deteriorate and the sync gap gets bigger and bigger. Finally the clip deteriorates. I have gone through all the settings recommended by Lord Smurf, although he recommends capturing at 352X480, and that isn't even an option for resolution. Also there is no interlacing option that is highlighted. I'm a rank newbie at this stuff, but I've tried everything I can think of to get this to work. I have been sticking with the Sonic product, but it doesn't allow me to pause; while capturing, if you stop capturing, that's the end of the file.....any suggestions? Rick

[Dimmer]

The problem is probably in the HDD speed compared to the captured file size. First of all: do you capture into AVI or MPEG-2? In case of MPEG-2, the file size is smaller and you can burn it on DVD right away. With AVI, you can get the best possible quality after hundreds of hours of encoding, but what's important here is that AVI file size will be huge and therefore impossible for HDD to handle unless you select a proper codec (see the guides you've mentioned). How large is the file with a minute of captured video?

Shut down all other programs that may be running, especially antivirus.

And of course, ensure that your HDD is running in UDMA 5 or 6 mode. There's a lot of info on how to do that, you might have to open the PC and check that you're using 80-pin IDE cable.

P.S. Forget about MyDVD, it's a lowest level program in its class.

[gator222]

This is a brand new Dell 8600 Media Center computer with plenty of speed and space. Pentium 4, 2.6 GHz. I'm capturing directly to MPEG2 (or trying). I am capturing mostly old music clips from Beta HiFi tapes; source material is not great, hence the TBC. And I never drop frames when capturing with Sonic. My guess is that there is something wrong with either a setting, or with the ATI software; I'm thinking about reintalling it, but I'd love to hear some other suggestions.....

[Dimmer]

I went through many versions of ATI MMC and found v.7.7 to be the only stable one. However, I'm using an older card - Radeon 7200 VIVO with sound coming through a separate sound card. I have no problems capturing 720x480 into MPEG-2 at 8Mbps as long as no other process uses HDD. Even if I simply open Windows Explorer, it drops a few frames.

I would suggest reducing bitrate and resolution to the point when it starts capturing without errors regardless of the quality. If you can't achieve this, the problem is obviously in software, so you should try reinstalling it and experiment with different versions. Otherwise try playing with settings and find the point when it starts dropping frames. If it's way below your quality expectations, post all your capture settings, maybe there will be something visibly wrong there.

[gator222]

Well, I went ahead and downloaded and installed MMC 9.0 and it appears to have solved the problem. Have no idea what caused it, but this appears to work fine on first try.....thanks for your help....

[rfmmars]

There must be some issues with the Vivo ATI capture cards and the drivers. Your not the only post. I have three ATI AIW cards and they never drop a frame even at 15,000 bps 720x480,I frame only 29.97 fps.

I also use Virtualdubmpeg2 to capture .AVI. There I get that I am dropping 300-500 frmes over a two hour capture, but I can never see them, and it varire to the amount based on what tape I am capturing from.

It's good that you were able to get a driver that worked. With the VDF to WDM wapper,these card are I think are the most flexable card out there.

richard
www.photorecall.net