8500DV capture problem.

[Jorge Belo]

Hi everybody,

First, my system:

ASUS P4S8X
PENTIUM 4, 2.4GHz
1GB CRUCIAL, DDR333
MAXTOR 6Y080L0 (80GB, 7200RPM (WINDOWS XP PRO, SP1))
QUANTUM FIREBALL 5T060H6 (60GB (RED HAT LINUX 9.0))
DVD SONY DRU-500AX
CD PANASONIC 24x
AIW RADEON 8500DV (AGP; Built by ATI)

Now, the crap: (if this is not the forum to post this, thousand pardons
in advance)

I want to capture TV with the AIW and burn it into DVDs. When I first
got MMC 7.7.1 running, while on TV Tuner, I didn't finish scanning for
all antenna channels, and when tried to use TV capture, it wasn't
available at all (assumed because I didn't finish scanning for all the
channels). Runned the PC Check feature and reported that the capture
drivers weren't installed at all or weren't registered with Windows.

Got the latest drivers available at ATI web page (capture, display &
control center), by the beginning of June '03, banged my head trying to
uninstall the old ones, succeeded (so I think) and follow the
instructions to install the new ones. Installed back MMC 7.7.1, runned
TV Tuner, this time scanned for all channels and at one point asked me
how many frames per minute I wanted to use (didn't pay attention what
for) and gave me 4 as default. Not knowing what to do (yes!, I'm a newby
on this) I took them and kept going and now I was able to capture TV,
but when I played it back..... SURPRISE! YUCK...! Cannot even get 5 sec
of continious normal video since the beginning of the captured video.
Tried PC Check again, and again reported the capture drivers weren't
installed at all or weren't registered with Windows. So I got the latest
drivers available, again, did exactly the same I just described and
sameold, sameold; I'm stuck at the same point with the same results.

Snooping through the software I found something about I frames, B frames
& P frames; tried all combinations possible; and nothing!

I've been browsing this forum to see if I can find an answer but haven't
be able to.

Got a guide by Candiman, at www.rage3d.org, to uninstall the drivers and
another by Genius, at the same place, for re-install, and I'm ready to
follow them but I wanted to ask the following questions before:

1)Does anyone know why PC Check reports that the capture drivers aren't
either installed or not registered with Windows? (yet, I can capture
something, even composite video in both DVD quality & AVI format)

2)Does anyone know the optimum settings for frames per minute that the
software asks for? (I want to be prepared for the next time I'm asked
that (if it is gonna ask me that at all again))

I'm sorry for all the boohoo, but I've been struggling with this for
about a month/month and a half and I have a knee on the floor already
(I'm going down!) but hope is still up.

Any help will be greatly, greatly appreciated and thanks in advance for
your patience on reading this one.

 

[Jorge Paulo Belo Martins]

Thanks for your reply Lawrence,

At the same time I posted this I kept looking for more answers/info and
found info on how to use Huffyuv, VirtualDub & TMPGEnc, tried them and
seems to be working; have to read a bit more to fine tune VirtualDub.

I think I won't bother at all with ATI again given that I'm heading
somewhere with these new softwares now.

Thanks again, I really apreciate it.

----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence Wilson <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati
Sent: Friday, July 12, 2003 3:09 AM
Subject: 8500DV capture problem.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jorge Belo" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 7:56 PM
Subject: 8500DV capture problem.



Hi everybody,

First, my system:

ASUS P4S8X
PENTIUM 4, 2.4GHz
1GB CRUCIAL, DDR333
MAXTOR 6Y080L0 (80GB, 7200RPM (WINDOWS XP PRO, SP1))
QUANTUM FIREBALL 5T060H6 (60GB (RED HAT LINUX 9.0))
DVD SONY DRU-500AX
CD PANASONIC 24x
AIW RADEON 8500DV (AGP; Built by ATI)

Now, the crap: (if this is not the forum to post this, thousand pardons
in advance)

I want to capture TV with the AIW and burn it into DVDs. When I first
got MMC 7.7.1 running, while on TV Tuner, I didn't finish scanning for
all antenna channels, and when tried to use TV capture, it wasn't
available at all (assumed because I didn't finish scanning for all the
channels). Runned the PC Check feature and reported that the capture
drivers weren't installed at all or weren't registered with Windows.

Got the latest drivers available at ATI web page (capture, display &
control center), by the beginning of June '03, banged my head trying to
uninstall the old ones, succeeded (so I think) and follow the
instructions to install the new ones. Installed back MMC 7.7.1, runned
TV Tuner, this time scanned for all channels and at one point asked me
how many frames per minute I wanted to use (didn't pay attention what
for) and gave me 4 as default. Not knowing what to do (yes!, I'm a newby
on this) I took them and kept going and now I was able to capture TV,
but when I played it back..... SURPRISE! YUCK...! Cannot even get 5 sec
of continious normal video since the beginning of the captured video.
Tried PC Check again, and again reported the capture drivers weren't
installed at all or weren't registered with Windows. So I got the latest
drivers available, again, did exactly the same I just described and
sameold, sameold; I'm stuck at the same point with the same results.

Snooping through the software I found something about I frames, B frames
& P frames; tried all combinations possible; and nothing!

I've been browsing this forum to see if I can find an answer but haven't
be able to.

Got a guide by Candiman, at www.rage3d.org, to uninstall the drivers and
another by Genius, at the same place, for re-install, and I'm ready to
follow them but I wanted to ask the following questions before:

1)Does anyone know why PC Check reports that the capture drivers aren't
either installed or not registered with Windows? (yet, I can capture
something, even composite video in both DVD quality & AVI format)

Because ATI and MMC are occasionally brain dead. This is a recurring problem
with all versions of MMC. This problem usually happens when you install MMC
over itself, even for an upgrade. The best thing to do is delete all of the
all instances of MMC, scrub the registry and start over from scratch.
www.dvdrhelp.com has an excellent section on how to install/uninstall AIW
cards. I have an 8500DV, and I have had the same problem myself.

2)Does anyone know the optimum settings for frames per minute that the
software asks for? (I want to be prepared for the next time I'm asked
that (if it is gonna ask me that at all again))

What you're referring to is the GOP settings, and you should basically leave
those exactly as they are. MMC doesn't really allow you to change them much,
anyway. Where you should be concentrating, IMHO, is bitrate. I would say
that the lowest you should ever go on bitrate is 6 1/2 Mbps and certainly no
higher than 8 unless your CPU can handle it. Some say that you should crank
up the motion estimation to 100, but I've also heard that if you have a
noisy source that that will just encode the grain along with the rest of the
image and give you a needlessly large file. Also, you might want to try
using CBR instead of VBR if you're concerned about CPU usage. I have a 1GHZ
P3 Coppermine on a VIA chipset board and the 8500DV is a CPU hog if there
ever was one. I have yet to really see a visual difference between VBR and
CBR at the same bitrate. Besides, transcodes in Ulead VideoStudio go way
faster with CBR video than with VBR.

But, seeing as you have a P4, CPU usage is not quite the same problem for
you as it is for me, no? Fortunately, I'll be getting into a P4 system
soon--and a Springdale one, no less. I've already got me an Abit IS7-E board
and I'm putting in 512MB of dual-channel DDR400 and a 2.4GHz P4C 800MHz FSB.
Hopefully that'll solve the problem.

I'm sorry for all the boohoo, but I've been struggling with this for
about a month/month and a half and I have a knee on the floor already
(I'm going down!) but hope is still up.

Any help will be greatly, greatly appreciated and thanks in advance for
your patience on reading this one.

Hope this helps you. Generally the 8500DV's a great card for gaming and the
only real problems I had previously were audio sync-related, but now that
I'm using the full version of MMC 8.5, things seem to be working better. I
may be able to hold off upgrading to the AIW 9700 for it hardware encoding
just yet

 

[Bastard Operator from Hell]

I had this problem and it turned out to be something really simple. There
was a driver conflict on my motherboard created by the Boot Partition
software I as using. I would not let me set my hard drives as DMA. Instead I
was stuck with the PIO setting which makes them slower than hell. I removed
the partition program and reinstalled Win2000 and then the ATI stuff and all
was fine. It was not an ATI problem. It was the combination of Win2000, my
motherboard and the partition program. Make sure your hard drives are in
DMA mode and not PIO mode.

Logan