Rage and the Theatre Chip

[Dman65]

I have a Rage Fury Pro that I bought a couple of weeks ago mainly for the TV output since I have been using a BT878 card for capture.

I am wondering if anyone knows the technical information about the data format that is transferred from the card itself. From what I have read the MMC 7.x program is able to capture MPEG from the chip. I have looked in the multimedia codec listing from control panel and it appears that there are entries for a VCR1 and VCR2 and I have read that the ATI card has to be installed in order to play these so I assume that it is a format that has hardware assist. I have not been able to find the actual technical information anywhere so everything is a guess at this point.

[mole]

I have a RAGE FURY PRO
if you install the drivers under windows 98, you can use the VIDEO IN with MMC and capture to MPEG
it sucks bigtime though
the VCR 1 is what you would switch to if you want to capture in Virtual DUb or something like that - those capture programs wont capture to any of the other ATI formats (at least that Ive tried)
Now in Win 2000 or XP thats a whole different ballgame - the 2000 Drivers comes packaged with a WDM driver, which allows any VFW software to capture and you can use ANY codec, too (PIC VIDEO, HUFFY, etc)
With Video1 in windows 98 you cant do that, but if you have WinVCR or Ulead Media Studio - you can capture to Mpeg (better than through ATI's software)

[mole]

BTW - i also used a brooktree card - the Win TV PCI - But once I worked everything out with the Rage Fury, the Win TV came out!
Brooktree cards tend to give little "STREAKS" when capturing at hi-res
the rage fury captures at 720x480 very nicely on my Athl;on 900

[Saemin]

hey mole, can u post ur system specs??
i have a rage fury pro also, but can't get ANywhere near full res... >_<
... i'm trying to find out WHat i gotta do to get it.... ^^

[patrickm]

the ATI cards do hardware DECODING, not encoding. but it does have a 'hardware assist', which to the best of my knowledge is minimal. most of the MPEG encoding is done by the MMC software.

VCR1 and VCR2 are ATI proprietary MJPEG codecs. i think VCR2 is 'locked' so that only ATI software can use it. (the old version used to be open, but buggy). you can download these codecs from ATI's website to play back the files even if you don't have an ATI card installed (thing is called ATIVCRX.exe, it's about 6Mb, somewhere on the support pages)

[mole]

Sure - my specs
Athlon 900
Abit KT7 Mainboard
512 MB Ram (but it worked fine when i had 256)
8GB Maxtor as Primary Master
20GB Western Digital 5400rpm as capture drive ATA66
ATI Rage Fury Pro 32 MB
Win XP (formerly 98 SE)
Soundblaster 16 ISA

I use the PIC VIDEO codec at 19 quality - it taxes the CPU around 40%
Having the NTFS system is nice, too
I use Virtual Dub for captures - me no like the MMC Capture Software

[patrickm]

no offense, but with that system, i'd lose the ISA SB card. it's the biggest bottleneck you have. http://www.compgeeks.com has the aureal sq1500 for like $10. it's a pretty decent card with a SPDIF coax, esp for that price.

[mole]

no offense taken - its actually one of the last bits from my old system, along with the 8 GB drive. I've been meaning to get a new one, but i'll probably go with the Soundblaster live or something. Does the aureal have 5.1?
But also, i'm aware that some game emulator will not run with a PCI soundcard. (Not that i use them much anymore)