Can only record a max of 3 hours with ATI AIW 9700 Pro?

[UltimateNinja]

This is a problem, because I'm wanting to be able to record football games to watch at a later date, and hopefully burn to DVD. Anyone got any ideas? I've got plenty of Hard Drive space left, so that's not an issue, and the custom recording setting is set to unlimited space (Windows Maximum). Plus, since I captured to MPEG-1, this file is smaller at just over 2 gigs than many others I've captured. Any ideas?

[Nelson37]

Is this an NTFS drive or FAT32? Filling out your profile would be helpful.

Fat32 has an absolute limit of 4 gig, and many progs/codecs put the limit at 2 gig, regardless of OS limitations.

The newer MMC is supposed to do segmented captures, haven't tried this myself, nor Mpeg1 either. You should be doing MPEG-2 for TV caps as MPEG-1 does not support interlacing. I routinely do 15 gig MPEG2 caps on an NTFS drive.

[UltimateNinja]

Thanks for the info, Nelson. It's much appreciated.

I have 2 NTFS 80 GB HD, and am using MMC 8.1. The reason I've got this particular setting on MPEG-1 is because I'm recording entire football games from television for viewing at a later date, and burn to DVD. I need the files to be under the 4.7 GB limit.

[overloaded_ide]

I am only using MMC 7.7 myself.

You did check the capture timer already I am sure, right
The one to capture only a certian amount of time, then shut off automatically. Make sure it's not somehow defaulting to 3hrs or whatever if you haven't already.

I never tried splitting files, and you shouldn't have too. BUT, you could try a test with that and see if will capture over 3 hrs then. That way you will know if the time is the problem, or the file size. If it splits the files at say 2gigs but records 5 hrs, then it probably has to do with the size. If it splits the files once but still shuts down at 3 hrs, then it's most likly a time releated problem of course.

Also for timers, don't know if any others exist since I don't have MMC8.1, but I have had other programs in the past that you could set the time to start recording automatically, one program you set a time to stop the recording the other program you set a time limit for recording. So check and see if you could possibly have 2 settings for recording time limits!

[FOO]

You should be using MPEG2
you will get more movie per megabyte that way.

[peregrin]

you may have some setting wrong because i've recorded for 5.5 hours using and ATI AIW 7500 and MMC 8.1 and using mpeg2 on drives that are NTFS formatted . Check in the one touch recording box and see if the setting for recording is set and check to make sure when recording that the record time is set to manually stop recording .

[UltimateNinja]

Thanks for all your help guys. Turned out it was the ultimate "duh" moment for me. *cringe* The custom duration timer was set to 3 hours. *sigh*

Another question here though if I'm recording something that will probably be around 3 and a half hours long, do you reccomend just capturing it in MPEG-2? Will the resulting file be able to fit on one DVD, do you think? With MPEG-1 a 3 hour recording was a little over 2 gigs, like 2.25.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Look in Tools for a bitrate calculator.
2500kbps video at 3.5hrs=4.37GB(DVD)

[overloaded_ide]

Before the game comes on I would suggest testing your capture methodes and bit rates

Maybe find one of those 3 hr John Wayne VHS movies and back it up first. If that turns out good, maybe the game will too.

The lower the bit rate the lower the quality. I capture directly to Mpeg2 but about the lowest I ever go is 4,000 bits. About 2 hrs is the most I try to sqeeze onto one disk unless I have to for a reason, and I think thats alittle over 5,000 bits and 4 gigs.

So if you go 4,000 and a full 4.7 gig it might fit 3hrs ok. But rather it gets fuzzy and blocky is another question.