ATI capture questions

[Coluph]

I recently bought the new ATI TV Wonder PRO Remote Control, with MMC 8.1. The card seems to be working much better than my old one but I have a few issues I can't seem to fix, maybe someone here would know how to get around these problems:

1) Audio. I have the card conected to the CD AUDIO connector on my sound device, which is the Nvidia SoundForce (yes it is onboard but it is a good quality sound device...not a cheapo one). The audio coming out of the TV tuner is too loud and keeps clipping. I have adjusted the mixers in both windows and the Nforce control panel but the ATI card still is firinng out an audio level that is too high and sounds terrible. How do you turn it down on the ATI card itself? (levels are set to allmost nothing but audio is still clipping...just clips quieter)

2) Mpeg capture. The realtime Mpeg capture works very well...better than I thought it would. I have followed Lord Smurfs guides exactly. I get ghost artifacting around the characters. It's not my source as they do not appear when I capture straight to AVI. Any ideas? Too low of a bit rate?

3) Mpeg capture. The video seems to 'bump' every once inawhile...meaning it jerks occasionally...not necessarily when it is panning. Its' not that noticeable but annoying if you know it is there. Does anyone else get this?

4) Scene changes sometimes flip a bit...not always but sometimes...this is again using the mpeg realtime capture

5) TMPEG doesn't seem to like the AVI's being put out by the card. Doing a reverse scrub or having it try to detect if it is using top or bottom frame results in the software freezing...just wondering if anyone else had seen this happen before (if you avoid doing these things it does work however)


I also tried the macrovision hack, but this does not seem to make a difference with this card. It still disables the record button if detected. I have an old 'video stabilizer' as it's called from way back, when I was duing VHS dubs, and this does fix the problem, and disables the macrovision, just as it did with a VCR. How this device works I don't know, it has a bunch of IC's in there with the numbers ground off that runs on a 9v battery but it does the trick.

On a side note I have the LG 2020 DVD-RAM/DVD-R/RW drive. Recently it stopped liking my Memorex RW disks...could my drive be defective...one day i worked...the next day it did not. I used a Maxell RW and it worked fine.

[Coluph]

I forgot to mention my system specs...not sure if this has anything to do with it.

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton core
1 gig Dual DDR Memory
Seagate 7200 RPM 80 gig hard drive using SATA/serialel adaptor that came with board
ABIT - NF7S motherboard (Nforce2)
Nvidia TNT2 32meg AGP card (4x)
ATI TV Wonder Pro Remote Control edition (PCI)

[lordsmurf]

It sort of sounds like bad source. Maybe a better VCR would help?

[Imy]

problem is DONT USE MMC to capture, use Vdub OR iuVCR.

I would recommend iuVCR.

[FOO]

At one time or another I have had to go edit the sound recording
level in the ATI Registry stuff to reduce it. I forgot where it is but it's easy
to find.

[Coluph]

OK, this helps me with the sound I think...I will give that a try when I get home...the audio seems to be too high, both capturing from the tuner, and the VCR, connected via breakout box. VCR is a higher end JVC (can't remember which model...it has flying erase jog shuttle, titanium colour...I know it was the highest modem regular VHS they had that year) I don't think different capture software will make a difference as it seems to be the internal level of the card itself but I will try that and see what happens. I will definately have a look at the registry...didn't think of looking there. Too bad the MMC software doesn't have record level metres so you can adjust the audio levels, (or a way to just record plain old wav audio rather than mp2) but I guess I can't be too picky. Thanks for the suggestions so far. I may try just going direct to the sound card rather than through the breakout box and avoid the ati audio device completely, but this doesn't solve the tv tuner.

I'm still a little baffled with the ghosting I'm getting with the mpeg capture or the jump every once in awhile. I may try a different bit rate, and fiddle with video soap a bit more and see what happens... curious if anyone else has seen this.

As for VCR's I'd like to find a used SVHS with a time base corrector...watching ebay but I'm hesitant to buy electronics from there.

[lordsmurf]

You try adjusting the volumes in WINDOWS, both in playback and recording modes ... look in volume controls ???

Also, delete soundcard drivers and re-install the card. That worked for me many many many months ago.

[Coluph]

OK, I did a quick search and found the registry entry for the sound volume....mine was set at 440!

This I suppose would explain why it sounded so terrible...the other setting was at 244..which I thought was still a bit high but left it. I bumped the record down to 175, and this seems to be a good level for it (better to be too low than too high IMO...can always normalize it later)

I'm really curious what other people have for this setting...and why the installation software would put it this high...

At least I found the problem with the sound

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ATI Technologies\Multimedio\Features\TV\Sound

Value Sound: Defaulted at 244 (left as is)
Value Record Volume Defaulted at 440 (changed it to 175)

There is also one labled User RecVol I left this alone as I didn't know what it was for. It has a value of 1 (for on?)

I wonder if there is a registry setting to let the software capture audio to a seperate wav file, rather than to the embedded mp2 file you get with the mpeg settings....