a couple of ati aiw questions

[jl8013]

I have a couple of questions about ati aiw tv capture.

Here is my sys spec.

p4 2.4c (2.64)
asus p4p800 dlx
1gb pc2100 ram
135gb capture hd
ati aiw radeon 32mb agp (7200 i think, its the first radeon)
display driver 6.14.10.6378
mm 8.5
huffyuv 2.1.1


1. Does it really matter in picture quality if I'm using the default dvd setting or the avi setting for tv capture? I can capture over one day of tv with the dvd 8mb/s setting, but with the setting from lordsmurf.com's guide, I can only capture 2hrs on a 135gb hard drive.

2. How come the huffyuv codec that I downloaded from here is different from the one that was on lordsmurf.com's guide? I cant change the interlaced option with mine.

[lordsmurf]

1. Does it really matter in picture quality if I'm using the default dvd setting or the avi setting for tv capture? I can capture over one day of tv with the dvd 8mb/s setting, but with the setting from lordsmurf.com's guide, I can only capture 2hrs on a 135gb hard drive.
2. How come the huffyuv codec that I downloaded from here is different from the one that was on lordsmurf.com's guide? I cant change the interlaced option with mine.

Your computer specs look good.

1. Do not ever use the default DVD or AVI settings that came with the MMC software. They are crap and do not use any proper video settings. Visit www.lordsmurf.com for guides on quality ATI captures. AVI captures are larger files that MPEG captures.

2. I got mine from here about 6 months ago. Search the Web, Kazaa, whatever for another version. You can use Motion JPEG (MJPEG) also, and it works as good as HuffYUV.

I found the HuffYUV here too: http://web.syr.edu/~tjmyers/intermediate_VFAPI.html

Since the file is only 21kb, I may add it for download on my site.

[jl8013]

ok thx, but ur site is down for me right now.

[lordsmurf]

ok thx, but ur site is down for me right now.

Loads fine for me.

[bottle-necked]

jl8013

135G = 2hours? That looks more like uncompressed than HuffY. It should be like 5.5hours (if I remember right) using 'Predict Left". That's about 410MB per minute+- (?), not 1.125GB per minute. @720x480?

Although, you might not be getting a true 'time remaining reading' from you capture program. That time is only aprox anyway and always changing with every write sequence.(?)

..I don't know...

I see you're using a P4-C model. You should be using PC-3200 DDR instead of that PC2100. The 3200 is 400Mhz (2x) where 2100 is only 266. I also think that "C" takes Dual Channel DDR in pairs. Just a thought.

[jl8013]

lordsmurf, in your guide for mpeg capturing. you said to set the bit rate to only 4.0mb/s for dvd. will i get a better result if i set it at 6mb/s like the dvd high setting?

[lordsmurf]

lordsmurf, in your guide for mpeg capturing. you said to set the bit rate to only 4.0mb/s for dvd. will i get a better result if i set it at 6mb/s like the dvd high setting?

Not for 352x480. The 4.0 MB/s is well enough information being given to every pixel. Extra bitrate is not really used, just bloating the file size.

For 720x480, you should try for 8.0 MB/s, and never less than 6.0, otherwise you'll notice macroblocks and other things starting to degrade.

352x240 = 2.0 max
352x480 = 4.0 max
720x480 = 8.0 max