Ati all in wonder vs mpeg2 hardware encoder which is best

[tigerman8u]

I want to put my VCR's on DVD. I also want to capture some tv shows and put on DVD. Hopefully I will get the digital video recorder I want for Xmas. I have looked at the ATI all in wonder 7500 and the all in wonder pro 9000. I have also looked at hardware encoders ie Avermedia, Ads, and Plextor does mpeg4 also. Read alot on Lordsmurf's website and here as to what user comments. Can anybody help me decide which would be better and give better quality for what I want. ie Ati 7500, 9000, or hardware encoder. What is the difference between Ati 7500 and 9000 ?
P4 1.7
512mg DDR ram
120gb maxtor harddrive
Intel mb with 845 chipset
I have a new 200gb western digital with card controller but not in computer yet.
All suggestions and help on how to set this up, with what i mentioned above, for best quality, greatly appreciated.
Thanx in advance.

[indolikaa]

Hello!

I capture video through three sources: ATI AIW 9000 Pro (for MPEG), a Sony Digital8 camcorder (for DV.avi) and, in rare cases, my GeForce2 GTS (for uncompressed avi).

I purchased the ATI AIW 9000 Pro wholly on LordSmurf's suggestion, and this is one computer hardware purchase I am not disappointed with.

The Radeon 7500 and Radeon 9000 are two different VPUs; there are a host of improvements and advancements in the 9000 chipset. In my opinion, there is no reason to buy the 7500 when you can find the 9000 Pro for $149.00.

My direct experience with other realtime hardware encoders is limited to the Dazzle DVC-II, which officially receives a 'SuckAss' award for anything more than VCD. Friends whom I exchange raw video for editing and processing have only given good words to Canopus realtime products.

I run my 9000 Pros on Athlon T'Bird 1200 processor set-ups. So long as I keep the bitrate under 5500 neither machine has any problems.

Good luck, and I hope Santa is nice to you. :P

.indolikaa.
A Happy ATI Customer!

[racerxnet]

Any VHS encoded with macrovision will not record properly for you. You can try the macro hacks on the net but will not enable you to record without light/dark scenes every 7 seconds. You can buy the card/Box combo to enable this or buy the Canopus 100 with onboard processing. This is less taxing on the CPU of your pc. Similar to what happens when you have an external USR Courier 2806 vs. a winmodem. Realtime MPEG2 will push your PC with the ATI card.

[lordsmurf]

Buy a good VCR for VHS playback, and a TBC if you want to remove Macrovision (an artificial error) as well as as the true errors on the tapes. That's good advice for almost any card.

The ATI AIW 9800 is the best one...

But I get by just fine on my 7200 cards. In fact, I plan to add a 128PRO here soon (a gift, plus a chance to hack the drivers for ATI MMC 8.x), so nothing wrong with the older cards, not at all. The capture chips on the 128PRO-9600 cards are the same. Only the 9700-9800 are different (more MPEG hardware).

As indolikaa's said though, the graphics chips are faster with the higher the card. Fast games suck on my old cards, but I don't play games anyhow. So if you need games too, grab a newer card like the 9000s.

To beat the quality of an ATI AIW card's MPEG capture, you'd need to jump up to a $700 Canopus MPEG Pro or $1100 Matrox card. The Hauppauge are decent too, but have known issues with the MPEG's it makes being non-compliant or flawed. No other real contenders in the MPEG capture arena.

Outpost.com and newegg.com have good prices. Also eBay for older boards. Or just find a user that upgraded to a new card and buy his/her old one.

[racerxnet]

Hey Smurf,

What are you going to use to disassemble the drivers? Finding resources for this application and knowing which ones will work are a real chore. Then learning how to use them will be the next hurdle. I've told of a couple programs that worked for my situation. What are you trying to change/disable. Do you need to monitor the API? What file has the code that needs modifying? It sure is a challenge.

P.S. Whats the matter with the Canopus 100 capture in relation to the ATI? Do you have a comparison of captures for inspection? I ask this question in reference to capture quality.

[tigerman8u]

thanx for your replies and help. the reason i mentioned the 7500 and 9000 pro is b cause my brother has one of each and will trade me for my Gforce plus a few $. My Gforce is 128mb 8xagp, the 2 ATI's are 64mb 4xagp. Do any of you think the drop from 128mg 8xagp to 64mb 4x agp will hamper me ? from your input i'm strongly leaning towards the 9000 pro. i don't play any video intensive games anymore so that's not a big deal. again thanx for the advice/help.

[dcsos]

Get a professionalk MPEG-2 capture card like the VITEC Direct Cut Machine or the SONIC SD-1000

[duhmez]

Never underestimate the power or th All in Wonder. And don't be fooled with a TV wonder, they suck.

My capture rig is an AIW radeon original 32 MB and the quality is maazing, for both mpeg capture and huffyuv lossless capture.

[lordsmurf]

Hey Smurf,

What are you going to use to disassemble the drivers? Finding resources for this application and knowing which ones will work are a real chore. Then learning how to use them will be the next hurdle. I've told of a couple programs that worked for my situation. What are you trying to change/disable. Do you need to monitor the API? What file has the code that needs modifying? It sure is a challenge.

P.S. Whats the matter with the Canopus 100 capture in relation to the ATI? Do you have a comparison of captures for inspection? I ask this question in reference to capture quality.

FulciLives has some Canopus sample images, showing the flaws in DV captures. I've seen that reproduced by people I know. The ATI and Canopus are both fine. It mainly depends on the user and settings. I don't have any side-by-side stuff anymore, never considered making it to share, did all that long before the lordsmurf.com site was even considered.

On the ATI disassebly, I have no idea. I had not even thought about it yet, and probably won't for a few more weeks. It'll be hit-n-miss and I'll be calling programmer friends. I'm not a programmer, but I somehow managed to write my own Pioneer 103 firmware (customized for Compaq) by fiddling and working with others in my same situation. When I do the ATI thing, I'll be sure to take notes. I didn't take good notes when I did the Pioneer firmware, so I no longer know what I did.

I'm mainly going after getting ATI MMC 8.x to work on the 128PRO. Maybe an anti-Macrovision version if I can do it all at once. It'll be a one-shot too, being only hacks for that one card and WinXP Pro. But I'm sure others can see what I did for others cards and OS. We'll see what happens. I'll be making posts here and time-sensitive downloads on my site if all goes well.

[indolikaa]

P.S. Whats the matter with the Canopus 100 capture in relation to the ATI? Do you have a comparison of captures for inspection? I ask this question in reference to capture quality.

I think this is in reference to DV's 4:1:1 vs. non-DV 4:2:2. The capture demonstration I saw was very noticed on reds edging into black. The image was (I think) that of a bank of stadium lights. I actually did my own short test from the Star Trek First Contact LaserDisc and it was apparent on a large plasma TV and nonexistent on my 32" Sony Trinitron.

I think I can backtrack where I posted my original question regarding 4:1:1. If I find it, I'll link it here. I'm not positive, but I think the pictures were from FulciLives also.

@ tigerman8u,

I purchased my ATI AIW 9000 Pro's from allstarshop.com, only because I couldn't find the card on newegg.com's site. Both are excellent retailers in my opinion.

As for AGP bandwidth? Hell if I know! What I can tell you is that the video I capture and forward to those with better systems that my own have no complaints regarding the ATI's quality.

Macrovision is an important question. The answer is a TBC, whether it's through a quality VCR or an external TBC. Your budget will likely determine the practicality of this issue, but it's a great investment if you plan on doing a lot of transfers.

Your system is significantly beefier than mine, so you shouldn't go wrong with whatever capture method you choose. Rumor around here at The Ranch is we will be testing a P4 HT on a 533 bus with 1066 RDRAM. I have it from very knowledgable sources that this will be akin to cracking open a walnut with a sledgehammer. We shall see... :P

[indolikaa]

@ racerxnet,

Here is the thread in question. It was from Star Wars and not stadium lights, but the image details quite clearly a possible reason to not use DV.

That being said, I use DV and have since I knew about it...

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/t183502.html

[johns0]

If you are going to choose ati go for the 9000 cause if you ever decide to buy a new gane for the heck of it most likely the 7500 wont be able to play it.

[indolikaa]

If you are going to choose ati go for the 9000 cause if you ever decide to buy a new gane for the heck of it most likely the 7500 wont be able to play it.

Ditto.

[LanEvo7]

I have an aiw 8500dv and for some reason whenever I do MPEG2 direct captures i have a lot of problems. I've used ATI, power dvd recorder and win dvd recorder and it all has the same effect. ATI says my dropped frames are <1% and the rest don't report any errors. But the stuff I capture looks like it skips a frame frequently. Not sure how to fix it. When I capture with MJPEG it doesn't happen.


BTW, if you plan to use it to play games, don't get the aiw 9000. The 9000 is an old chipset with no direct x 9 support. Get at least the aiw 9600 or if you have the money aiw 9800.

[jrsdsl]

I have a AIW 8500dv. Would the AIW 9000 be any better for capturing. I have another system for games so that isn't a factor. Running WinXP on a Athlon XP 2600+, Abit NF7-S, 512 meg ram.

Thanks

[spiderman2k1]

I capture on two card's dazzle 2 adn ATI dazzle 2 is better for Satellite and ATI is better for VHS. Both card's are very good. for Dazzle 2 go to www.dazzlegeek.com and for ATI AIW get one at www.pricewatch.com if I was you I get a cheep ATI AIW then get a Dazzle 2 frome bay they do not make Dazzle 2 any more but there are two capture timer's for the card and it's the best capture card for MEPG 2 to record TV show's. If you shop right you can get both card's for $100.00 buck's that two card's and you only spend $100.00 dollars then get you DVD record on top of it.

[FulciLives]

Concerning the DV 4:1:1 problem ...

I have found out that there are two filters out there that attempt to correct the problem of converting DV 4:1:1 to MPEG-2 DVD format.

One works with VirtualDub and the other works with AviSynth.

I have't tested them as I currently don't have the CANOPUS ADVC-100 or any other means of capturing in DV but I've heard that the filters do a decent job of "fixing" or "masking" the errors.

I'm still toying around with the idea of maybe getting the CANOPUS ADVC-100 but for now the price is keeping me away but I might eventually get one (sooner than later) as I finally got a new job ending nearly a year of being on and off (mostly on) unemployment compensation which barely pays the rent little alone "toys".

As for where to get these filters ...

See this THREAD and the post by vhelp:

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=190450

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[tigerman8u]

I got the ATI AIW pro 9000 today. will set it up tomorrow and see how it works. If I don't like it my brother said I can give it back to him, so nothing to lose $ wise.
to Lordsmurf and indolikaa, you both mention TBC. is that a video stabilizer? sorry but i'm not sure what you meen.
my vcr is a panasonic pv-4403 if that helps.
Thank you all very much for your help. will post my results.

[lordsmurf]

Time Base Corrector (TBC)
A hardware device used to remove or mask variations in the video synchronizing signals, which can result in "skewing" and other distortions in the video image generated by unavoidable mechanical inaccuracies in helical scan recorders. This is accomplished by automatically delaying the video signal so that each line starts at the proper time. In capturing a TBC is used to 'clean up' analog tape problems and may assist in the capture of old VHS tapes when used between a VCR and capture card. Hardware TBCs can be expensive.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=breadCrumb&A=search&Q=&ci=2138

I suggest the DataVideo TBC-1000

[tigerman8u]

Time Base Corrector (TBC)
A hardware device used to remove or mask variations in the video synchronizing signals, which can result in "skewing" and other distortions in the video image generated by unavoidable mechanical inaccuracies in helical scan recorders. This is accomplished by automatically delaying the video signal so that each line starts at the proper time. In capturing a TBC is used to 'clean up' analog tape problems and may assist in the capture of old VHS tapes when used between a VCR and capture card. Hardware TBCs can be expensive.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=breadCrumb&A=search&Q=&ci=2138

I suggest the DataVideo TBC-1000

i am checking this out now

thanx to all of you for your help

[jamawass]

Buy a good VCR for VHS playback, and a TBC if you want to remove Macrovision (an artificial error) as well as as the true errors on the tapes. That's good advice for almost any card.

The ATI AIW 9800 is the best one...

But I get by just fine on my 7200 cards. In fact, I plan to add a 128PRO here soon (a gift, plus a chance to hack the drivers for ATI MMC 8.x), so nothing wrong with the older cards, not at all. The capture chips on the 128PRO-9600 cards are the same. Only the 9700-9800 are different (more MPEG hardware).

As indolikaa's said though, the graphics chips are faster with the higher the card. Fast games suck on my old cards, but I don't play games anyhow. So if you need games too, grab a newer card like the 9000s.

To beat the quality of an ATI AIW card's MPEG capture, you'd need to jump up to a $700 Canopus MPEG Pro or $1100 Matrox card. The Hauppauge are decent too, but have known issues with the MPEG's it makes being non-compliant or flawed. No other real contenders in the MPEG capture arena.

Outpost.com and newegg.com have good prices. Also eBay for older boards. Or just find a user that upgraded to a new card and buy his/her old one.

The AIW 9600 actually has the new rage theater 200 chip, directx 9 hardware and dual vga output which is useful if you have your card also hooked up to a projector. All AIW direct x9 cards have hardware encoding assist which takes about 20-30% off the cpu load during mpeg capture.