ATI MMC 9.1 - Captured video is letterboxed but squished

[devnulllore]

Hi,

I have the ATI TV Wonder PCI card. This is not the VE edition. I realize that the official drivers limit the resolution, even in fully compliant DVD mode, to 640 x 240. The problem I am having is that the resulting recordings "look" letter boxed but seem actually just squished down. Is this a result of the resolution limitation?

To be honest I am actually happy with the quality, even in the 320 x 240 DVD setting but of course if I can get better quality I would like that.

I guess my underlying questions are. Should I use the drivers from ATI and somehow re-encode the resulting video or get the drivers for the chipset, which I have used before and many others recommend, and get the true resolution that the hardware supports.

The problem I have seen with the chipset drivers is that MMC does not work with those. I do have other DVR software to use, keep in mind, that I have tried before but am always looking for suggestions.

*sigh*

I know it's a lot but I am relatively new to all this and the card was a gift so I just want to get some of my favorite shows on DVD.

I thank you all for any help ahead of time.

Cheers,

~dev

[lordsmurf]

For the BT8x8 cards, try AVI capture in VirtualDub or iuVCR.

[iantri]

Try AVI_IO and Virtual VCR, as well.

If the ATI software works for you it is a major miracle and should be held as proof that there is a god. Get rid of it and install the btwincap drivers; the quality is better, they are less buggy, and you will sleep better at night.

BTW, it looks squished because the aspect ratio of a 640x240 file is not 4:3, it is 8:3. A video image is 4:3. And how ATI considers 640x240 DVD compliant is rather curious. Perhaps they say "DVD quality"? Because there is no way you can generate a valid DVD with that.