Great video, not so great audio

[ddawson24]

I have been capturing using my AIW 9600XT. I can get very good video results but the audio isn't that great. I have a Hercules Game Theater XP sound card. Most of the time I capture it is using an S-Video source with RCA's for the sound. And then of course from the AIW it plugs into to GTXP via the 1/8" mini jack. Is there a way to capture where I just plug the RCA's directly into the soundcard and I can keep the audio in sync? Through the AIW I have the highest audio settings preset. It seems that there is too much distortion even after I run the audio through a program like cool edit. I did a search and couldn't find that much on this topic. Thanks

[BrainStorm69]

Sounds like there are two issues you are having. One is that your audio levels may be set too high. There is a registry hack for AIW cards to deal with this. You can probably find it if you search this forum for "ATI audio registry hack". The other issue which I have experienced also, is that you may get better sound going straight from the source into your sound card. This can be done with a set of audio cables that have RCA jacks on one end, and a stereo mini-jack on the other. Or you can also buy an adaptor to go from RCA to stereo mini-jack (try Radio Shack).

[Steve Stepoway]

As BrainStorm69 says, your audio levels are too high. Are you certain that you are going into the line input to the GTXP and not a mic input? Line level is much hotter, and sending it to a mic input would cause huge distortion.

[ronnylov]

I have the original ATI All-In-Wonder 32MB model and I have this audio problem too. I have noticed that if I open up the volume mixer settings (double click on the loudspeaker icon next to the clock in system tray) and select properties for recording and then after I have started the video capture I decrease the recording volume to about 20% of full (if it was set to full before) then the distortion goes away in the recorded video. The problem is that it seems to autoadjust the recording level so no matter how low it is set it will distort the sound until you lower it even more after the recording have started.

1) Start ATI MMC.

2) open the recording level mixer settings

3) set the recording volume control to a high setting (80 % is fine).

4) Start the recording

5) Lower the recording level in the mixer settings to about 20 %.

6) After the finnished capture increase the recording level again to make it possible to lower it again during next capture.

I know how to set the recording level in the registry but it does not help because of this autogain function which distort the sound regardless of original setting. I must lower the volume after recording have started.

This problem occurs no matter of which software I use for capturing (Virtualdub and AVI_IO is the same as ATI MMC).

I did not have this problem when I used old drivers. I have dualboot with WinMe and there I have ATI MMC 7.7 or something like that and WDM capture drivers from long before the Catalysts.

Some driver versions cause the problem only on mono channels.

The problem seems to be driver related. I have not yet found a good driver combination where everything works with my AIW Radeon. But it should be possible to solve this problem because it have once worked without problems with audio...

[ddawson24]

I did the registry hack and that did seem to hack. My sound card auctually has 2 line inputs and an auxilury. The 1/8" jack from the AIW goes to the aux on the back of the sound card. There is no way it could reach the break out box. I actually ran the rca's directly into the line input and that helps as well. I just have to change the default recording source in the settings to the line input instead of aux. The only annoying thing is everytime I open the ATI Television and I want to record I have to change that default recording source from aux to line input. Is there any type of registry hack that can be done to change that. I know in the registry there are a couple that say audio in and audio connection. I just wouldn't know what to change them to.

[ronnylov]

I think you can rerun the Initialization wizard to change the input permanently.

I'll try to connect my VCR audio connectors directly to the soundcard and see if that helps. It is annoying with this "autogain" function that makes my sound distorted...

[ddawson24]

Yeah going through the wizard fixed that. Everybody was a ton of help. In one of the capturing guides there should be a section on the audio portion of capturing with this card. I haven't messed with it enough to see if the autogain thing happens to me too. Hopefully not.