A Fix for ATI AIW capture missing res. in W2K !

[armix]

I have ATI AIW 128 16MB (AGP), and recently switched from W98 to W2K.
I have recommended ATI WDM Driver - 5.13.01.3279, and MMC 7.5.

As zillion of people like me discovered by now, the vertical capture resolution in AIW stuck on ???x288 (for PAL) for AVI captures, and there is no way to set it higher to capture in full frame at 720x576. However, when one goes back to W98 or WinMe with theirs VFW drivers and MMC 6.4, everything gets back to normal, and the capture resolution limits disappear.

I've been shitting my PC for a few weeks now, trying to overcome the problem - different drivers, betas, MMCs, VFW to WDM wrappers, etc.

And then I came across a little obscure WDM driver patch for ATI AIW.
It consists of only one file ATIBT829.SYS and accompanied with READ.ME text file.

So, I renamed it to ATINBTXX.SYS and copied it to my
C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS directory, overwriting the original ATI WDM driver.

Then I opened VirtualDub and could not believe my eyes - I got 720x480!
The only disappointment is that it's no good for PAL (720x576), but is perfect for full-frame NTSC capture.

That got me interested... I looked at all properties of that "fixed" driver:
File Version : 5.0.2183.3
Company Name: by Ihor Fesenco
Internal Name: AtiBt829.sys

But all other ATI RECOMMENDED drivers have:
File Version: whatever
Company Name: ATI Technologies Inc.
Internal Name: ativbtxx.sys(MV)(NI) <------ !!!

And guess what - MV stands for MACROVISION, and NI stands for NON-INTERLACED. No wonder the ATI All-in-Wonder recommended crap drivers are disabled for WDM AVI capture at resolutions higher x288

I've checked quite a few different versions of ATI drivers for W2K, and all late ones (including betas) got these (MV)(NI) symbol on them.

Anyway, here is the link to get the patched (and legal) driver:
www.cinax.com/download/drivers/atiaiw.exe

If somebody finds or got already PAL version of this patch, please post it here !!!

regards, armix

[Bstansbury]

The URL you just posted must be bad. I would not link. I went to Cinax.com and they have no driver site. They have a download site but only for their products. Must be something wrong.

[armix]

I just got it again...

http://www.cinax.com/Download/drivers/atiaiw.exe

armix

[Bstansbury]

More questions about your post. Are you really using MMC 6.4 with the new driver or have you tried MMC 7.5.

I can see that ATI may have caved into pressure to include Macrovison to their codecs to prevent capture of protected VHS tapes,... that is all that Macrovison does,.. it scrambles incoming VHS signals such that they can not be copied on another VHS tape drive. I guess this same function could be detected by ATI software to prevent the capture of copyright VHS tapes. I don't see that this would case ATI to limit the frame size of any other video capture,.. they could always detect the input Macrovison "Ticks" and stop the capture.

What frame size options do you have with this new driver,... In MMC 7.5 and AVI, I have, 80x60,150x120,176x144,240x176,240x180,320x240,400x 240,480x240,560x240,640x240,720x240,320x240,400x30 0,480x360,560x420,640x480,720x480. All of this is great but not the one I want which is 480x480. If I could find that I would be happy.

Also, you said you renamed the driver to ATIBTxx.sys and overlaid it to the orginal driver. You must have used the same name or ATI would not accept it as a driver,.. right???

I'm using MMC 7.5 and I forced loaded a different version of WFWWDM drivers than what was installed. The strange thing is that no matter what I tried, windows would not install it into the systems driectory. It kept telling me that this driver was dated older than the one installed. I told it to forget that and just install it and it wouldn't. I finally just copied both of them to the sys directory and so far so good. Still I'm missing 480x480 in AVI. In MPEG, I can custom set it to what I want,.. but I want to capture in AVI. My system is not fast enough to capture 640x480 using even huffyuv.

Any suggestions.

[Ole_thor]

Armix,
I have the same problem with XP that you had with 2000.
I tried to replace the driver ATIBt829.sys with the new driver
and the OS won't let me do it. I tried uninstalling the device to free
the driver, but when I delete the driver, it comes back automatically.
if I try to replace the driver, the old one comes back. I will have
to research the proper way to install the new driver.

does anyone already know how to do that?

Ole

[Ole_thor]

The XP Problem with replacing drivers is due to "Windows File Protection".
there is a fairly detailed explanation in http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/driver/sfp/wfp.asp
I will try this tonight and figure out what is the best mechanism and post
the solution.

Ole.

[diveboy]

not sure if this will work. but you can try mv.exe from the nt res kit to replace the file at boot time.

[patrickm]

DOS boot disk.

[Bstansbury]

Ole_thor,

read his orginal post again,.... he replaced a file that was in Window\system32\drivers\ directory with the new file. The file name is actually; ATINBTXX.SYS . I found it in the same place,.. so he just replaced it. He did not overright ATIBT829.sys

My concern in doing the same thing is that I already have all of the frames sizes he is missing,... so I don't really thing this is the real problem. I hate to experiment on my system since I've tried so many things and had so many problems, I don't want to try something unless my system is broken.

[armix]

Bstansbury,

Quote >>
What frame size options do you have with this new driver,... In MMC 7.5 and AVI, I have, 80x60,150x120,176x144,240x176,240x180,320x240,400x 240,480x240,560x240,640x240,720x240,320x240,400x30 0,480x360,560x420,640x480,720x480. All of this is great but not the one I want which is 480x480. If I could find that I would be happy.
End Quote >>

If you have all of that, you do not need any fixes!
I am going through total madness messing with my system and my AIW card DAILY FOR THE LAST 3 WEEKS to get what you have! How did you do it?
Please tell me exactly what ATI AIW is on your system, and how do you install everything so you have all these resolutions?

Here what happens to me every time I do a fresh Windows 2000 installation:

I got an ATI All-in-Wonder 128 (16MB, AGP), with the BT829 capture chip

1. I format my hard drive and install Windows 2000 Professional (all default options)
2. It detects and installs default WDM drivers for my AIW 128 card and its Bt829 chip.
3. Install SP2.
4. Install DirectX 8.1
5. Install Sound Card drivers
6. Install ATI recommended WDM drivers for AIW 128 version 5.13.01.3279
7. Install MMC 7.5 with all components selected (default).
8. I open MMC 7.5 for capture
9. Select AVI format - horizontal sizes go up to 720, but the maximum VERTICAL resolution is 288 ONLY !!!

How can you get 720x480 on you system ???

[Bstansbury]

I hope I can help but I've always had these frame sizes. My ATI card is AIW Radeon AGP 32 MB DDR. It came with MMC 7.1. I've loaded MMC 7.5 from the Rage3d site. I have the latest DirectX8.1. IF you mulitply and the problems you've had and the software you've loaded by 5X, then you'll catch up to me. There is not enough time or paper to tell you the hours I've spent getting my system to where is it. I wish I had a trace file,... I need it. If I ever crash again, I don't know how to recreate it.
All I can do is back it up.

Look on the forum at the two posts I've made recently,.... they will give you some clue to what I've done. ONe is called "Assigning Interrupt for Video Capture", and the other is "Tweaks for Windows ME for Capture"

One thing we can do is to compare the software versions of drivers that are loaded. For example,.. I've had problems trying to load the latest WDM wrapper found on the net. Windows ME will not let me load it because of the "File Protection" capability in WinME. The wrapper does not have a valid signatrue and therefore will not load. I bypassed that and manually loaded it by overwritting it in the Systems directory.

The current version of VFWVDW.DRV and VFWVDM32.DLL are 4.90.0.3000. The current version of ATI Video drivers is ;WME_R128_4_13_7192.exe. If you can think of anything else to ask, let me know and I'll look it up. By the way, the MMC reg tool from Stinky only works on MPEG settings, he has no information on what to do about AVI settings.

[Ole_thor]

In order to get the driver file from Igor Fesenko installed on XP
(using NTFS) you have to take his driver file (ATIBT829.sys)
compress it (I used the NT4 Resource kit compress utility)
and put it in the ATI driver folder as ATINBTxx.sy_
(C:\ATI\support\WXP_R128_6_13_3279\Atidrive)
Then you have to update the video drivers (instead of install)
by right clicking on the desktop and going into properties->settings->
advanced->adapter->properties->driver->update driver, point to
the folder mentioned above when it asks where to get the driver
and it will say that the file you are installing is not digitally signed.
I ignored that and continued. when it was complete and rebooted,
I was able to select 640x480 in virtualdub. unfortunately it still
looks like 640x240 (squished twice as wide as it is high).
I haven't had much time to investigate beyond that point.

prior to this, I was unable to use virtualdub to capture.
it gave me a negative image and no sound. I tried doing a
driver update tonight instead of an install (using regular ati drivers
instead of Igor Fesenko's drivers) and I was able to capture
video and sound (albeit only at somethingx240). I think I will go
back and play with the properly loaded ATI drivers using mmc7.5
and see if I can capture 640x480 avi files.

that's it for tonight, probably won't get to play with this tomorrow,
but I will pass on what I discover as soon as I can.

Ole.

[Ole_thor]

armix, bstansbury ( and anyone else that wants to )
can you look at the drivers that you have installed for the
multimedia capture devices, and the video adapter driver
and post "the OS used / the device name / driver name / version / date /
author / max avi capture size that works / capture tool (mmc or vdub...)"

I discovered last night that following instructions of ATI
left me with the microsoft drivers instead of the ati drivers
on my adapter. it would be good to confirm who has what
drivers and what size they can capture with it. to make sure
everyone looks at the same thing, use the device manager to
look at the properties of the device and get the driver details from that.
then we will be comparing apples and apples.

As soon as my wife lets me back in the playground, I'll get that
info and post it also.

thanks,
Ole.

[Bstansbury]

Ole, Not sure that this will help you since all of this information is specific to my ATI card,.. but here it is,

WindowsME,ATI AIW Radeon AGP DDR card, Video Driver=ATI2VXAG.VXD, Ver= 4.13.7189, Author=ATI corp.,

This driver is availble from the ATI (Find a Driver) site and is the latest they have for Win ME. As far as performance, I have all of the sizes listed above in MMC 7.5 and all work to some degree. My problem is that my system is not fast enough (or is still conjested with something)to capture at or above 640x480. At that speed I drop about 20% of the frames using MMC 7.5 and AVI (Huffyuv). If I use MPEG-1 I can capture at that frame size with <1% drops but there is still jerky output.

Hope this helps

[Ole_thor]

Here is the info on my drivers and the results I got.

Descrip ATI RAGE 128 windowsNT Display Driver
Provider ATI Technologies
Date 9/26/2001
Version 6.13.3279.0
Filename ATI2DVAA.DLL

Descrip ATI WDM BT829
Provider ATI Technologies
Date 9/26/2001
Version 4.91.1.5104
Filename ATINBTxx.sys


WINXP pro 2002 Dell P4 1.7Ghz 512Mb ram 2x20Gb

AVI capturing with max resolution quality
MMC7.5 TV 720x240 flat squished - bad
MMC7.5 TV 320x240 very good
Virtualdub 1.4.8 320x240 very good
iuvcr 3.11.0.176 320x240 very good


So it looks like in this mode the highest vertical resolution I can go is 240.
I will try the Igor Fesenko BT829 driver as soon as possible.

Ole

[Bstansbury]

I can see that you have the latest drivers available from the ATI web site. I can't explain why you don't have the necessary drivers, except that there could be a performance problem with your card and that is why ATI did not put the high resolutions in that driver. How old is the Rage 128 card???

I would also suggest sending an E-mail to ATI tech support asking them why there are no high res frames in that driver.

[jolo]

Interesting topic !!

I have a Radeon 7500 all in wonder and I haven't even been able to get the TV version 7.6 to come up at all !!
Is it being proposed to replace the ATI drivers with Stinky's driver ?
I am running WINME on the 800MHG Duron with 384mg RAM.

Here is what ATI recommends for my Radeon 7500 all in wonder:

Recommended Driver - 4.13.01.9031 display driver for WinME
Hydravision™ 2.50.023 - for hydravision
ATI Multimedia Center 7.6 - MMC 7.6, noDVD
ATI DVD Player 7.6 - DVD player

It sould like it is recommended to not install ATIs - MMC 7.6, noDVD driver, but Stinky's MMC 7.5 driver.

Is this true ?

[iKlEiTlH]

I had a similar problem with the MMC TV not loading up...
Are you trying to do a custom install where you minimize what they install into your cpu?
If so, then just choose express...
I tried installing TV by itself and with some of the other components, but it didn't seem to work unless I installed the entire MMC package.

[jolo]

I'm not trying to do anything unusual or custom at all !!

Just can't get my MMC TV to come up. It starts, I see it, but it never runs the applicastion. It just freezes.

Doesn't freeze the computer, just the application.

Jolo (Jon )

[jolo]

I'm not trying to do anything unusual or custom at all !!

Just can't get my MMC TV to come up. It starts, I see it, but it never runs the applicastion. It just freezes.

Doesn't freeze the computer, just the application.

Jolo (Jon )

[Lamont Cranston]

I am using an ATI AIW 128 Pro with win2K, driver 5.13.01.3279, WDM->VFW wrapper and capturing 720 x 480 with AVI_IO and VirtualDub. 720 x 480 has always been an option. I did not think there was any difference between the AIW 128 and 128 Pro.

[woodman1445]

I tried all them new drivers and what I found out is that If you use win 98 and use the drivers that came with the card and MMC 6.2 and use the opions there you can capture 720X480 and it all will work. Win 2000 and XP all work but You will find it's l lot of trouble. Keep it simple.

[Lamont Cranston]

In win 2K I installed only the driver NO MMC any Version. I installed the WDM->VFW Wrapper and I capture 720 x 480 with 48KHz audio with both the AVI_IO and VirtualDub. IMHO Get rid of MMC. Any version of MMC is pitiful.

[mole]

The answer to the resolution problem, will most definitely be this program :

http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/

if you have a Brooktree based crad (I know the TV Wonder cards are)