ATI TV Wonder VE TV Capturing Advice

[aumfc]

Hi,

I just bought an ATI TV Wonder VE yesterday with the main purpose for it being to watch TV on my desktop and, more importantly, to schedule record television shows and put them on VCD or SVCD.

My setup is:

Windows 2000 SP3
Pentium 4 1.5
768MB RAM
2 x 40GB HDD
nVidia GeForce MX 400
SoundBlaster Live! Value

For the most part, I haven't had a problem watching television. The click every time I change channels is annoying but bearable. And, the video is kinda flacky but that may be because of the splitter I'm using and the cable, hopefully the new ones I buy today will fix that.

Anyway, my question is:

What is the best method to use for scheduling and recording TV in order to make it into a VCD or SVCD?

Actually, using the pre-configured VCD recording option in the ATI Media Center software that came with the card worked but the quality was not that great. I have also been able to produce a VCD capturing the vide at the software's highest setting (640x240) then, using ULead Video Software, converting to VCD. The quality was better then the direct VCD capture but took forever to edit and encode.

I am hoping there is maybe some better software that will take more advantage of the card producing better VCD files or SVCD files and still allow the convience of scheduling iwth an interactive TV guide. The Media Center default SVCD vertical resolution is limited to 240 so I'd have to convert anyway.

Any information would be much appreciated, especially if someone is currently doing what I want to do with the same card.

Thanks,
Jason

[wings123]

I have this card as well and have not hooked my cable to it yet. From what I hear, PowerVCR II is the best for sceduling and recording. It also has a bunch of different settings for bit rate and size.

[alandla]

Check out my post on this forum group on Jan 10 (next page or this link).
http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=136192

A lot of people commented on the very same question

[MOVIEGEEK]

The VE was my first capturecard and PowerVCR worked well with it.Here
is a tool that allows you to make a (X)VCD or (X)SVCD on the fly without re-encoding:
http://www.vcdhelp.com/MMC_Reg_Tool.zip

Also I recommend ATI MMC 7.6 beta(in OS select WinXP)
www.ati.com/support/driver.html