realtime ATI MPEG-2 capture WITHOUT using MMC?

[miamicanes]

Are there any MPEG-2 codecs or capture utilities that can take advantage of the ATI All in Wonder Rage Theatre chip's hardware acceleration features besides ATI's own MMC 7.6 or newer? As I understand it, the AIW doesn't quite have full hardware MPEG-2, but its chipset can assist apps written to take advantage of it to vastly accelerate things that would normally cause an all-software MPEG-2 encoder that tried to capture in realtime to fall on its face or drop most of the frames (IDCT calculation, motion searching, etc.)

I love my AIW 128 Pro's ability to capture 352 x 480 MPEG-2 from VHS well enough to make the extra hassle of capturing 100+ gigs of MJPEG or HuffyUV and overnight re-encoding with TMPGenc not worth the work or hassle, but its refusal to capture audio at 48000hz (forcing me to re-encode the audio anyway) irritates me to no end. So...

1) Is it possible to pull off realtime MPEG-2 encoding from any app BESIDES ATI MMC?

or...

2) Is there any way to force ATI MMC to capture DVD-compliant 1/2 DV-1 video (352 x 480) with proper 48khz audio in the first place?

[Mirror_Image]

2) Is there any way to force ATI MMC to capture DVD-compliant 1/2 DV-1 video (352 x 480) with proper 48khz audio in the first place?

MMC 7.7.0.1 does 48kHz audio captures, but I'm not sure you can get it to work with an AIW128 Pro - I'm not saying they won't work together, just that I don't know if they will or not.

[miamicanes]

Hmmm. I guess I'll give 7.7.0.1 a shot tonight. Up to now, I stuck with 7.6 because the number of people having problems seemed several orders of magnitude larger than those *NOT* having problems with it, but I guess 48khz is a good reason to try it. After all, I'm technically living dangerously with the AIW Radeon 8500's WDM drivers already, but amazingly enough, neither the installer nor anything else has even coughed, let alone complained so far

<flame>
It pisses me off to no end that ATI has written off the AIW 128 pro entirely, seeing how it has the *EXACT SAME* capture hardware as every AIW Radeon manufactured later on. Personally, I think they owe a *huge* moral debt to AIW128pro owners, seeing how the d**m card couldn't even capture 10 minutes of MPEG-1 without rebooting the machine for the first 6 months I owned it (mid-2000), and hardware-assisted MPEG capture (one of the selling points listed on the box and in ATI's ads) was a fiction/fantasy until MMC 7.6 came out -- a version that officially doesn't even support the AIW128pro. In any other industry, that would probably meet the definition of "Fraud" IMHO, if they wanted to drop their *flagship* card less than a year after its release (and while the drivers for everything besides Win98SE were STILL beta/unsupported), they should have *AT LEAST* let 128 pro owners trade them in for an AIW Radeon for some nominal charge (note to ATI: "nominal" != new price from buy.com!!! )
</flame>

[Nelson37]

I have same card, same opinion, same problem. SFAIK no other app can use the enhancement features of the ATI card but MMC. It always says "codec locked" or some such.

MMC 7.7 does do 48 K audio, and some have reported success with the AIW 128 pro. I have tried several times and methods of uninstall and re-install, no success. However the possible combinations are numerous and success or failure can hinge on something as simple as rebooting (or not) at a certain point, usually contrary to software instructions.

Have been using the "remove 3:2 pulldown" with excellent results. Have confirmed this does IVTC and inserts the Pulldown flag. Editing difficult but workable, see my thread on editing ATI realtime.

[Sulik]

You might also want to wait for MMC 8.1. The latest rumors are that it will be out within a few weeks, has all the new features of MMC 8.0, and is backward compatible with all existing boards.

I'm especially waiting for:
- SW videosoap (noise reduction - especially useful for VCD/SVCD - hope it won't tax the cpu too much - the 9700 AIW has it in hw)
- 48kHz LPCM Audio as well as MPEG audio
- I've seen MMC 8.0 and it's better than 7.7 for MPEG2 captures, especially since you can now set the maximum and target bitrates.

[Nelson37]

Finally got 7.7 to work, New version of Catalyst drivers for AIW 128 pro and manual install of the 5 unknown devices did the trick. 48 k Audio makes real-time DVD-compatible (X)CVD an option!

MMC 8.1 looks like the hot ticket, better bitrate control is badly needed. From what I am reading, looks like the noise filters will only work on the Radeon series, though.