ATI AIW 128 Pro Capture Card Question

[rayban]

I am debating on whether or not to continue to use this card on a new system I am building which will be used mainly for digital video editing and burning to DVD. I have the 32MB version and was wondering how the quality of this card is on analog 8mm and vhs tapes being converted over to DVD. Would my system (P4 2.4Ghz and 120G 7200 8mb cache drive) be enough to capture great lossless AVI from 8mm and vhs tapes using this card? What other suggestions would you give? I am on a budget but have heard comments on Leadteak Winfast TV2000 XP ( is this better than the ATI AIW?) My other option is to upgrade to an AIW 7500 card if that would improve capturing of analog sources.

Any suggestions?

[n6nfg]

As I understand it, the video capture capabilities of the AIW 128 Pro are
identical to the radeon AIW 7500/8500 and maybe the 9500. They
all use the same chip set (rage theatre). The differences between
them seem to be in the version of MMC software that is shipped/supported
with them. Someone please correct me if I am wrong about this.

Official support of the AIW 128 Pro ended with MMC 7.1. Many people on
this board report being able to use later versions of the MMC (up to 8.x)
with the older 128 Pro. You just need to find the "magic" recipe that will
allow the newer MMC to be installed.

MMC above around 7.6/7 seems to allow for 48 Khz audio capture for DVD
compliance. Prior versions only allowed up to 41 Khz (VCD standard).
I believe better motion estimation capabilites were enabled in drivers
beyond 7.6 or so. Also, filters beneficial to VHS capturing became available
sometime in the high 7.x or maybe this was introduced with the 8.x series.

I also have the AIW 128 Pro, and would like to get mine working with the
later MMC stuff, just haven't had the time to work through the issues yet.
I do believe this older board will still hold its own though. The ony reason
to get a newer one is less hastle in getting the newer MMC to work.

-n6nfg

[sea4me]

I used to run a celeron 1100 system with my AIW 128/32 (not pro).

Just recently buildt a new PC with AIW 9000 pro (1700 celeron).

Judging quality is not science but it looks much better than on the old system. Capturing analog material looks much better. TV is better too.

Could of course be due to better system performance. But i rarely experienced frame drops with my old system.

Havent experienced any bugs so far. On the old AIW I continously had problems with TV sound. Sound was way too loud and couldnt be adjusted properly.