ATI AUDIO SYNC / VIRTUALDUB NO WORKY

[Coluph]

Hey guys, I am -still- having problems

My System:

Abit NF7S Board with AMD Athlon 2500+ CPU
1 GIG Dual DDR 333 RAM
ATI TV Wonder Pro Remote Control Edition (I am told this is the All in Wonder without a video card on it, if I am wrong please say so)
Capturing Software MMC 8.2, this is what came with the card
Windows XP Pro
Sound is the Nforce Onboard Audio (yes I have tried a stand alone card it does NOT make a difference...in fact...it is worse, so do not tell me my sound device is no good)

The problem : Sound is out of sync. You see the picture then you hear it.

First off, I CAN NOT use Virtual dub to capture. It refuses to do it. It says, 'Unsupported Video Format' no matter what setting you tell it to use. How you folks get this card to work with Virtual Dub is a mystery to me. I have tried the wrapper driver.. IT DOES NOT WORK with this card.

This in mind, I am forced to use the MMC software that came with the card. It captures fine...NO dropped frames. Picture looks nice. Audio is off.

My settings: Codec - Huffy or straight UVY2 (uncompressed) Makes no difference what I use. SO the codec is not the problem. Audio is set to 48 khz, PCM.

I can capture just fine with the realtime MPEG2, but the quality of the ATI's realtime MPEG compression is complete garbage. It's fine for time shifting and watch it once video but for going to a DVD...forget it ...looks like all the characters are having seizures. (and yes I have tried changing the bitrate...it still looks like crap) Video soap preview doesnt' work either...I get multiple upsidedown black and white screens along the bottom of the window, the rest of it black.

Source: Hi8 Tape from a Sony Camcorder with a TBC, and stabilizer

What I have tried:

Capture file huffy -> TMPEG (can't scrub takes too long for some reason..tmeg seems to hate this codec) leave everything the way it is convert...audio out of sync by the end of the 25 min episode.

Capture file UVY2 (uncompressed) Same as above, but oooh I can scrub and at least use the filters in TMPG now.

Virtual Dub - won't capture. 'Unsupported format error' I have tried several versions.

This is a fresh clean install of windows, and the computer is brand new.

I have tried the bitrate trick with SoundForge...1 if the card worked the way it's supposed to I shouldn't have to do this...and 2 it doesn't work either because it has to be at 48,000 hz in order to be dvd standard

YAAI Won't open MMC's avi files

My old 5 year old Asus AGP 3800 had perfect audio sync. (It had the problem of chopping about an inch of picture off the right of the screen thoguh so it's useless)

Does anyone have an end all fix it solution. This will be the second ATI product I have wasted my time with, (the last one got returned directly to ATI as their drivers don't work with the VIA chipsets properly) and I am convinced at this point that ATI cards are complete garbage, and a waste of time, prove me wrong by helping me make this thing work...I'll beleive it when I see it.

I am one step away from taking it back to the store...does anyone know what DOES work and doesn't take a month of tinkering to get working...please do not say Canopus.. Nobody sells those here, (Future Shop are you listening?) and by the time I import one will cost over $600 cdn. Please bare in mind I am not a complete idiot when it comes to this stuff...my Asus card worked fine just chopped the picture off, (likely becayse they won't make proper drivers for xp for it) I have had a capture card since the original Videoblaster, and used it on windows 3.1.

Sick of computer gear that doesn't do what it's supposed to. The only reason I got this card was because it was raved about so much by a few individuals. I am beginning to get the feeling they are either blind or have no clue what they are talking about.



Sorry to be such an ass here folks, there are not words to describe how frustrated I am.

[duhmez]

Did you try in virtualdub,

352x240 YUY2 ?

If ou are trying to capture highres, well, ive not used the new pro tv wonder, but the one I have captures max 240 verticle res. Anything by 480 won't work with it. (Unless you install the btwincap drivers btwincap.sourceforge.net
However I don't know if your card has the same guts as the original.

When you click file>capture avi: deos it find the capture driver and imediately say" unsuported format" or doe it say this when you _try_ a video format?

[Coluph]

OK lets see....

Vdub... 352x24--hmm yes this does work...but this is useless unless I am making VCD's, which I'm not...so this won't do me much good

Tried installing the btwincap driver....virtualdub crashes...obviously not the same hardware.

Does an All In Wonder Radeon have different hardware on it? I'm in the process of packaging the card up as I type this now.


I tried the 'update' ATI has...this has caused more problems than good...Card won't capture at all now and windows won't uninstall previous versions. (This reiminds me of the horrors I went through with the AIW 128 way back when...I guess things never change)

[Coluph]

Well I officially give up with the ATI TV Wonder Pro Remote Control.
The remote is the part they seem to be more concerned with in this package...not the card itself.

Don't buy it unless you want alot of grief. It's a POS.

Conexiant based. Going to see what else they have. I may try full fledged All In Wonder, or a Leadtech or something.

Folks..don't waste your time with this thing.

[duhmez]

Yes it has different hardware than the EXCELLENT full vivo and All in wonders. Cheap connexant crap. ATI put artiificial limit of x by 240 for no good reason in the TV wonder, and you are right thats useless.

(the reason they did it is thus: the bt8x8 hardware is unable to overlay x by 480 while capturing x by 480. This means to captrure high res with this hardware, you must disable overlay completely. This means it will capture but you cannot see what youa re capturing. BTW Ati drivers and MMC won't let you do this.

TV wonder is crap, I got burned too. What i hhate is, I went to ati site to get the specs, there was none. just "YAY! Capture m mpeg2 video! Capture mpeg 2!! hooray!"
Another site I checked was selling tv wonders, and the description said "capture up to 640x480"
So then i went to local store and bought it. Well, 480 supoort was driopped years ago.

I did get pretty good results with btwincap and vdub and preview mode instead of overlay. (Not as good as the all in wonder9s) I have now.

[Coluph]

Yeah, I don't know why ATI doesn't get a clue that people would like to just buy the All In Wonder without their video card. I allready have a video card that does what I need it to do, and to be honest I do not trust All In One products...i've had enough headaches with those allready.

I'm going to get a Pyro A/V Link (the one simular to the Canopus) I'd get a full fledged canopus but the $200 price difference, I don't think is going to be worth it. The Pyro appears to do the same thing, so here's hoping.

Just to see what happens, I threw my extremely old IV-550 card in the computer...tried the bt driver...by golly the thing works...audio is in sync and the files actually read properly in tmpeg now, using the same huffy codec. (this proves it wasn't my system!) Who knows what ATI was doing to the file to make it not read properly.

This old card actually isn't doing too bad of a job, considering it was made for a windows 95 machine...based on the bt848. The only problem is that it does drop about 30 to 40 frames in the course of 25 mins, not that noticeable but will be a problem if I capture anything longer than that. (and the overlay doesn't work, so you can't really see what you are doing until you are actually capturing)

SO final conclusion...do not get a TV wonder anything...garbage garbage garbage! I have no faith in ATI so I will be skipping the All in Wonder line.

If anyone from ATI is out there....WHY do you guys keep making prouducts like this that do not work properly, or at the very least, stop selling this product as a PVR/capture card. The only usefull purpose it has is for watching TV on your computer.