ATI AIW questions

[Coluph]

I just got the ATI Radeon 7500 All In Wonder Card up and running in my system. This is the AGP version (not the VE version)

There are a few things I've run into that maybe someone else with this card could clarify. Before I get into this...I did look at LordSmurfs guides...I wasn't completely satisfied with the results and did a little tweaking, and this is what I came up with:

720 x 480 (this is what I want as the res on my DVD's so I'm capturing at that) (NTSC)
MPEG2
Record Cropped Video is enabled
Interlaced Mode
48 khz / 16 bit stereo
GOP is at the default 4 / 2 with Closed GOP enabled (TMPEG DVD encoder did not like the 2 /2 settings in the guide and would reject the file, saying the GOP header was invalid)
VBR Max 4 Target 3.42, Motion Estimate 100% (boosted this up a bit...I hate artifacting, and it was quite visible with the lower setting)
Audio 256 bps
Video Soap Medium (I'm on analog cable, this cleans up the noise)
- Combo Filter 1 62%

Now the capture I'm getting looks pretty decent, but every so often, you get a slight glitch or pause...making it quite obvious the video you are watching originated from a computer. It's not always noticeable on cartoons but if you get a live action sequence it stands out quite a bit. Looks like a stutter or breif pause in the video. Audio is not affected.

Any ideas what could be the cause of this?

PC AMD 2500+
1 Gig Ram
80 gig 7200 RPM drive
Abit NF7S Board

[lordsmurf]

Dropped frames ?

[FOO]

I don't think 3.42 mb/s is good enough for 720 x 480

try reducing motion search . encoder may be running out of
time on high motion.

[Coluph]

Hmmm, it doesn't appear to be dropping frames...MMC is not reporting anything is dropped anyway.

I will try moving the motion setting down a little. i don't want to move the bit rate up too much higher or the files are going to be too big. It doesn't seem to matter if it's fast motion or no motion...its still there...allmost like it's a timed glitch every few seconds...as if there is a buffer getting full clearing and starting over again and it isnt' doing it seamlessly. It didn't do this with the other card, and I have not changed anything as far as hard drives etc, so again I don't think it's my computer.

One really annoying thing I've found so far...I can't make plain old AVI's with this card...

The result with MMC is a file with audio out of sync, and unreadable files with other non ati software. (takes forever to load)
The result with virtualdub is dropped frames (useless)
The result with IUVCR is good, but after you run it through TMPEG to
encode it...audio sync is gone again...I have no idea why it would do this

Other cards do not do this, I wish I knew what the ATI card was doing differently, the web site really doesn't give you a whole lot of information.

I truly do not beleive it's my computer's fault as every peice of software does something different.

I would prefer doing the AVI route if possible...I trust TMPEG's encoding abilities more than ATI's to do a better job. (On the fly vs several hours...I'd imagine the several hours is going to do a better job)

Frustration setting in again. (Why is it that everyone else has no problems with this but regardless of what I do things screw up. I've even bought a brand new PC for this, and I'm on my third capture device now) Is this again an issue of not having a TBC (and why are those things do damned expensive and hard to get..is there a schematic anywhere I can use to build one?)

[Coluph]

OK, tried it again...moved the motion search down to about 80%
Captured direct from the TV tuner...still does it.

link to what I mean...10 meg file.

http://orwin.scritch.com/video/

Any other suggestions?

(and if anyone knows where I can get a used VCR with a TBC in it CHEAP, let me know...don't mention Ebay...too expensive, and usually broken, or the standard 'ships to United States only' BS gets in the way when you do find something)

[non-linear]

Have you tried bumping up the bitrate, or turning the resolution down. I think this could be your problem. You need more than 3-4Mbps for good quality 720x480 video. If you want to use that bitrate, try using a 720x352 resolution (1/2 D1). Have you tried a constant bitrate (CBR)? Have you tried capturing without VideoSoap, or reduced VideoSoap?

[Sulik]

At first, I didn't noticed any jerkyness or anything like that, but when I look at the clip frame by frame, I found two places where a frame was repeated - it looks like your problem could be related to a/v sync (repeated video frames in order to maintain proper a/v sync).

What sound card are you using for the audio capture ? (some integrated audio chipsets have been know to cause this problem)

If this doesn't work, you might want to give MMC 8.8 a shot - I noticed that it was better than previous versions when dealing with a/v sync on my AMD system (though the installer seems a bit more picky).

Btw, is the source a VCR or a tuner ?

[neomaine]

coluph,

First, if you haven't tried lordsmurf's site, you should...

Then, I'd be curious as to what version of Catalyst and MMC you're running. I'm using one generation back (Catalyst v?, MMC v8.7) since the newest ones ruined sync for me.

It may not be your mpeg file with hiccups but simply your computer not being able to provide the sustained 2-4 meg per second...you only have one drive from your specs. Having at least two drives, one for OS/programs and one for capture is a very sound practice. I actually have three: OS/programs, capture, long term storage (finished video). This gives you the benefit of not running into system stuff (loading/running programs, paging/swapping of memory), giving you a clean drive to capture to and another drive to encode to.

Also, I'd check to make sure there wasn't something else using up CPU while you are running the mpeg...you may have something usurping cpu cycles every so often (i.e.: your 'hiccup spots'). I often find friends PCs with spyware/adware (even viruses) that are running in the background unbeknownst to them. Some of them using 60-90% of the CPU. Doesn't leave you much to play with.

Just wanted to note that as of MMC 8.1 I've been capturing to MPEG2 (w/ mp2 audio) for all my captures for great results. Saves allot of time on the reencoding front. Though others extol the use of MPEGVCR for cutting, I find TMPGENC excellent for getting rid of commercials (especially once I started using a closed GOP)...and very accurate. But you have to cheat since TMPGenc has a problem with (I think) P frames. I use MF2 to figure out the cut marks then use those in TMPGenc, DON'T use the preview window. Well, you have to translate between 1/30sec in MF2 and 1/100sec in TMPGenc... Some have mentioned using TMPGenc Author but I haven't checked that out.

Sorry I digressed a bit on the commercial cut thing. To summarize, check your fragmentation on your single drive and check if you have anything gobbling up CPU while you're playing back.

[FOO]

At one point in my ATI history , the captures were duplicating
1 or 2 frames exactly every second without duplicating the audio.
Drove me nuts until I made an Avisynth script to remove duplicates.
This went away and I don't remember why.
I also had a cheesy shutdown timer at one time that fired itself up
every second and trashed the capture.

Also if you change the capture display setting to show framecount instead of
time , it will show exactly how many dropped frames instead of the
useless "<1%frames dropped"

[lordsmurf]

Your bitrate is way too low. 352x480 is what that bitrate is for

[Coluph]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I think I found a solution to the problem.

After trying all the suggestions, nothing really seemed to make much difference. I tried a second hard drive in there pulled from my other machine, and also installed the sound card from the other machine as well...a soundblaster live...this didn't correct the problem. Adjusted bitrate, changed resolutions, disabled video soap....nothing worked.

I installed the mmc 8.8 and this seemed to correct the problem, but I ran into an issue where it was having difficulty loading properly due to a mis-install awhile ago with mmc 8.2 and a TV Wonder card.

I've wiped the entire drive and started over, all Windows Updates installed, current drivers, and MMC 8.8 installed and the problem seems to have gone away. Smooth video now. (crosses fingers it's really fixed)

I guess the only thing I can recommend if anyone does upgrade their software... -READ THE INSTRUCTIONS- Uninstall anything having to do with ATI and then reinstall everything step by step from the web site using the latest version, or it is likely to mess up your registry and cause problems. This is including the Video drivers as well. I just need to figure out how to get the Guide Plus back now.

I haven't tried any captures with AVI's yet, but here's hoping that is fixed now too.

There seems to be some major changes to MMC between version 8.1 and 8.8 and it is probably worth the upgrade if you haven't done it.