ATI AIW: Minor capture problems

[Angryguy]

I've been trying for a while to try and transfer VHS to DVD, but have yet to be succesful to my satisfaction. These are relatively minor problems, but annoying nonetheless. I'd really appreciate any advice.

I'm using an ATI AIW Radeon 9000 Pro card for capturing on a P3 933MHZ computer, and will be using a AMD64 3000+ system under Windows x64 for DVD Authoring/burning afterwards.

I am capturing directly to MPEG-2 format using settings recommended at www.digitalfaq.com:-> 352x480 resolution, 48KHz audio, 2-2 PB Settings, Max Bit Rate of 4.00, Target of 3.9, Motion quality at 99, Audio encoding at 256 K. no Video Soap enabled.

I used this codec to capture a video [/w sound muted] from a DV camcorder [it had only A/V cables, so capture was the only option] and the picture came through perfectly fine (after I realized that the target computer didn't have a MPEG-2 decoder installed).

Issue 1: When I am trying to capture video from TV (cable) or VHS however, with the same codec, the picture isn't fitting the screen properly. There is a black-bar on the right side of the screen, and a thinner one on the bottom [this is with the Record Cropped Video option disabled: enabled the bars fully frame the picture]. This issue did not appear when capturing from a DV Camera (connected to the VCRs A/V inputs)

On testing it with the Cable Boxes on-screen menus, it appears that the On-Screen menus extend to the full size of the screen, while the TV image itself does not. I'm guessing this has something to do with the aspect ratio, but this seems odd nonetheless given that the picture always appears fine in MMC before/during capture. Should I assume that this display-glitch won't be present when viewed on a regular TV - or do I need to enable some sort of cropping to correct for it? [At the moment, I don't have a working DVD player that can read burned movies to test it with].

Issue 2: Sound The Sound quality on the captured audio is not as clear/crisp as the original sound (meaning as it sounds while watching live TV through the computer). The recorded sound seems a little unclear, and sounds almost like there is a slight echo to it. Any suggestions on how I can improve the audio quality?

Thanks again for any advise.

[lordsmurf]

Your first issue is overscan. This is normal, this is fine. The computer shows more than the tv. The tv broadcasts fill the tv screen. But not the full canvas, which you see on a computer. A DV camera shoots a full CCD. The ATI AIW card can put black on top of overscan, and that's good, because the overscan is mostly noise. Go to digitalFAQ.com and read all the other capture guides, not just the ATI ones. You missed the important info by skipping them.

Audio may be a problem of your audio card (poor quality card), or you don't have it set loud enough, or too loud.

[Angryguy]

Thanks for the quick response.

I originally thought it was just a masking error, but got confused when different inputs gave different results with the black-bars on the sides.


It seems like the sound issue is related to my hardware. I just tried playing the same recorded file back on both of my computers, and the issue only appears when playing it back on one of the systems. I'm guessing it must have something to do with either the equalizer or speaker settings, even though I've never had any audio problems with others apps on either system (DVDs, games, etc).


I guess the only thing left to do then, is to author it to DVD and see how it looks and sounds on a regular television before I try playing with any other settings. [My standalone DVD player won't accept +/-R discs, so I'll have to get a friend to test it out].