Newbie needs help with ATI HDTV Capture Card

[techhead]

Hi All,

I hope someone can help me. I recently purchased an ATI HDTV Wonder card (despite reading some horror stories about the ATI software). I installed the card with relative ease into my new Dell Dimension 9150 (Pentium D 2.8 GHz, Win XP SP2, 1 GB RAM, GeForce 7300 LE video card, Creative SoundBlaster Audigy, 160 GB HD).

I have experimented with different versions of the ATI Multimedia Center (ATI MMC) software but have not been able to successfully capture a TV show to MPEG-2 format. What I have discovered is that the MPEG-2 file that ATI MMC creates will not display properly in Windows Media Player, or even open in TMPGenc or other applications. It will, however, open and play perfectly in the ATI MMC File Player application.

(When I open the file in Windows Media Player, it does not have any sound and looks like it is going in super slow-motion.)

What am I doing wrong? Or what do I need to install (codec?) to hopefully fix it? I have an open ticket with ATI but, so far, their advice has been to upgrade to the latest version of MMC to see it that will fix it. (Which hasn't!)

Thanks in advance!
Cheers - Techhead

[edDV]

Try playing it with VLC.

Run it through GSpot (MPeg version 2.52 Beta) to see if the file is a normal MPeg2_TS. Post the results here.

VLC takes a few liberties to make the file play on a not worthy for HDTV computer.

[techhead]

Thanks edDV. I will download VLC and give it a try. I ran GSpot and it indicated:

Codec ="MPEG2_Video"
Name = "MPEG-2"
Stat = "Codecs are NOT Installed"

So, I clicked on System | List Codecs and found two codecs on my machine under the format "MPEG2_Video." One was CinemasterVideo.dll by SONIC and the other was atidvcr.dll - ATI CC Multiplexer (which was listed in GSpot as "Other.")

I'll try to post a screen capture since I might not be describing this with enough detail.

Thanks for your help!
Techhead[/img]

[edDV]

Was the card tuned to a SD digital channel? It's only 720x480 resolution, not HD. But SD should be 704x480 not 720. Try a HD channel. It should read 1280x720p (ABC or FOX) or 1920x1080i (CBS, NBC, PBS).

Or does ATI have some kind of downscale mode to a custom format?.

[techhead]

After using some of the info that your help provided, I found another codec forum thread http://www.moviecodec.com/topics/6490p1.html that discussed my exact problem. Following some advice there, I downloaded and installed ELECARD MPEG 2 Video Decoder Package release 3.0.... and, HURRAY!, by some higher power, I could play my MPEG-2 file in Windows Media Player 10.

According to Microsoft Windows XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility, the ATI codec (atidvcr.dll) is not "approved" for use with Windows Media Player 10 - so, perhaps that's why it wasn't working properly. But the Elecard codec has seemingly gotten me straightened out!

On to your question... I think I might have selected to record my digital tv broadcasts as "DVD High" quality instead of "Native" because of the amount of disk space required. Should I use the native format instead? Would that yield better quality?

Anyway, thanks so much for your help as you got me pointed in the right direction!

Cheers,
Techhead

[edDV]

...

On to your question... I think I might have selected to record my digital tv broadcasts as "DVD High" quality instead of "Native" because of the amount of disk space required. Should I use the native format instead? Would that yield better quality?

Anyway, thanks so much for your help as you got me pointed in the right direction!

Cheers,
Techhead

That depends if you want HD or SD and whether the destination is a DVD. It looks like you are currently on the DVD path.