Need a new card

[123fish123]

My ATI-ALL-In-Wonder Radeon is very old (2001) and I think the original model. I am in need of an inexpensive replacement. All I really need to be able to do is to take my analog sources (mostly VHS) and capture them for conversion to DVD. Can someone recommend a good card that is inexpensive in order to do this? I don't care about gaming or any other bells and whistles like remotes or hi-def TV. Thanks!

[mats.hogberg]

<edit>

[Baldrick]

No, continue here. Cause I have already closed the other topic.

[lordsmurf]

There's nothing wrong with your AIW Radeon you have now. The video part of the card has not really changed in 5 years. There was no need for it to change, it's always worked well.

Newer models simply added faster graphics, and that has zero effect on the video.

You do need to update your ATI MMC software to something newer. Either 8.7 or 9.02 are suggested. Get them free at www.ati.com

[neomaine]

My ATI AIW Radeon 32DDR (I think changed to the 7000 or 7200?) is still working just as good as the day I bought it back in 2001. Just as good as my (somewhat) newer AIW 9600xt.

From my perspective, you already have the cheapest solution...FREE!!

To get a couple of extra bells and whistles, I'd download the 8.7 or 8.9 version of MMC.

[lordsmurf]

My ATI AIW Radeon 32DDR (I think changed to the 7000 or 7200?).

It's a 7200. I have the same card. Bought in August 2001.

[123fish123]

I think the issue I am having with the ATI AIW radeon is that I don't know which is the most current driver for it. Their site does a poor job of joining up drivers to products and I don't know when the cutoff is (which version of their driver is the last/most recent one for this product). Because of this, it's not currently working. If I could solve that problem I probably wouldn't need a new card

[jman98]

I also have the ATI All-in-Wonder. I really should thank ATI some day as that card single handedly convinced me that continuing to buy ATI products for video recording was a very bad idea. Yes, ATI has its fanboys. They are all over the forums here. My favorites are the guys who pump $500+ dollars into upgrading their PCs just to make their ATI cards do what they are supposed to do. If you post this type of question in the "Capturing" forum instead of here, you'll get a more balanced group of answers from people who actually do own other cards instead of the "I love my ATI so much it's scary!" type of answers you see above.

I bought the Hauppauge PVR-350 a couple of years ago and life is good. The PVR-250 is just as good and cheaper if you don't need TV out on the card. Just remember that if you record something with ATI and want to re-encode it, everything reports the field order as being the opposite of what it really is. I haven't done this in a while so I'm not 100% sure, but if I remember right, Hauppauge actually records Bottom Field First. I do remember that everything I used to check the video stream with reported the wrong field order. Must be a bug in the stream output.

By the way, if your PC is as old as your card, you will HAVE to buy a new card from somebody to do DVD captures. ATI relies on software on the fly encoding, which means if you have an old CPU, say less than 2 GHz, you won't be able to record full height D1 DVD video video with your card. That's the beauty of Hauppague. They use a hardware chip on the card, so you can record DVD quality video on old CPU systems because it doesn't use the system CPU to encode what it records.

I know some of you ATI guys are foaming at the mouth. Frankly, some of my comments are just a little tongue in cheek as I really love tweaking you guys, but honestly, I have really known of guys who spent over $500 to upgrade their systems to make a stupid ATI card work instead of buying another manufacturer's card for less than half of that because buying another card was "crazy".

[neomaine]

jman98,

Though some of your statements are tongue and cheek, it would be hard for the OP to know where you were serious and where you were not. To clear this up I'm offering this for the OP:

- I am not an ATI fanatic. Simply a user who found a good product that fit my needs years ago and still find it very useful. Not sure what's scary about saying that I like my card and have used it for 5 years.
- I am not a Hauppauge user but from what I seen it does an excellent job at what it does.
- I ran my original card on an Intel PIII 550mhz computer. If someone pumped $500 dollars into a machine just to use their ATI card, its because they had something wrong with the computer in the first place. Capturing video, from any source, requires a certain smoothness in the operations of the pc. If you use an external card there are still things you need to make sure are in line to get the best results.
- The ATI card is not only software. It is software with a hardware assist. Makes a big difference. It is infinitely more likely that other i/o based processes have an affect on the usage of the MMC software.
- The hardware issue you are talking about was with certain versions of the cards and mobo's using the VIA chipset. This issue was with the VIA chipset and not with the card since the same issue affected other things in the PC as well. You cannot say the same with the ATI card.
- Comparing the ATI to the Hauppauge 250-350 is comparing apples to oranges. The 250/350 is a hardware based MPEG1/2 capture card. Therefore, it cannot capture to native avi or use any other codes to capture with. And since the AIW can capture to MPEG1/2 with the same quality (or better, with videosoap now) I would say that the hardware MPEG1/2 only encoding would be a deficiency. If you're only interested in MPEG encoding then I agree that the Hauppauge is an excellent choice based on what I've read. However, if you're not...

So, to the OP, you have two long time users of ATI AIW cards saying the problem is not with your card. I would do two things:

- Use the links lordsmurf gave you in getting the latest drivers and MMC software for your card. As you would with any card.
- Use the search function to make sure you have you PC configered in such a way that you do not have i/o bottlenecks. As you would with any card, internal or external.

I'll let lordsmurf chime in on anything I got wrong...

[123fish123]

I think its the IO bottlenecks that are also hurting me. I know a big one is to turn off the virus/firewall software. Any other low hanging fruit?

[lordsmurf]

I don't know what jman is going on about....

ATI is one of several excellent cards. It has the distinction of being able to do both MPEG-2 and uncompressed AVI in high quality. ATI MMC VideoSoap goes the extra mile with the ability to clean up your video with realtime filtering.

Hauppauge makes some great MPEG hardware cards. Canopus makes some great DV AVI capture boxes (although they fellate themselves a bit too much with pompous marketing BS). Matrox has a great line of RT NLE cards. Certain Philips-chipped AVI cards do well too. Each of them has their share of flaws and quirks, but they're each really good for the tasks I just mentioned.

Anyway, to address a few things...

the guys who pump $500+ dollars into upgrading their PCs just to make their ATI cards do what they are supposed to do.

Why? There nothing special about ATI compared to any other video card, in terms of resources. Anything in the 1.5Ghz P4/AMD line should be fine. There's no way to get around RAM or hard drive space, regardless of your video card. Just basic computer specs are needed.

record something with ATI and want to re-encode it, everything reports the field order as being the opposite of what it really is. I haven't done this in a while so I'm not 100% sure,....... I do remember that everything I used to check the video stream with reported the wrong field order. Must be a bug in the stream output.

You refer to an error on interlaced MPEG-2 captures when using ATI MMC 7.5. That error was fixed back in 2003. You're way out of date. That error was fixed by the end of the MMC 7.x line, and is nowhere to be seen on 8.x or 9.x versions.

but if I remember right, Hauppauge actually records Bottom Field First.

Nope. DV is pretty much the only thing that does bottom field first. All other captures cards and DVD recorders tend to do top-field first, including your Hauppage PVR cards.

By the way, if your PC is as old as your card, you will HAVE to buy a new card from somebody to do DVD captures. ........ which means if you have an old CPU, say less than 2 GHz, you won't be able to record full height D1 DVD video video with your card.

Why? In August 2001, I bought a P4 1.8Ghz, along with this very ATI card. I could capture 720x480 up to 15Mb/s and use VideoSoap (on heavy) to boot, and got ZERO dropped frames. No audio errors. Perfect captures. I could get a Celeron 1.7Ghz up to about 9-10Mb/s interlaced MPEG-2 using VideoSoap (on heavy) before it started to drop frames.

ATI relies on software on the fly encoding,

No. ATI using hybrid hardware/software methods.

that's the beauty of Hauppague. They use a hardware chip on the card, so you can record DVD quality video on old CPU systems because it doesn't use the system CPU to encode what it records.

Nope. Hauppauge still hits the CPU because of preview modes. I'm not aware of any video card (at least not in the consumer or prosumer market) that uses 0% CPU, one way or another.

Anyway.........................

123fish123, if you PM me, I'll see about giving you you older drivers and MMC 8.7. Also let me know what OS you're using.

[lordsmurf]

I think its the IO bottlenecks that are also hurting me. I know a big one is to turn off the virus/firewall software. Any other low hanging fruit?

http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capture/droppedframes.htm

[123fish123]

Good link but it doesn't give specifics. It talks about optimal memory setting but doesn't really say what they are for us novices. I'd love to change some of the windows settings but wouldn't even begin to know how.

[free is better]

i am running an ancient aiw 128 pro (32mb) on a p3 933 mhz dualie as an exercise in computer tuning, 512 mb system memory. using scsi u160 and a 15k rpm for the os and a 10k rpm for the capture my recordings are trouble free with no dropped frames. i theorized that if i could relieve the cpu of as much work as possible i could come extremely close to what is accomplished by a hardware capture card. this project also showed me how important computer tuning is to successful captures regardless of how good one's system is. following good practices as defragging, separate drives for os and capture, adequate memory and the like can only help the situation and enable us to make the most of what we have. i also run a 2900xp with a leadtek xp2000 tuner card but i do all my important work on the p3 running processor intensive programs like procoder 2.0 flawlessly.