AIW Radeon DVD/MPEG2 captures -- is GREAT quality possible?

[dood]

System: Dual P3-933, WinXP Pro, 1gb+ RAM

I've got an AIW Radeon 32mb PCI card (no AGP on my PC). It works great as a video card, but I've never really got it working well as a capture card (I've been using a firewire/DV card and encoding with Ligos/TMPGEnc). I'm interested in saving time by capturing directly to MPEG2 using the AIW.

I recently got the 7.5MMC and I can actually capture at DVD settings (MPEG2, 740x480) without dropping frames UNLESS I set the motion estimate to anything other than zero...then I start getting dropped frames.

However, the quality of a DV/Ligos file IS MUCH BETTER THAN an AIW-encoded file (same specs, vhs source). Am I expecting too much for the AIW real-time captures to equal software encoded avi's? Or do I need to keep "tweaking" the AIW capture settings or even use another capture program than MMC/TV?

Is it even possible to approach the quality of Ligos/Tsunami using the AIW Radeon card for real-time MPEG2?

Thanks

[lnetzel]

I am also looking for this answer... I bought the card for the same reason and I myself has'nt really been getting any good captures otu of it... just different percentage in framedropping and I use a AMD 1,4 ghz with 768 DDRAM on an Asus MB... I should be able to do somethign good with this since I made better captures with my old PIII 600mhz and a TNT 2 card... I was hoping for an Upgrade. am I also expecting too much?

[AdamB]

If you have a DV card and want reatime MPEG2 you could try Wincoder from Intervideo. My current machine is not powerful enough to do MPEG2 with it. You can download a trial version from there site.

I would be interested to hear what people think.

AdamB

[Bud]

Ditto on the AIW Radeon 32mb my is a AGP type, I stopped using as a Capture card, with all due respect to the MMC7.5 Reg utility, still can not get very good results as I can with VirtualDub Capture in AVI format and convert with TMPGEnc. My System is a AMD 1.7 Ghz, 120 GB Western Digital Drive, have all the Codec's I need to run still can't get the results I want.

Bud

[Stinky]

you will never beat the quality of capturing to lossless AVI

you will never beat the quality of a hardware MPEG capture card

the AIW is a good card and you can get good results - you can capture directly to VCD standard and get decent MPEG-2 quality but don't expect too much from an inexpensive capture card that uses software MPEG compression :-)

[dood]

If you have a DV card and want reatime MPEG2 you could try Wincoder from Intervideo. My current machine is not powerful enough to do MPEG2 with it. You can download a trial version from there site.

I would be interested to hear what people think.

AdamB

Just curious, what is your current machine spec? I wonder if my dualP3-933 will do DVD?

I'll give Wincoder a try. How is the quality at less-than-DVD captures?

[Pugwash]

I'm getting <1% frame loss recording at 720x576 (PAL-I) mpeg 2 on a udma5 drive. Athlon XP1500+, WinXP Pro, 512mb DDR ram. ATI MMC 7.1 on a Radeon 64DDR VIVO.

[AdamB]

Current machine is 400 Mhz PII.
VCD quality was OK, but its not what I want.
I hope to build a new machine in the next few days, then I can give it a shot.
AdamB

[Stinky]

Current machine is 400 Mhz PII.
VCD quality was OK, but its not what I want.
I hope to build a new machine in the next few days, then I can give it a shot.
AdamB

AdamB: you are going to need more than a 400 to do any kind of MPEG-2 capturing with your AIW.

I only have a 450 PIII and can't do much in the way of MPEG-2 capturing - those with faster machines and more RAM will be able to fully utilize the MMC MPEG captures

[AdamB]

I have ordered a new motherboard, P4 2.0Ghz northwood and 512Meg DDR.

This should do the trick..

[lnetzel]

Well. I can't even Capture in Lossless AVI, cause I get.. hrmf.. loss... even with Huffuy... bla bla... I can't even capture uncompressed AVI with this damn card... get like 3% framdedrop right away!