capturing from pay per view

[thermalundy]

I have been trying to capture movies from pay per view using the ATI All In Wonder 32MBDDR. The problem is when I look at the captured movies the colors are all messed up. I think this is because of macrovision or some form of protection. I was just wondering if there is anything I can do to fix the macrovision, or are there any programs out there which can improve the quality with filters or something? Any help would be great. Also is anyone else out there who has tried this? If you had good results what did you use? Thanks.

[JerryH2]

you can try buying one of those Macrovision scrubbers, but the ones I've seen are one for composite video; don't know if any exist for S-VHS.

The other thing you might dig for would be hacked drivers/cracks for your card that let you get around Macrovision. Matrox cards have long had "3rd" party drivers available to enble proper recording/capturing from camcorders that would otherwise trip or fool Crapovision, er, Macrovision.

[dvbr]

Hi,

What kind of DSS you have ?

I used to capture from DTV, with no problems, using SVHS input.

Maybe the messed colors are caused by the color system of the IRD. When capturing, is the preview ok ?


Regards

[thermalundy]

I don't have DSS, I just have a cable box. I can't afford satellite tv

[thermalundy]

When I capture, everything is messed up, including the preview. It seems to be just pay per view only though, not the regular channels.

[PrOLiNe_]

LOL.....DSS is same price as cable and way better picture quality :)

Also "Digital Cable" is crap, as they mislead peolple by not telling them the first 99 channels are analog, of which they are the channels most watch on a regular basis.

No offense to anyone...just like to take a jab at cable any time I get chance. :)

[dvbr]

Hi,

As you described, it could not be only macrovision, it could some other scrambling system of the cable signal.

If you are not capturing from the decoder video output, try. If you are yet, try to get from the TV set video output, sometimes the TV circuit filters the scrambling signals.



Regards

[Bud]

I Think a lot of this may depend on your service provider for Cable, where I live, I receive Digital Cable on ALL CHANNELS including pay-per-view, have not had any problems recording direct on any channel. I even did a test of recording to a S-VHS Tape then transfered that to the system, no problems, worked great. I also have what they call I-Control, with that THEY do the recording, I just play it back on the cable box and record to my system anytime I want. No this is not the same as Tivo, the recording is done on the Cable provider equipment. So it may very well be your cable company putting in some form of block on the Pay-Per-View stuff.

Bud

[gvarney]

Thermalundy,
If this *is* a Macrovision problem, try this:
http://www.doom9.org/Old_news/may01.htm, find the link for ATI Macrovision remover.
It worked for mine. Note that this does not disable macrovision on the TV out, only in. I have not yet tried this:
http://www.dvd-digest.tv/downloads/files/atimacro100.zip
(read about this here: http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/articles/macrovision_graphics.html)
to see if it handles this.

Hope this helps you out.

Geoff

[ColtWalker]

Don't bother to even try "DisableATIMacrovisionDetection.zip" from doom9. It may have worked on very old ATI cards but it does not work on the AIW cards. It did not work for me and it has not worked for anyone else I know who has tried it.

There are a lot of posts out there concerning this issue. Most follow up with the same futile suggestions that do not work. I plan on experimenting with alternative drivers on another hard drive but at this point I have tried many many things and the Macrovision still plagues me.

Next I plan to try this: http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/supportedcards.html

[thermalundy]

ColtWalker,

If you have any luck please let me know.

[Bud]

As of this post about the only way on the new AIW cards is either a "Box" (Sima) between the DVD/VCR player and the card or use of the P231/P233 Video Cards, I have used both the P231 and the Sima Video Box (check the web on the Convertor Box). They both work on Macrovision. The only problem with the P231 Card is it will only do VCD MPEG formats, don't know abouth the newer cards, someone on this site is up to speed on these cards. Try a search on the P231 and you may come up with some more information.

Bud

[ColtWalker]

Bud: Yours is the best comment on this subject I have read here thus far, thank you.

First, I would like to offer my experience with the black box approach. The Automatic Gain Control effect can be compensated for with the box and this seems to work well for VCR to VCR dubbing. However, this approach does not completely remove the Macrovision, it merely suppresses it. Since the ATI AIW card is not affected on the principle of AGC like VCRs, being as it intentionally detects Macrovision and responds by preventing quality capture, any small trace of the Macrovision can still trigger this software coded reaction. About 20 minutes into a video I was recording, enough effect was left to trigger ATI AIW's Macrovision detection using the black box, and thus ruining my video capture.

Secondly, I am unfamiliar with the P231/P233 Video Cards. Are they video capture cards that are stand alone, or are the integrated into a complete video card? Could you please tell me a bit more about them or reference me to a URL?

I thought of purchasing a stand alone video capture card to put in my system with my ATI AIW. But I am unclear as to the exact presence of the Macrovision detection code. Is it in the ATI codecs, video drivers, or video capture software that is part of MMC? Depending on where it is, a second stand alone video capture card may or may not solve the problem. Otherwise a completely different video card and/or capture card would be necessary.

Elaborating on my next experiment, please tell me if you think this is viable. I plan on installing Win2k on another hard drive from scratch. Then not installing any of the ATI drivers, with the exception of that which is on the Win2K CD, auto detected. I will also not install MMC or any of the ATI software, none of it. Then I will download and install WDM video capture driver from http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/ which may or may not support my card. If my card is supported, I will then download and install Virtual Dub, which I have also not tried before. With this combination and the latest MS DirectX driver, I hope to be able to capture from Macrovision encoded VHS video from composite with my ATI AIW card. This process is somewhat cumbersome to test so if anyone has tried this and knows it will not work with ATI AIW Radeon card, please let me know.

Thank you.

[Bud]

It's a PV231 and here is a link that will explain the card and if you do a search on the forum you will find a number of replies on this subject, far to many for me to comment on here.

http://steve.kittelsen.com/pv231/


Bud

[ColtWalker]

UPDATE: I was unable to get the Conexants BtPCI WDM Video Capture driver ( http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/ ) to work under Windows 2000 with the ATI All In Wonder Radeon video and video capture card combo. This may be due to the fact that it simply will not work with this driver, or it may be due to the fact that I have failed to attempt all possible things.

I attempted capture with Virtual DUB 1.4.8.

Macrovision signature symptoms were as follows: Only motion video was visible in the top few lines of the capture. The majority of the window displayed only distorted colors and what appeared to be a still image from the VHS I was attempting to capture. This is exactly how ATI responds to Macrovision when doing video capture.

Hypothesis: The offending software that detects and responds to the presence of Macrovision is in either the ATI capture driver or the ATI provided codec. I only wish someone here in the forums knowledgeable enough could verify either way.

Conclusion: In order to duplicate Macrovision protected VHS, I will have to obtain another video capture card unless I am able to find third party drivers for my ATI AIW that ignore Macrovision. It is NOT the card+s fault, it is the ATI programmers who made sure their software / drivers responded to the Macrovision. Blame ATI for going out of their way to prevent their customers from backing up their home videos!

Keep in mind, video capture cards have no AUTOMATIC GAIN CONTROL circuit like VCR+s. The capture cards that will not capture due to Macrovision are limited by the software drivers, or codecs, or software, and not by the actual card itself.

I have no current recommendations on a video capture card that is KNOWN to ignore Macrovision since I have yet to receive feedback from anyone that can verify their video capture card is truly oblivious to the anti-copy technology. Video capture card companies tend not to advertise this as a feature.

I believe in Bud+s suggestion of using the PV231 card above, he used the BOX (analog device to suppress Macrovision) with his PV231. Therefore, I cannot conclude that the PV231 alone will ignore Macrovision, although I wish it did. I haven+t been able to obtain the BOX so I will continue to search for a capture card that ignores Macrovision. If the PV231 will only copy Macrovision protected VHS when used _with_ a Macrovision removing BOX, then by itself it is as useless as my ATI AIW.

Video capture cards that completely ignore Macrovision do exist and if anyone out there knows of one, confirmed, and not speculation, please post to this thread and let us know.


Thank you

[You_Are_Alive]

You can try the following long shot which works for me. (but I don't use the AIW card) to capture. When I captured Captain Corelli's Mandolin with a straight connection to my capture card, I had trouble cause of Macrovision. I thought I was out of luck. But I have an extra player around that does not seem to recognize the Macrovision and I am able to record with no problems, S-video.

My suggestion, run the signal thru a pass through player first, then from there go to your capture card and Macrovision will be gone! Give it try if you can and tell me if it works. I'd like to know, maybe I'm just really lucky that I have an extra player that doesn't recognize Macrovision.

[Nelson37]

I have the ATI AIW128 pro and the Macrovision removal hack DOES work for me. I tried the earlier version under Win98 with no success, then after loading XP Pro I used Stinky's latest mod and it worked on both VHS tape and DVD, removed brightness pulse on VHS and 20-second limit on DVD.

From reading the original hack's readme, it was intended for NT and not Win98.

[myke]

The ATI Macrovision Disable from Doom9 Works on my ATI All In Wonder 128 on composite input.

[ColtWalker]

DisableATIMacrovisionDetection.exe from doom9 does NOT work with the ATI AIW 128 Radeon card under Windows 98 and does NOT work under Windows 2000.

I have had no luck with the patch. Possibly, ATI changed the offending driver file locations with there more recent capture card products.