ATI TV Wonder PCI, Need advice on simple capture and burn.

[MALB75]

Hi all, I am new to this, but have researched it. I bought this card and installed it the way i was supposed to, ie mmc7.1. Now, I have recorded with the digital vcr and tryed to burn vcd with very poor video quality noted on television. Looks good on PC, but very crappy with 51" TV. Now I have read to use PowerVCRII and tweak it a little bit and I should get wonderful results. I am a little skeptical, esp. when $100 is involved. I can play vcd's on my dvd, but not svcd's. I can burn vcd with click n burn software and svcd's with freevcd. I have heard also I can make Svcd's complient with my dvd if I mask it with vcd compliance. How? I have done several of the reg. tweaks listed by stinky and used all the programs, ie virt dub, tmpge, etc. with poor results also, not to mention long conversion's. Is it really that easy, get powerVCR and config. to my system, capture and burn? Which of my burn programs is better? I want to capture video from my jvc svhs camcorder, and burn it onto a vcd or xvcd, and get good results. So far what I have come up with just doesn't cut it. Please give me some advice on what I need to do to capture and burn good vcd's for playback on my dvd player. Specs: WinMe, 933mhz, 128RAM, 20gig hd

[fyreboltx2]

cant help you with the svcd part i can offer you some tips for capturing.

its gonna look crappy on a big tv (worse on hdtvs). and converting from avi to mpeg causes quality loss.
try capturing in avi using one of these codecs: divx 5, mpeg 4 v3 (nimo codec pack) or huffyuv, yuy2 (comes with ati).

you could try a higher bitrate non-standard vcd (try a 1500 to 2000 bitrate) when you convert but your dvd player might not be compatible with it so check it out on this page)

try this at your own risk:
uninstall, mmc 7.1 and get mmc 7.6, i used to use mmc 7.1 but the frame loss pissed me off. go to www.ati.com and get the latest drivers for ati tv wonder ve but select XP as your os (i know you have ME but i have ME too, and the XP version works) and youll see the mmc 7.6 as an update (altough they say its unsupported)

[MALB75]

OK, will the 7.6 update increase my ability to capture above 240, ie 480x480? 240 just isn't enough! now mpg4, yuy2, huffyuv didn't come with my card. That is all foriegn to me. Will the power vcrII allow me to capture @ 480x480 in mpg1 or 2? I have read that my dvd player will play vcd and xvcd with a bitrate up to 5000. But can not play svcd unless it is masked like vcd. How do I make xvcd from avi or mpg with my burning software? Any help would be appreciated. I would really like to just use a program that captures strait to mpg with the option to get higher resolution above 240. Take that and burn it to vcd and just get decent results. Thats all I want. Is that too much to ask for? Anyhow, I feel like this is almost impossible. I thought we were a little more advanced these days and didn't have to worry about hacking out own computers to make a simple task work, and only get subquality results. I thought this card would allow me to capture anything I wanted, put it on VCD and play it @ the same quality that it came from. I am frustrated if can't tell. If you now a better way, please let me know! thanx

[fyreboltx2]

oh well i that case, yes, use powervcr II! but the quality and resolution all depends on your player. you might have to try different things for you dvd player to get an xvcd to work.

here is a guide: http://www.vcdhelp.com/tmpgencxvcd.htm
this will help you with conversion from mpg to an xvcd compatable mpg.

and capture at the highest resolution and bitrate that your computer can handle. i think you should be able to do 720X576, at 2300kbps smoothly but youll have to try it, it really depends on resources and hardware speed.

just dont expect the quality to be amazing, itll be better then vhs, but not anywhere near as good as dvd.

hope this help, if you have more question then feel free to post em.

[Sulik]

720x576 @ 2.3Mbps will look like crap (unless you're recording static images).

You can't do full D1 resolution under 4Mbps and expect high quality.

[fyreboltx2]

i said 2.3 beacuse the xvcd guide says to use 2.5, or atleast i ment 2.5, NOT 2.3.. sorry.

i didnt notice it beofre, but your posts says your dvd player can handle up to 5mbps, so you can probably do it at 5000kbps. 8)

[schwinn]

Power VCR II is available as a 30 day free trial it gives you full use of the product but for only 10min at a time. But that should be enough for you to decide if it's worth the money or not. I also have an ATI capture card and everything I've read has said that Power VCR is much better then the ATI software. i will soon be trying it. Just do a search for Power VCR @ google.com and you will find the free trial and much info on the product. Iagree I would rather not spend any money but I do want high quality encodes. Schwinn

[C-Dub]

definately use different capture software I think the ati vcr sucks there are many different free ones out there goto the download section

[MOVIEGEEK]

OK, will the 7.6 update increase my ability to capture above 240, ie 480x480? 240 just isn't enough! now mpg4, yuy2, huffyuv didn't come with my card. That is all foriegn to me. Will the power vcrII allow me to capture @ 480x480 in mpg1 or 2? I have read that my dvd player will play vcd and xvcd with a bitrate up to 5000. But can not play svcd unless it is masked like vcd. How do I make xvcd from avi or mpg with my burning software?

MMC 7.6 doesn't have SVCD setting but the VCD setting is much better
than MMC 7.1;TV Wonder VE is limited to 640x240 in mpeg due to the
chipset,but the Radeon AIW($199 US) is able to capture up to 720X480.

[Sulik]

Actually, I tried both PowerVCR and MMC, and MMC definitely has better quality captures than PowerVCR IMHO.

[Digitizer]

Software has nothing to do with quality, it's the settings. PowerVCR is a waste on WinME. Just use FREE VirtualDub to capture in any of the uncompressed or compressed codecs. It's another thing if you'd be using WinNT and ATI TVW but there are ways around that too. I would personally recommend MJPEG codec which takes about twice the space than MPEG2 at quality setting 18. You now have to pay for it, but $20 beats $100 for PowerVCR.

One thing to know is that you should NEVER use ATI software for capturing. It plain sux.

[Sulik]

I don't agree with Digitizer. There are some issues with MMC setup, but once you get it installed properly, it is very easy to use and has excellent quality for RT capture.

The most important thing is the bitrate. If whatever compression you use creates twice the file size, chances are it will be better.
MJPEG is a waste IMHO, since it is equivalent to I-frame only MPEG at a very high bitrate. You can do the same thing capturing I-frame only MPEG at 15Mbps, and your capture will not need exotic codecs for playback.

[macleod]

to bring the $100 price tag down on powervcrII, go to ebay and get it for $10.00. I did it that way and it IS a legit copy.

I too have a TV wonder PCI card (next step up from the tv wonder VE version) and have the same issues (quality) with captures. Check out my settings in the computer button right above my post).

There is a post on this site (use the search function for powervcr) that talks more indepthly about powervcrII and how to tweek it to capture, etc.

If you use vdub, you wont be able to capture above the 240 X xxx. Others might disagree and may be smarter than me. You'll actually get "not configured for that resolution" type error if you go above 240.

I use powervcrII to cap star trek TNG from cable at 352x480 (CVD format) and get good quality. The downside to powervcrII is motion detection. You can get it to capture at ALOT higher bit rate and res than your AVI counterpart and some other the other mpeg captures. Me personally, aside from the motion detection issue, the REAL TIME mpeg capture looks as good as anything that I have done AVI'wise and all without having to re encode. I just cap, cut out commercials real quick, and burn to SVCD(CVD) using nero and throw it in my DVD player. I get right at 40 minutes of TV on one CD.

Lastly, I agree with the one poster who said ATI capture sucks. Out of the box and being a virgin, its cool. In a week, it sucks. Every tool you try will follow the same theme....

[lchiu7]

[quote="macleod"]to bring the $100 price tag down on powervcrII, go to ebay and get it for $10.00. I did it that way and it IS a legit copy.

...

I use powervcrII to cap star trek TNG from cable at 352x480 (CVD format) and get good quality. The downside to powervcrII is motion detection. You can get it to capture at ALOT higher bit rate and res than your AVI counterpart and some other the other mpeg captures. Me personally, aside from the motion detection issue, the REAL TIME mpeg capture looks as good as anything that I have done AVI'wise and all without having to re encode. I just cap, cut out commercials real quick, and burn to SVCD(CVD) using nero and throw it in my DVD player. I get right at 40 minutes of TV on one CD.
quote]

I just learnt about that capability but when I try to capture SVCD format using PowerVCRII 3.0 and a Hauppauge WinTV PCI card (480x480, 2530 kbs etc.), Nero complains that the output file is non compliant for SVCD (I ignore that) and then the CD created won't play in my Skyworth 1080P DVD player which plays regular SVCD's fine. The CD jerks and shows lots of horizontal color banding

What is the motion detection issue with this card?

Larry

[Banko]

What are you talking about that it looks bad on big tv's! I have a Sony 61 inch which is a projector big screen TV yet the quality is the same of a digital one, and all my CVD's VCD's SVCD's look good.