Is the ATI VCR format totally useless ?

[jolo]

Had some difiiculties with capturing a particular video tape, so I tried my ATI. I selected the "good" setting and it ran through fine.
Then for the final step in this is to encode in TMPG (2-pass setting) to SVCD then use Nero to burn to CD. Then it will be another VHS video tape that I store away.

Problem is that ATI likes and recommends the .VCR format. Seems to take up less room and looked fine in the ATI file viewer, but ..........
Nothing else will work with this stupid thing !! TMPG won't read it. Vdub won't read it, M@-Edit Pro chocks on it, LSX can't use it, Honestech won't handle it.

It appears that there are various comments I have seen here about the library in ATI, which doesn't come up for me.

Is there any tool out there which would allow me to convert this format to something that I could edit, encode, burn ? Why did ATI develop a capturing format that which is good only for viewing on a PC that has their File Viewer !!

Please help.

AMD XP 2400
200 GB western digital drives
Radeon 7500 All-in-wonder

Jon

[menace]

Why did ATI develop a capturing format that which is good only for viewing on a PC that has their File Viewer !!

--answered your own question there i think.. I use the ATI MMC and have it capture mpg's--its quick, works pretty good and is very compatible--is this an option for you? I have never run across the .vcr format but like most proprietary things that are incompatible with the "popular" formats, it will die a painful death. (we hope)

[Sulik]

The primary advantage of the .VCR format is support for closed-captions, and being able to play slower or faster with pitch corrected audio.

I personally rarely use it except for temporary recordings, though it is possible to export it to MPEG-2 (but most likely will not be VCD/SVCD/DVD compliant).

[kenmo]

The primary advantage of the .VCR format is support for closed-captions, and being able to play slower or faster with pitch corrected audio.

I personally rarely use it except for temporary recordings, though it is possible to export it to MPEG-2 (but most likely will not be VCD/SVCD/DVD compliant).

How do you export .vcr files to mpeg ? If you can export it then you could frameserver the resulting mpeg (via VirtualDubMeg) to Tmpgenc.

[Sulik]

You have to go to the Media Library, right-click on the VCR file, and select "export to MPEG-2".

I also had some success in the past exporting audio and video separately using the MS graph editor, so it may be possible for DShow-based application to import it (in theory, that is).

[Thorn]

Since you have the HD space, why don't you try capturing with Virtualdub and use the Huffyuv codec? The quality will be much better than any compressed codec and all other programs can read it (but it takes about 35GB/hour for full resolution). You can also use an mjpeg codec to save space since you have the processing power. I always prefer to keep the quality as high as possible through the cap and encode process, and since Huffyuv is lossless you prevent loosing video quality.

[spiderman2k1]

I do a little trick to make good DVD back and you might try it on SVCD capture to DVD then use UNLEAD or any other DVD software to make a DVD to the hard drive then use DVD2SVCD to make the file smaller for you I do this with www.DVD2ONE.com or you can use www.DVD2DVD-R.de I capture at 8000 CBR DVD mpeg 2 then just use dvd2one to make me a 4.3gig DVD as for dvd to svcd DVD2SVC you be your best shot

[pcostanza]

Last nite I recored a tv show (1 hour) as DVD Best and when I imported it to TMPGenc it said it was not supported although it was an mpeg file. I carried it over to DVD Workshop and burned as is and it looked OK not great.
I burned it to RW and most of the show was fine but there were times when the show was 'staccatto' and stuttered thru parts of it.
There are many choices on the settings with my 8500DV when capturing TV that I haven't tried all of them yet.

[syeager]

jolo,

I have an ATI AIW 128 Pro w/32mb and am capturing mpeg2. However, I have experimented, a bit, with capturing with .vcr format and quality looks very good to me. Found out that you can access ATI MMC option for file/tools/something tool from the same menu that has your tv/vcd/file options. In this tool, it allows you to convert .vcr files to mpeg files. Take a look and see if you can get it to work. I tried it, it created an mpeg file, but none of my utilities could read it. However, my system is not running well and it may have corrupted the file. If you have better luck, let me know.


Good luck.

[jolo]

I thank all of you, I'd like to give you an update and would love more comments:

1. Have tried VirtualDub to captrue with inconsistent results with the Huffy 2.11 codec . When trying to capture from my VCR, I have recently had it stop at about 10-13 minutes into the capture, but it continutes to capture the audio. The video just stops.

2. I have noticed a very high amount of dropped frames which got reduced when I changed from 480 x 480 to 640 x 480 in vdub.

3. Huffy now gives me more options and is the patched codec.

4. It has been frustrating, the convertion library tool I got working after a call to ATI. Converted to MPEG-2, but of course, I can't do anything with it in TMPGenc. I can demux it, but not encode it, it can't read t hat M2v file. So. that's out.

5. I just downloaded and started working with Stink's
MC tool. I'll see how it goes, but I have to install the Wrapper as well I'm told.

6. I would really like to get the Huffy thing working, even with the disk space issues, because after a 2-pass in TMPG, it looks great, the one time it worked for me.

Please, any suggestions, please help. I am using MMC 7.7.

Thanks again.

Also, is there a superior third party Capturing tool like AVI-IO or WINDVD recorder that works consistently and works well that anyone has tried with the ATI card ?

[syeager]

OK, I am still refining the process (and I am really still quite raw right now). However, I have captured in ATI vcr format (able to capture 720x480x6mb with <1% frame drop as opposed to mpeg2 where anything above 352x480x2.5mb drops a lot of frames), use library tool to convert to mp2 (almost exactly the same file size and only takes a few minutes to convert), open with special version of virtualdub (prior to virtualdubmod, which will not open any mpeg2 file I have), frameserve after editing and filtering (remove commercials or unwanted clips and remove static), open in tmpgenc and encode. This is working for me, but as I say, I am still working on the process. Let me know how yours works out.

[pcostanza]

I cannot find the tools option in my version to convert to mpg. Maybe since I don't have the 128 card (I have the 8500DV 64 mg) it's not available for me. I've also searched ATI and it does not mention this for my version and it's not in any of the books that came with my software.

[jolo]

syeager,

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

That is an awful lot of steps to go through, just because ATI All-In-Blunder's is so crappy at capturing.

There must be, hopefully, a better, consistant, reliable way to capture if you have ATI. I would like to know the experiences of people that use Windvd Recorder, AVI-IO, replacement ATI drivers.

Thanks for the tip of the "special" version of Vdub which will read the concerted VCR file. I agree with you that it appears that using anything but ATI's VCR format is crummy with the card, including Vdub. It is frame dropping time.

If you wouldn't mind, syeager, Could you give me some more details about your approach after you convert to mp2 (which I thought was only a audio format) and load into virtualdubmod. I'd like to know how you prepare the file for TMPG and how long it takes to do this. Your approach seems to make a lot of sense.

Jon

[kenmo]

I use VirtualVCR (freeware from www.digtv.ws) with my ATi TV Wonder and it is the best capture program I've ever used. And I also used the "patched" version of Huffuv codec.

A/V stays in perfect synch and few dropped frames at 640x480 captures. I've captured 3 hours of tv and no a/v synch issues....


Great program...BUT I would NOT suggest the BTWINCAP drivers. They made my system extremely unstable

The ATi drivers work best for me !

I can not give VirtualVCR enough praise.

[syeager]

Actually jolo, I stopped using virtualdub for the moment. Good program, but it will not save to mpeg2. And all I want is to:
record with my ati capture (in .vcr format) (realtime capture)
convert to mpeg2 (takes just a minute or two, even for 4gb file)
clip out commercials and save mpeg without reencoding
burn to svcd or miniDVD

I capture with ati's tool in .vcr format. Use the ati library tool to convert to mpeg2. Import the mpeg2 into TMPGEnc DVD Author to edit out commercials and quickly create nice dvd menus. No encoding time. I go from uneditted .vcr to miniDVD in about 20-30 minutes (much of that time is finding the commercials and cutting them out). Oh and by the way, the editting interface for DVD Author is the absolute best I have seen. It does not cut down to the frame but works with whole GOPs instead.

2 of my 3 DVD players play miniDVD, so I am good to go. Let me know if you have a different solution.