ATI Capture with 3rd Party Software

[FOO]

I'm sure there are lotsa people with ATI AIW 8500 out there.
I've had one for 3 years and it works pretty well but here has
always been issues with the software for it. I upgrade every time
ATI changes anything and am now at 8.5 Every time they fix
something they break something else.
Since 8.5 ALL of my 3rd party capture apps crash except ATI.
Most of them used to work
It's got to be the capture driver.
Does anyone know about this ? ATI doesn't seem to.

[snowmoon]

What does "all" mean? Specifically which ones, it makes a big difference.

VirtualDUB, AVI_IO, premeire, ....

VirtualVCR, uiVCR, PowerVCR, ...

[FOO]

Everything ULEAD
Everything you mentioned except possibly Power VCR
We're taking about more than 10 apps here.
Some of them will preview a little but any action
to change the channel for example crashes.
I just tried a modified Virtual VCR and the preview
worked but it crashed when I closed the app.
I'm not keeping notes unfortunately

[snowmoon]

I guess you will have to uninstall and clean the ATI crud out and re-install the earlier version. That is one reason I have sworn off ATI hardware.

Hopefully someone can chime in with a better suggestion, I was hoping it was a VFW/WDM issue but that would only affect half the application I listed not all of them.

[FOO]

ATI in their wisdom chose not to support VFW at all.
I pretty sure it's the WDM capture driver.
I suppose I will regress to previous version(s) and see.
Hopefully I can change the capture driver and keep the
same MMC.

One of the reasons for this is that capture with PicVideo MJPEG
codec produces a 650 ms audio delay. I want to see if
another app can capture in sync.
Note that all the ATI codecs are in sync and that
at least one previous MMC/driver with the MJPEG codec
captured in sync. Why did they break it ? Brain Damage ?

[snowmoon]

Weird I've used PicVideo MJPEG form day 1 ( several years ago ) with perfect sync on all my systems. I use a WinTV card for analog captures.

[FOO]

This is just FYI for those with ATI Radeon.

ATI updated their drivers again lately, I installed them
and all the Capture Apps started working.
I had MMC 8.5 which I didn't re-install

Ulead for example now works and captures with the PicVideo
MJPEG codec without Sync error. I checked most of the
others in preview mode only and they worked.

Now I need to see if MMC can capture in sync.

[LanEvo7]

FOR EVERYBODY HAVING ISSUES WITH THEIR NEW ATI MMC.

Go to ?:\Program Files\ATI Multimedia\tv.

Now find a file that is named AVBISurf.bak.

Rename the file AVBISurf.bak.ax.

Everything should be fine then.

[FOO]

Ok but tell us what it does ( or does not do )
I have a inquiring mind - I wanna know


I also have brain damage

[txpharoah]

ATI cards are optimized to capture MPEG or AVI uncompressed. That's part of the problem. MMC is the only program cable of taking advantage of all the ATI hardware, so no using 3rd-party stuff. Some of the newest ATI drivers and MMC are a bit buggy, so when one doesn't work, roll back to the previous version. Repeat until you find a decent combination. The April 2003 drivers and MMC 7.7 or 8.1 seem to be the most stable ones for the newer AIW Radeons.

[LanEvo7]

Ok but tell us what it does ( or does not do )
I have a inquiring mind - I wanna know


I also have brain damage

I found this solution on the internet somewhere because I wanted to update my video card drivers since one of my games keeped on crashing with the old one.

The reason it works is because "ATI's "VBI Surface Allocator" is incompatible with DirectX 9. This is likely due to the fact that ATI have raised the priority of their filter above the priority of the one built-into DirectX. This problem affects both Catalyst 2.5 and 3.0 drivers." (source showshifter support site)

BTW: I stated the original file name wrong. The original file name is supposed to be AVBISurf.ax not AVBISurf.bak. After renaming the file should be AVBISurf.bak.ax. Sorry for the confusion. [/b]