Which method of capturing is better? DV or 9700AIW pro

[Shaolin]

I currently have an AIW 9700 pro. I am using it to capture my camcorder. I have done everything in the "lsot frame" section (is. disconnect the wireless lan, close nonessential applications, etc--except for the seperate HD which I will do next). I am losing about a frame a second. Which is about 300 frames in 5 minutes....an awful lot!

Does anyone out there have experience with firewire? I'm thinking of purchasing a firewire card and using DV to capture the video. Will this improve anything? Is it any better?

Specs:
9700 AIW pro
pinnacle Studio 8 capture software
DVD quality
ASUS A7N8X board 2800
board soundcard
S video

Any other ideas on what could cause this lost rate not thought of/discussed in the other forum?

Thanks

[Tommyknocker]

Does anyone out there have experience with firewire? I'm thinking of purchasing a firewire card and using DV to capture the video. Will this improve anything? Is it any better?

Yep, yep, and yep.

[lordsmurf]

No problems with any ATI cards here.

[DEC]

Go Firewire. I cap Digital 8 w/ Videowave, dont disconnect anything, all sorts of crap running and no dropped frames.

[Sulik]

Sometimes, dropped frames can also be due to a bad soundcard clock (could be cause by the hardware but also by bad drivers), so you might want to look into that as well. 1 frame per second is definitely too much, unless you're recording from an extremely bad VCR (1fps is 3-4%, but VCRs are supposed to be within 0.5% accuracy in normal playback mode)

[Will Hay]

There's one thing that every expert seems to have missed here

I could never, ever, ever, EVER produce successful results capturing anaolgue footage (you're capturing anaolgue via the ATI, right?) with Pinnacle Studio 8.
It was horrendous, HORRENDOUS!!!!!!!!
Don't get me wrong, I'm a massive fan of Pinnacle Studio 8 (it's my preferred method for DV transfer and edit) but for me nothing beats Virtualdub (with the option to lock video to audio unchecked).
Good luck
If you don't have any luck with Virtualdub and you have a firewire capability on your camcorder then def. go get a firewire card.
You won't regret it, it's flawless (with Pinnacle Studio 8...).
Will

[FOO]

I would try the Ati software (MMC) first , before I bought new hardware.
If you use DV you will always have to encode.

[Hardcoreruss]

Does anyone out there have experience with firewire? I'm thinking of purchasing a firewire card and using DV to capture the video. Will this improve anything? Is it any better?

Yep, yep, and yep.

I second that

[Shaolin]

Foo--what do you mean by encode? DV captures the video differently than the other method?

[Tommyknocker]

When you change analog to digital, it is called encoding. So changing your camera/VCR composite signal to a digital format is called encoding. DV to your computer is not encoding. It is a direct digital input from your camera to your system. Since the data never really changed, this is not encoding per se.

[FOO]

My point was that it takes hours to convert DV to MPEG2.
The ATI stuff will convert to MPEG2 while it captures with
adequate quality, saving lots of time.
If you need to edit , you should do DV , edit , and encode later

[SatStorm]

DV all the way!

DV does a transfer to PC not a Capture, so it is loseless.
Captures, are not loseless.

About ATI Cards, here are 8 reasons why most non Americans dislake them


1. ATI has always issues with Via Chipsets. So if you have a via chipset, don't buy them
2. ATI doesn't like AMD processors. So, if you have an Athlon, Athlon XP or Duron, better choose other products, not ATI chips based
3. ATI is legendary for non supporting users. Email them and if you have a Canadian or N. American I.P., one day they may answer you. On all other cases, you wasting your time. To be fair, ATI Deutschland has some support, but only if you write them in German and have a German IP address...
4. ATI never updates the drivers of a 18 months product. ATI 's strategy is to force users change cards each time they update their OS. So, when you buy an ATI product, prepare to change it soon or later.
5. All ATI products, are optimised for NTSC use. The PAL / SECAM users have a "wrap" like use of those products, meaning you don't get the 100% of PAL / SECAM with ATI cards. Also, ATI has a bad history background with PAL, since plenty of ATI's earlier products, never had valid/ correct drivers for PAL capture. The use of third party solutions simply don't work always.
6. ATI believes that the global market is everywhere like USA. That means that they testing their products only on Dell's, HP's and Compaq's ready OEM PCs, the most popular PC market in USA. Unfortunately, on most Europe and Asia, people built their own PCs. On half cases, ATI appears always issues at first, corrected later with driver updates. The bottom like is, if you wish to buy an ATI card, and you own a PC built by you, better choose at least 6 month old products, which the issues with hardware platforms are mostly solved. Then again, buying a 6 month card from ATI simply means that this card gonna have a very limited future support ...
7. ATI doesn't like active users. The late Catalyst 3.8 drivers, reported that they burn (yes burn!) the ATI cards, because they rise the temperature about 10 Celsius Degree ! So if you have a PC with 2 - 3 HDs, 3 - 4 PCI cards, a DVD and a DVD burner, in any typical ATX box with a big 400W supplier (or 2 suppliers, very common those days especially for our hobby, video processing), then for using ATI cards you have to invest to water cooling systems, costing the price of your audio card?.
8. Overclocking anything and have an ATI card inside a PC is like playing the Death Roulette?

I hope I was usefull

[KrisS]

GREAT POST SatStorm (it should be referenced in Capture FAQ).
Which program do you use for encoding captured DV (from TV) to DivX/Xvid?
I have pretty good results with GordianKnot and Dr DivX. I avoid VirtualDub, as it is significantly slower...
Cheers
KrisS

[Treebeard]

Always Firewire baby!!!!!

i picked up my Firewire card here and it came with software & a 6ft firewire cable.

works like a champ for only $13

[dcsos]

My ALL IN WONDER never dropped frames in a ALL INTEL MACHINE/...that's the key!

I remember reading a discalaimer in the download of their drivers for this beast that indicated most users had a problem installing this unit!
It was a hilarious read considering they were telling you your computer would most probably experience WIN98 protection errors!
And they weren't the least concerned about your problems afterwerds!

(MY A-I-W is a legacy version the 32mb PCI version)
I even got my A-I-W to share display chores with a 32MB MX-2 NVIDIA
by ASUS..(the A-I-W insists on being the primary display even tho' its PCI..the SOYO BX chipset MOTHERBOARD never could get the GE-FORCE AGP card to function properly as the primary display)

[Richard_G]

DV all the way!

DV does a transfer to PC not a Capture, so it is loseless.
Captures, are not loseless.

About ATI Cards, here are 8 reasons why most non Americans dislake them

You should have stopped after the third line, up until then the advice was fine, after that I've never read such a load of ill informed, biased bollocks in all my life. Just because you have had problems with an ATI card doesn't mean everyone else has them. Speak for yourself and don't try and assume everyone else has the same problems.

ATI European support in Ireland is excellent, one phone call and they sent me a driver CD for a 2 year old card by return. My employer has used Dell corporate leasing for machines (all with ATI graphics chips) for the last 6 years and there's never been a driver problem. I also fail to see how overclocking a pc can have the slightest affect on a graphics card, what's the difference between me clocking my 1800MHz XP2200 processor to 2000MHz rather than fitting an XP3000 processor? I'm overclocking the processor but the AGP bus is still running at the same speed.

There's an old English saying, "A bad workman blames his tools". This post just goes to prove how bad a workman you are.

To dcsos (and SatStorm), my ATI AIW Radeon, AMD XP2200, VIA KT400 machine has never dropped a frame, neither did the ATI AIW 128, AMD Athlon 1.33GHz, VIA KT266 before it or the ATI AIW 128, AMD Athlon 600, VIA KT133 before that.

I suggest SatStorm, that you go and learn to set you hardware and software up properly instead of wasting time posting personal opinions purporting to be fact. I though we were supposed to be supporting the newcomers on here not trying to put them off.....

[SatStorm]

No Richard_G...
I suggest YOU to do a forum (and internet) search about ATI cards before posting...

I always know pretty well what I'm saying and almost half people here agree with me: ATI sucks.

I never read complains for other cards from Asus, Nvidia, Matrox, or Hercules (kyro 2 or whatever) around. But I keep reading problems with ATI cards. And I tested all the ATI cards myself (it is my job you know...)

What that means?


Also, you said it yourself: You used a DELL. Only UK and Ireland follows the American logic, just look how fixed PCs like those from Dell, HP, etc sells in Europe.
ATI always count and optimise products for users like you. Unfortunatelly, users like you are only few in Europe. We Europeans built our own PCs and you have to be lucky your combo be compatible with ATI. Most of the time you have issues.

The way I see it, you simply didn't read my 8 reasons (don't mention the 9th, which is questionable: ATI captures only to 704 x 480 and then always resize to any resolution, including the native PAL one, 704 x 576! Yes, choose ATI and "enjoy" the results of a fast on the fly resizing from NTSC if you use PAL.)

It seems that you are a fan of ATI or you simply have benefits from ATI sales.
I'm here in this forum as a simply enthusiast of this scene and I believe that most of the newbies around wish to read all the infos about those subjects. And the Positive and the Negative ones.
In other terms, you are a fan of a product, I'm a enthusiast of a scene.

If I did a mistake is how I expressed the first reason:

1. ATI has always issues with Via Chipsets. So if you have a via chipset, don't buy them

Maybe,more correct is:

1. ATI cards most of the time present issues with Via Chipsets. So if you have a via chipset, the risk for issues is high, so better don't buy them

It is exactly the same statement in a "diplomatic" way.

[lordsmurf]

ATI has its fair share of problems, as does any technology company, but I think you're being a little biased from sour past experiences. Until earlier this year, I probably would have agreed 100% with you, but not at this time.

ATI has fixed a lot of that in past months, especially with expansion on the European/PAL front.

The only confirmed conflict with AMD is the timer function, and even then, only on some cards with some drivers and some versions of MMC (mostly the new stuff). It's a small percentage.

The heat issue I believe to be a myth. I have 5 fans in each of my cases, both in and out, and 500W supplies. Even when I had less fans and 300W each, they were fine.

Support sucks, but us ATI users do stick together.

They support cards for about 3 years, which is fair. Computers get outdated before that anyway.

To be fair, most products are tested on the big names like Dell.

VIA are cheap chipsets anyhow, and ATI problems are only one of their numerous issues.

You PAL guys got a raw deal at first, but the USA is the largest market, so I can understand their logic. But they have fixed it. I see ATI AIW Radeon PAL cards often these days. Some of the newest ones do both.

Resizing NTSC to PAL is how most movies are done anyway, so you're not getting itall that bad. Maybe not optimum, but many cards work like that anyway.

I built both systems myself. (Well, I actually had Compaq assemble one of them, but I ordered each part separately, was not a pre-built unit... the OEM was the only way to get a P4 1.8 at that time, no retails chips available).

[Richard_G]

SatStorm
I think you misunderstood, My EMPLOYER uses Dell machines, so that is what I use at work but my own machines have all been home built ever since my first 286 machine in 1990. I also build machines for other people and always use ATI video cards in them. I know the cards and know that they do the job. I also have no connection with ATI other than as a very satisfied customer.

I agree that there are large numbers of posts from people who have issues with ATI cards, but only because of the numbers of them sold. Up until recently, if you wanted to capture video, you had two choices, buy an ATI AIW or VIVO video card or buy a dedicated capture card in addition to a video card. This was the situation when I first started with video editing a number of years back. Because of this, a large proportion with an interest in video went for the only thing readily available which was ATI. Think about it, if a million people buy ATI and 1% have problems, that's a lot of people with problems. If 1% of people have problems with something else but only 10,000 units are sold, that's only a few.

I started off with a Miro (Pinnacle) DC10+ and had nothing but trouble with it. At the time Miro customer support actually recommended that I replaced my existing video card with an ATI one as they knew that their card worked well (marginally better actually) with them. Eventually, I replaced the Miro and separate video card with an AIW. The early ATI software was absolute crap but fine for the average user who just wanted to capture the odd low-res clip from his camcorder to email to his friends. For more serious video work it wasn't good enough and something else was needed. I used Virtualdub and the PicVideo MJPEG codec instead and it worked perfectly.

Despite my experiences, I won't slag off Pinnacle products, just that I personally had problems with one. I've also had an IBM hard drive die on me but I'm not going to go around assuming that everyone who has bought an IBM hard drive will have it fail and suggest that they are all faulty and nobody should buy one.

A large number of people have problems with VIA chipset motherboards, not only when using ATI video cards but with many other cards. Mostly this is down to not setting up (or even installing in the first place) the chipset drivers. Try it one day, install Windoze on a VIA chipset machine but don't install the VIA drivers. It will work and will be fine for internet surfing, word processing and normal tasks. It won't work very well but you won't notice that until you try and capture video, play back a DVD or do anything that makes it, or the graphics card, work hard.

Looking in this forum isn't representative. You only have to look at some of the very basic questions asked by some posters. I know we all started somewhere, but the ignorance of some people sometimes amazes me. Some of the replies fall into the same category, replies by 'experts' who demonstrate the literal meaning of the term (ex = has been, spurt = a drip under pressure).

I did read your 9 points. In fact I read them more than once, and took them as the rantings of someone who has had problems, possibly of his own making, but is either too proud or too stupid to admit that he himself may be wrong.

As I said in my previous post, "A bad workman blames his tools".

[taz291819]

DV all the way!

DV does a transfer to PC not a Capture, so it is loseless.
Captures, are not loseless.

While that is true, you forgot to mention getting the analog source to dv (by using a dv camcorder) is capturing it. It is using the dv encoder in the camcorder, which IS lossless.

I was going to go the DV route (and may later on), but I don't drop frames what-so-ever with my AIW 9700Pro. The captures look fantastic (s-video satellite source) and I don't have to re-encode it to a dvd compliant mpeg-2 format, the AIW captures that way for me.

To each his own on capturing methods, but for me, the AIW works great.

I must admit even though the MMC software has come a long way, I still cannot setup an event to capture correctly. Even though I select s-video as the input, when it starts to capture, it switches to ANT input (when I having nothing connected to it). I have to manually hit record for it to work correctly. Kinda a pain, hopefully they'll (or I'll) find a way to fix this bug.

[SatStorm]

This debate about ATI cards is repeated all the time the last year, after ATI's new models.

The problem is not the new ATI models, those ones are far better (and expensive) the previous models.
And a global knowledge of the market, of how different parts of the world are, helps to understand better all the views of a subject. This is something hard for the USA costumers, since they are the center of the market attention, so when something works best for them, is a "de facto" solution. Unfortunatelly I'm among the very few outside USA which have to deal with stuff you don't even know that exist...

First off all, try to realise something: When you say "ATI" you name a brand. You don't specify a model or specific ATI series. Where this leads? Let me try to explain:
For you in USA and some parts of west europe, when a big name presents a series of products, you simply buy them. You upgrade. Have you ever wonder, where the stock of the olders products of a company goes? I bet you don't! Well, a part is pushed to OEM manufactures of mediocre solutions, but the most amount of those cards are pushed to secondary markets, like east europe, the mediterenean countries, asia and Latin America.
So, when my friend Lord Snumf come up and say about how great ATI cards are in general, he means the latest (last year's) models.
So, N. Americans and Western Europeans understand what he is talking about, while the rest have a wrong idea that any ATI card is a good solution. Can you understand the problem here?
Meanwhile, ATI cards use to be legendary for issues for any PAL related topic, nobody can doubt that. Because those cards are not on sale in N.America and NW Europe, doesn't mean that they are not on sale in the rest world. You can easily say there is a 12-18 months market delay for any product first presented in US. Yes, we do have the latest ATI marvels in our market, but only few can buy them. Meanwhile, we have the same needs as you have today, so what we can do? Search alternatives. If now I read everywhere that "ATI Rocks", whatever you mean and how you mean it, I'm gonna by any ATI I found afforable for me. Which ATI cards are those? A years or more cards! Result: The well known frustration you once also have with them, before you replace them with the new ones!

Now some points:

@my friend Lord Snumf
"ATI has its fair share of problems, as does any technology company, but I think you're being a little biased from sour past experiences. Until earlier this year, I probably would have agreed 100% with you, but not at this time".

ATI believes that the market is like the situation in US, that was always the problem of this company. And as you already said, earlier this year you would agree 100% with me, but not at this time (because of their new products I suppose). You once again follow the american logic of the fast upgrade. Only USA users upgrade and change hardware that easy! Here in europe, the main attitude is to milk out anything. Why you think Linux is so popular here? Because with this OS you can use 100% your hardware, in a modern way without upgrades!
It is a totally different approach....


"ATI has fixed a lot of that in past months, especially with expansion on the European/PAL front"

Yes, the mainstream European gonna see this in 12 - 18 months from now. When those products will be cheap enough to young European users. Since then, it is the old ATI cards for us, which is the well known horror!


"The only confirmed conflict with AMD is the timer function, and even then, only on some cards with some drivers and some versions of MMC (mostly the new stuff). It's a small percentage"

"Confirmed" here is used with the meaning of "official conflict" right? Well, I talking for the so called "issues". Those can be solved by you or me or any advance user with knowledge of PCs. But most of the people around us, are not like us. They wish to plug in a card, load the drivers from the CD, read couple of "How To's" and start testing. The problem with ATI cards (the olders at least, if you prefer a more diplomatic expression...) is that you need to learn things beyond those steps, just to solve issues. How to order PCI cards, update the chipset drivers, etc. Now, why the mainstream user have to learn about all this and do all this, when he can simply use any other card and with a CD set up is ready?
ATI cards have plenty of issues, all solved if you search for them but I repeat: Why a costumer has to search to solve issues himself, from a product which is supposed ready to work from the box?
You don't have this problem with any other cards in the market.

"The heat issue I believe to be a myth. I have 5 fans in each of my cases, both in and out, and 500W supplies. Even when I had less fans and 300W each, they were fine."

Why people invent a myth for a product? Why they didn't invent myths for nvidia or other cards before?
Sorry, we Greeks use to say "If you see smoke, there is a fire" which means if many problems reported from various sources, then there is indeed a problem, even if we can't see it.

"Support sucks, but us ATI users do stick together"
We agree on this. But don't expect anyone willing to be like this. There are people out there, if they don't have service, they don't buy. Asus is well known for this issue also...
And if Hauppauge have a good name is Europe, is because the German Department do such a good job helping users, officially and unofficialy, you simply can't say something bad for them. But you can say plenty bad things for the service of ATI....

"They support cards for about 3 years, which is fair. Computers get outdated before that anyway"

Outdated yes, non used no. And if you count the delay of 18 months between the US/Europe Market, you see that you have 3 years to solve the NTSC issues with drivers, while you have only 12-18 months to solve the PAL issues with drivers. Which is the no1 problem we the PAL users have with ATI? They never solve the PAL issues for real. When they start solving the, they simply drop support of the model.

"To be fair, most products are tested on the big names like Dell"

Exactly, those Dells, Smells, whatever you called them, don't exist here! No, to be fair, they exist but nobody buy them. We buit our own PCs! How this is possible? Easy: In Europe, we have dedicated for PC's shops. You go there and you say: I want a PC. Then the salesman start asking you: What kind of CPU you want. You say and then he present you which motherboard it has compatible with the CPU you choosed. Then you choose VGA, HD, Audio Card, etc. When you finish, the salesman ask you for what this PC is for. You say, he may suggest alternatives to choose (always the cheaper ones! A very good tradition indeed...). Anyway, you confirm your order and that's it.
Then you leave and they send you at home 2 - 3 days later the PC you ordered with anything you choosed. This is how things work here. So if you don't know specific things, you end up with issues. And the combinations of hardware are countless this way. In a way it is natural to have hardware conflicts, what I fail to understand is why those ******* conflicts are so typical when you choose a ATI VGA, and so rare if you choose any other card!

"VIA are cheap chipsets anyhow, and ATI problems are only one of their numerous issues"

VIA chipsets is about the 70% of the PCs in Europe, unfortunatelly.... Only nForce 2 start selling a bit, but most of the choices we have in Europe, based on VIA chipsets! So, anything non VIA compatible, is not a VIA issue is the opposite! This situation is totally different than USA, which you don't use VIA so much.

"You PAL guys got a raw deal at first, but the USA is the largest market, so I can understand their logic. But they have fixed it. I see ATI AIW Radeon PAL cards often these days. Some of the newest ones do both"

No, the PAL market is bigger. NTSC is used only on few certain places, anything else is PAL (SECAM is history even in France nowdays...). But NTSC used in N. America, which PCs are more common than elsewhere. Same situation with internet, you have internet from mid 90s, we start having internet late 98. Today, the market is 50 - 50% and the only reason that doesn't seems so much, is because english ain't the main language of most PAL users. Just see this forum statistics. Only 20% of the users come from non English native speaking countries.
The truth is that Germans visit german sites, French visit french sites, and so on. Only few countries have citizens without egoism to express themself in English. Scandinavian and most of the mediterenian countries are like this, but most of the second ones are pour compared to the first ones. East European countries, simply don't speak english, this language use to be forbitten 15 years ago, it needs a generation to stop represent the enemy they use to believe that it is....


"Resizing NTSC to PAL is how most movies are done anyway, so you're not getting itall that bad. Maybe not optimum, but many cards work like that anyway"


Who talks about movies? If you wish to back up a movie, you don't do it by capturing, but by ripping. Exception is the LD disks,but those are so few in Europe, like the VCD players in US!
Capturing VHS or TV or Satellite or whatever is PAL and only PAL. And what makes you to believe that we watch only US stuff? We watch many Hollywood movies and some US series, but the most popular programs around today, are local reality shows, local series, cartoons (those are japanish, so yeap most could be from NTSC...) music videos (local scene) documanteries, etc. And athletics! To tell you the truth, European Cinema movies from the 50s-60s-70s are years now the most succesfull airing on all local european markets! Stuff like Star Trek, Stargate, Buffy, etc here, which I know that it is huge there, is for very small viewing minorities, basicly focusing on children! Even farscape never aired on most European countries!. Only some American influanced markets like UK (of course) Germany or North Italy have some kind of compatibility with USA on what they watching.
So for us, the native PAL support is a must, a need. Asus cards and Hauppauge products may have problems like the ones of ATI cards, but there is a big difference here: Those products has real PAL fuction, not a resizing bullshit like older ATIs...

@ Richard_G

When I start searching for this hobby, ATI was an exotic US thing. The only solution I had in 1996, was some ISA Hauppauge cards, like win Cinema Pro. That explains why Hauppauge still has a good name in Europe. Later, matrox came (I still remember Sefy praising his Matrox mjpeg G400 card!) and the first Asus.
The year was 2000 and ATI still had not a good distribution system in Europe. You had to order ATI and wait couple of weeks to arrive, paying double the price of you there in UK/Ireland.
Today, ATI is everywhere in Europe, expecially older stock products. In Polland for example, currently you can only buy old ATI cards for example, and we all know how big the Polish market is.
Yes, this year, 2003, ATI has a better distribution system, also it seems that it does a better job with PAL. What about the older products then it stills sells around, without officially support them?
ATI manage to create more unhappy PAL users than happy ones.

And if only 1% are the ones with the ATI problems, then why half reports of our capture list are negatives for ATI?

Let me tell you why: Because only a small minority of users, really use the fuctions of a card beyond Games! All those with ViVo cards, almost never use them, beyond the TV out for a game.... But when someone actually tries to use those cards for our hobby, the results are most of the times negatives... Expecially if you card is an ATI.

You keep posting this phrase of yours "A bad workman blames his tools"

What about the workman capable to do his work with any other tool, except this tool?

What about all of us capable to do our job with any other card than an ATI?

The tools determines the workman, or the workman choose the tools for his job?

Sorry, but just read the capture card list commets. When half of the reports about ATI cards are about negative issues, whatever you and I say is useless...

[andkiich]

SatStorm:

I don't take a lot of creadence in the hardware on this forum ofr one simple reason. Most people will complain louder about problems than they will exhault successes with their machines and/or process.

That's why you get a lot of people complaining, and the large number of complaints might also be because a lot of people buy them and they are very popular.

If what you stated in your post were true in my case, then the machine hat I built almost a year ago should be halfway to China by now! My MOBO and my AIW have Via chipsets. I did have a dropped frames problem, but resolved that by not using VirtualDub anymore.

It's good to share your experiences with the masses here, the more info the better. It is however best to make the exchange of knowledge as subjective as possible, as biased opinions serve no one but the poster, allowing them to vent some frustration.

You've posted some good advice on this forum on all kinds of topics, but this I did not expect.

[Will Hay]

.....I still remember Sefy praising his Matrox mjpeg G400 card!

Hell, I still have my Rainbow Runner G in a drawer in the study!
I was so in love with my G400 I imported the RR-G from the US and whilst couldn't use the signal imput (NTSC) I hammered the composites with over use.
A great card to this day, but sadly confined to burial in my desk
Will

[taz291819]

DV all the way!

DV does a transfer to PC not a Capture, so it is loseless.
Captures, are not loseless.

About ATI Cards, here are 8 reasons why most non Americans dislake them

Hey SatStorm,

Not to sound too rude or anything, but the original poster of this thread is in the U.S.. Why go off on a tangent about how non Americans dislike ATI cards? Also, by the way, you should have said non North Americans, because Canada and Mexico use NTSC also.

[Will Hay]

Not to sound too rude or anything, but the original poster of this thread is in the U.S.. Why go off on a tangent about how non Americans dislike ATI cards?

Whilst I have no reason to support Satstorm...
....Firstly, because it's completely relevent insofar as ATI assumed their primary market, and initially first choice customer base was the US (and therefore tailored their product range to suit).
And secondly...
...because this forum wasn't created just for the Yanks.
Just because a thread starter is a US citizen means it's only relevent to them.
Oh, I forgot...
...not to sound too rude or anything.
Will

[SatStorm]

@andkiich

The members of this forum is a very good sample you know. Inteligent, with more than average needs. If they have a problem it means that it is a problem.
If I was a company, I would hired people reading forum like this, just to know how to make my future products....
The machine you bought a year ago, is now a good buy in Poland and maybe some parts of india.... It is also a OK PC for most European mediterenian countries.


@taz291819

Simply because this is an international forum and this post interest anyone. I simply present a side of view concern the non NTSC users. If you read my posts, I always mention both users, even if theory. You see, when someone search for an info, gonna read this, and that and the other. (s)He don't care from where the info comes, simply want information for the subject. A global approach it might help him better than "what works for us"

In the map, USA and Canada are in North American, right? Mexico has close relations with USA, most call it "Central America".
For us, Americans ain't only USA citizens....
We devide america to N.America and Latin America. This is how we call it.

@all:

I'm not against ATI, OK? I simply want to present all the sides of the story. I don't wish someone came here, read about ATI, go buy it and then wonder why this other guide with a cheap Hauppauge card do all this stuff better than him....

If you wish to question me, or to point me something (like my friend lordSnumf did), I love to read about it. I love talking for those subjects and I learn always new things about any subject when I talk for them. But do it correct, based on facts. As I do (or try to). Personal opinions don't count.
I bet that you'll be suprise if I tell you that I personally suggest ATI cards to my friends, if they have the compatible combo (very rare here in Greece, which via chipsets dominate the market...). But I also inform them for all the negative and positive things about them.
Here, I see only positive commets. I 'm in the unpleased position to point the negative ones...

[SatStorm]

Will Hay, you really suprise me sometimes

[lordsmurf]

insofar as

I gotta check my dictionary.... is that really one word?

[taz291819]

WillHay, I don't see the relevance what-so-ever.

SatStorm, I've read many of your posts, and have found many of them to be informative. Actually, this one for instance has been informative. The eight years I lived in Germany, I never heard a single European call a Mexican or a Canandian, "American."

But as I said before, this thread has gotten off topic, let's get back to the DV vs. AIW 9700Pro debate. I'm curious on what the benefits are of each, for NTSC users.

[lordsmurf]

For USA, NTSC, the 9700 and 9800 AIW cards are unbeatable in the sub-$1000 level. I've compared it to cheap AVI cards and a Matrox AVI card (Max edition). Superb quality comparison. The Matrox has a slight edge over the ATI, but at a price of $1000+ I would hope so.