Copy Guard, Sima copymaster

[VTOM]

Is there auto carriage return here? (sorry if not).

Sima - Does it work? I'll give you answers, but I also have questions, so please be kind and help a learner out with your replies of wisdom.

Yes, I bought the Sima copymaster, for $55 at Circuit City in Round Rock. I have AIW Radeon and JVC late model VCR. I use MMC 7.1 and maybe Vdub. I'm trying to capture two heavily infested tapes - Schoolhouse Rock (science), and Rescuers, both by Disney. I have not tried with S-video yet, but it does appear to work for composite video, for the first few minutes anyway. Ie, my captured video no longer loops. I also haven't tried to capture the full tape yet, but don't anticipate any problems.

Now, for your part...
1. Does anyone know what capture chip is inside my AIW Radeon?
2. Is Copy guard scrambling part of the WDM layer, or DirectX layer, or is it in the hardware itself? I was hoping, and still hope to find a clean software solution to this ugly problem. I know for a fact that using Vdub alone does not conquer copy-guards!
3. If copyguard is in WDM driver layer, then where can I get a better driver?

Capturing:
4. My VCR literature says that S-Video output is 400 lines. I can capture S-video with AIW Radeon. The tapes I will capture are regular VHS tapes. I DO want to capture the best quality video. Is there any advantage to capturing in s-video, and what resolution should I set capture device to? This is not so obvious question to answer, because re-sampling (vertical scaling) can lead to poorer quality even if the resolution is higher. And that leads me to my next question:
5. On AIW, when I capture composite NTSC, but set resolution higher than 352x240, is this really doing any good? Is resampling done in analog hardware, or digital hardware, or is it done by software?

Thanks in advance, VTOM.

[CubDukat]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-12-04 10:24:45, VTOM wrote:
Is there auto carriage return here? (sorry if not).

Sima - Does it work? I'll give you answers, but I also have questions, so please be kind and help a learner out with your replies of wisdom.

Yes, I bought the Sima copymaster, for $55 at Circuit City in Round Rock. I have AIW Radeon and JVC late model VCR. I use MMC 7.1 and maybe Vdub. I'm trying to capture two heavily infested tapes - Schoolhouse Rock (science), and Rescuers, both by Disney. I have not tried with S-video yet, but it does appear to work for composite video, for the first few minutes anyway. Ie, my captured video no longer loops. I also haven't tried to capture the full tape yet, but don't anticipate any problems.

Now, for your part...
1. Does anyone know what capture chip is inside my AIW Radeon?
2. Is Copy guard scrambling part of the WDM layer, or DirectX layer, or is it in the hardware itself? I was hoping, and still hope to find a clean software solution to this ugly problem. I know for a fact that using Vdub alone does not conquer copy-guards!
3. If copyguard is in WDM driver layer, then where can I get a better driver?

Capturing:
4. My VCR literature says that S-Video output is 400 lines. I can capture S-video with AIW Radeon. The tapes I will capture are regular VHS tapes. I DO want to capture the best quality video. Is there any advantage to capturing in s-video, and what resolution should I set capture device to? This is not so obvious question to answer, because re-sampling (vertical scaling) can lead to poorer quality even if the resolution is higher. And that leads me to my next question:
5. On AIW, when I capture composite NTSC, but set resolution higher than 352x240, is this really doing any good? Is resampling done in analog hardware, or digital hardware, or is it done by software?

Thanks in advance, VTOM.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

First, not having used any of the ATI cards, I couldn't tell you what the chip inside is. You should try ATI's website; if they don't have that info, they should.

I can, however, give you help on the other points. Macrovision is hardware-embedded in any device that features it. That's one of the company's guidelines.

Second, if your tapes are regular VHS, you may or may not have better results using the composite input, since the two parts of the color signal aren't recorded separately as they are with true S-VHS, and the VCR's job of separating them isn't always that well done. I have several tapes I've captured in both ways, and I can honestly say that most of the time, it depends on the source materials, but I would recommend using the S-video output with S-VHS native material.

Finally, there seems to be a split on capturing at a higher resolution than the end product and resizing. Some say it's wasteful, while others claim the end result is smoother video. I've actually tried it both ways, and I now use the higher-capture-rate-and-resize way.

Hope this works for you.