ATI TV-Wonder (PCI) capture more than 240 lines!?

[Belgarion]

I'm getting really irritated with that TV-Wonder PCI card...

Every single tool I'ved tried detects the chip as being the bt878 .. I've looked at the datasheets, and that chip is able to capture at 720x480.

I've tried several tweaked drivers for the bt878 chip, can't get any of them to work properly.
So I re-installed the drivers for TV wonder coming from MMC 7.1

My problem remains, I'm unable to capture at more than cheap 240 lines with ATI's software/drivers (MMC 7.1 , Windwos 2000 Pro, TV Wonder on a dual-video card system (GeFroce 2 and Voodoo 3).

What is the reason for that crap?
Why can't I capture at more than 240 lines? All capture resolutions above 240 lines are not even displayed in the Digital VCR properties.

Even tried MMC 7.5 , didn't help at all. That means that's either a limitation in ATI's implementation of the bt878 driver, or a limit in ATI MMC, or that the TV Wonder doesn't have a bt878.

In any case, I'm getting pretty fedup with all these software issues.
Anyone got any solutions?

Thanks
Belg.

[Belgarion]

Btw, bt878 is the chip that does the video processing. Conexant's chip.

[Belgarion]

Anyone, any idea?

[Belgarion]

Ok, well.. For those of you who are having the same problem as I did. Here are the results:

- Yes, the ATI TV Wonder can capture at 480 lines !
- You can not capture at 480 lines if you are watching the feed at the same time (only 240 then)
- Of course, using the "great" ATI MMC you can not disable preview during recording (didn't find how anyways) so you can not record at 480 lines.
- I installed the tweaked bt8x8 driver from iuLabs (www.iulabs.com) and their tuner/capture software iuVCR.
- I have now several recordings at 640x480, and god it's beautiful !! Finally, at last, my quest is over.

[vhelp]

balgarion,

TIP:
----
* just before you click the record button do this,
* shrink the video window as small as possible (w/ your mouse)
* you'll get a lightly better frameframe (less drops) if you do
this trick. I did. If you goal is to make great looking encodes,
then don't worry about watching on your screen.

Another TIP:
--------------
* just becase you found what works for ya.
* get a 4" shielded "Y" adapter - you'll know what to do with it.

But, don't get it at RS, its like $5 bucks - go to K-Mart its $1.95 #M62084
But if you must, then get the gold plated ones (only RS has'em)

Now, record in stamp-size, while you watch on your TV, he, he..... this shoudl help in your capturing!

I do this all the time, and my encodes R perfect, becuse it seems that
the capture card take priority over the quality of the signal. And the TV
seems to be secondary.

I've added this to my website's TIPs section.


------------------------------------------------
. . .revised web site

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: vhelp on 2001-12-09 11:06:27 ]</font>