Stupid ATI AIW Question

[stahlhart]

If you'll recall, I'm that unfortunate bloke who was trying to get the two ATI cards (9500 Pro AGP, AIW PCI) working together in the same system.

Anyway, I finally got my AIW cable delivered yesterday, and was able to start working with VHS captures on the PCI card. I'm running into some problems here, mainly audio/video sync issues, but I need to spend some more time trying things out and figuring out what I'm doing before I ask about that here.

My question is this: the breakout cable for the AIW card has four inputs -- a yellow RCA for composite video, a black S-Video connection, and red and white RCA inputs. I got composite video working, but I ended up using S-Video from my AVT-8710 for video instead, since I thought I'd get better quality video this way.

But I assumed that the red and white inputs are for left and right audio. I was not able to get MMC to "hear" anything when I connected the VCR's audio up here. I ended up having to connect the VCR audio to the line input on my sound card in order to get audio in the capture.

Are those red and white inputs for left and right audio? If so, what might have been the reason I could not get audio input working with them...?

C.K.

[Krispy Kritter]

Yes, those are for audio.

Do you have audio if you watch the TV tuner?

[stahlhart]

I don't have the ability to use the tuner -- the tuner works, I get a raster, but my PC is in a room where there's no connection to cable.

I suppose I could get a 75/300 balun and connect bunny ears to it... I'll see what I can do here, though, seriously. Thanks for suggesting this.

C.K.

[stahlhart]

My drivers look like they're all installed correctly. I see something like six AIW devices in Device Manager, with no conflicts or driver issues.

Should I also see a slider in Volume Control for the AIW, or does the audio just show up in the system and work its way out the sound card like other forms of audio? The audio works correctly through the TV function in MMC (you get the visual indication for the volume level in that oval GUI) if I connect it though the line input on my Santa Cruz.

My OS is W2K SP4, by the way. Catalyst 5.4 drivers, MMC 8.9.

C.K.

[marshalljames]

Do you have the AIW plugged into the sound card?My guess is not!

The breakout box works just fine for recording either through comp or s-video but you must have the sound cables connected in order to get sound.
From the vcr to the Breakout block and secondly your ati to your soundcard with the audio/video out cable that came with your ati card.

[DarrellS]

Do you have the AIW plugged into the sound card?My guess is not!

The breakout box works just fine for recording either through comp or s-video but you must have the sound cables connected in order to get sound.
From the vcr to the Breakout block and secondly your ati to your soundcard with the audio/video out cable that came with your ati card.

My thoughts exactly

I don't have the ability to use the tuner -- the tuner works, I get a raster, but my PC is in a room where there's no connection to cable.

Drill a hole through the wall and run a coax cable through a splitter to the PC or come through the attic and down through the top plate.

[stahlhart]

Okay -- here's where I'm confused about the whole thing.

The card is an AIW Radeon. Has four connections on the spine: the monitor jack, an F fitting for the tuner, A/V in, A/V out.

The cable I have doesn't have the "block" on the end -- it has the S-Video style connector that fits into the A/V in jack, then it breaks out to four cables, three RCA females (yellow, red, white) and S-Video female.

How can I run audio "out" to the sound card, when I only have one cable connected to A/V in...?

My sister has an 8500DV, and it has one of those blocks with the leads that run to the sound card, so I've seen what you are describing.

Do I have the incorrect cable? Is there audio "out" meant to go to the sound card on the pins of the A/V in jack, or do cables need to be connected to both A/V in and A/V out?

I looked at the ATI manual, and it has two diagrams for cabling, one for capture and one for running the AIW out to a television set, but I wasn't able to get a handle on audio input from these diagrams.

I just want to connect a VCR to the AIW, with video through a TBC.

C.K.

[sanlyn]

The red and white RCA inputs on your AIW coupling device are for audio (red=right audio, white or green = left). The AIW card doesn't have its own audio processor, you have to use the Line or Aux input on your sound card. The volume levels are controlled by using your Windows "Advanced" input volume controls. In Windows the input volume should be around 75% to 85% for whatever you're using as your input source. If you have treble/bass sliders in this window, adjustments you make there will be heard in your audio. To reduce noise, you should mute inputs that you're not using (such as Microphone, etc.). Don't mute WAv or the others, or you'll mute the PC's other audio sugnals.

I'm wondering why you're using the PCI card instead of the 9000 Pro AGP. Did I read you correctly, that you have both a PCI and an AGP AIW card? AGP is much faster and cleaner -- unless, of course, your 9000 Pro is not an AIW.

I've used AIW's for quite a while to capture to MPEG, with no audio synch problems. For DVD you should be setting the sound to PCM, 48K stereo. The default 44K in the AIW setup windows isn't DVD compatible. I note a problem sometimes when capturing to AVI; in your AVI editor, set the audio loading either 500 ms ahead or behind to correct this. Also had the same capture/AVI problem with the nVidias, but nVidia is a mighty poor capture card so I stopped using it.

Try lordsmurf's excellent AIW/DVD guide at
http://www.digitalfaq.com.

[stahlhart]

I forgot to add: I bought the card on eBay, just the card by itself. Ordered the cable from sonewhere else separately, so I'm putting this together in pieces. That's why I'm wondering if I got the wrong cable.

Regarding the coax -- no, I can't do it that easily. I live in a condo, and in order to get cable into the room where the PC is I'd have to run it up through two floors inside the wall from the basement.

C.K.

[stahlhart]

The red and white RCA inputs on your AIW coupling device are for audio (red=right audio, white or green = left). The AIW card doesn't have its own audio processor, you have to use the Line or Aux input on your sound card. The volume levels are controlled by using your Windows "Advanced" input volume controls. In Windows the input volume should be around 75% to 85% for whatever you're using as your input source. If you have treble/bass sliders in this window, adjustments you make there will be heard in your audio. To reduce noise, you should mute inputs that you're not using (such as Microphone, etc.). Don't mute WAv or the others, or you'll mute the PC's other audio sugnals.

I'm wondering why you're using the PCI card instead of the 9000 Pro AGP. Did I read you correctly, that you have both a PCI and an AGP AIW card? AGP is much faster and cleaner -- unless, of course, your 9000 Pro is not an AIW.

I've used AIW's for quite a while to capture to MPEG, with no audio synch problems. For DVD you should be setting the sound to PCM, 48K stereo. The default 44K in the AIW setup windows isn't DVD compatible. I note a problem sometimes when capturing to AVI; in your AVI editor, set the audio loading either 500 ms ahead or behind to correct this. Also had the same capture/AVI problem with the nVidias, but nVidia is a mighty poor capture card so I stopped using it.

Try lordsmurf's excellent AIW/DVD guide at
http://www.digitalfaq.com.

My AGP card is a 9500 Pro; I'd have to replace this entirely to do the video capture through that route.

I got the PCI AIW card cheaply, and initially thought that since I had a couple of open PCI slots I could toss it into one of those for a dedicated video capture device. I'm learning now that it isn't quite that simple.

What you've described here must be why running the VCR audio directly to the sound card works correctly. I'm just confused as to what the point of the audio inputs on the AIW are if it can't process audio -- or do I have to run audio OUT from the AIW to the sound card -- in which case, is it a second cable connected the A/V out, or do I need a different cable connected to A/V in?

If the AIW cannot process audio from the A/V source, then what is the purpose of running audio into it and then out of it to somewhere else, rather than just go somewhere else (i.e. the sound card) with the audio directly, which was what I ended up doing?

I have been spending time at Lord Smurf's site...

Thanks to everyone for the responses here, by the way!

C.K.

[stahlhart]

The setup in question that I'm trying to follow is on page 21 of the AIW Radeon User's Manual http://www2.ati.com/manuals/Awra8575.pdf.

Seems to me from this illustration that the card is both an audio and video capture device, and there's no mention here of having to run any lines to the sound card.

I'm obviously missing something here... (?)

C.K.

[sanlyn]

Right, I get it that your 9xxx AGP is not an AIW, but I used AIW PCI's in the past with good results.

Every AIW I've ever seen (although I haven't used all of them, and there are many models) have an output cable cluster similar to your input dongle. The output cluster has several wires, one RCA for video out, sometimes an S-Video out, often a mini-Sony 1/8" stereo plug output. These outputs are for connection to inputs of an external vcr, tv, etc. This output cluster feeds out of the AIW thru a black, multiple output jack on the card's rear face, looks similar to an s_video jack. There should also be a short black lead from the AIW that connects to your Line-In or Aux-in input on your sound card.

I've yet to see an ATI capture card with audio inputs on the rear of the card itself, but I'm certain they exist. The purpose of this extra audio line to your sound card is to allow you to audibly monitor your AIW's operations thru your PC.

The reason there are audio inputs to the AIW card's input dongle itself is for sound synch processing (so I'm told some time ago by an Ati tech, though I've never had audio synch problems with an Ati card). The card's innards might be tracking the soundtrack, but sending it through your PC's speaker system would seem to me to be a function of your PC's sound card. Like you, however, I have one question about this scenario: if you don't plug the wire into your sound card, why is that the AIW can't record audio thru its own innards? You'd be unable to monitor the sound while you record, but you should hear it in the replay if the audio is indeed being tracked by the AIW. I don't have an answer for that one, and Ati Tech never addressed that issue.

My AIW 9600XT card itself has what appears to be an internal audio connector -- looks like one, anyway, but no AIW I ever saw has directed the user to connect that to a sound card internally.

I do know that most sound cards have the ability to record audio input onto your PC as a WAV or other audio file. How ATI uses a sound card to record PCM or even AC3 is something I never looked into.

[DarrellS]

The setup in question that I'm trying to follow is on page 21 of the AIW Radeon User's Manual http://www2.ati.com/manuals/Awra8575.pdf.

Seems to me from this illustration that the card is both an audio and video capture device, and there's no mention here of having to run any lines to the sound card.

I'm obviously missing something here... (?)

C.K.

What is your PCI card?

From this manual, the 9500 Pro is not a capture card

http://www2.ati.com/manuals/Rade9500.pdf

The link you posted shows the audio out connecting to the sound card on the PC.

My PCI card is a 64MB All-In-Wonder VE card. Here is the connector it uses.

[anitract]

I too would like a good explanation...I've never really been satisfied with my understanding of what the aiw is actually doing to get the audio...except you need the connection to the sound card....anyone? lordsmurf?

My guess is that the mmc software itself is grabbing the audio stream being sent through Windows from the sound card. This would explain why the audio has to be PLAYING through the sound card in order to grab it.

So why have audio input jacks on the breakout box/cord? My guess is that this is for (1) the convenience for the user of having both audio and video inputs in one place and (2) the fact that not everyone's sound cards has rca-type inputs.

Anyway, I bet the aiw doesn't process tha audio at all...just passes it on to the sound card and the grabbed by mmc while reording.

[stahlhart]

The reason there are audio inputs to the AIW card's input dongle itself is for sound synch processing (so I'm told some time ago by an Ati tech, though I've never had audio synch problems with an Ati card). The card's innards might be tracking the soundtrack, but sending it through your PC's speaker system would seem to me to be a function of your PC's sound card. Like you, however, I have one question about this scenario: if you don't plug the wire into your sound card, why is that the AIW can't record audio thru its own innards? You'd be unable to monitor the sound while you record, but you should hear it in the replay if the audio is indeed being tracked by the AIW. I don't have an answer for that one, and Ati Tech never addressed that issue.

Thanks again for the additional help here... I only started tinkering with the AIW card last night, and spent a couple of hours on some test captures; I still have quite a way to go as far as figuring out which setup will work best for me.

I did one uncompressed AVI capture using the HuffYUV codec per Lord Smurf's guide at digitalFAQ. The video came out beautiful, even at full screen on the PC when viewed afterward with WMP -- the only problem was that the audio was horrifically out of sync. And I mean horrifically. That was with the audio from the vcr connected directly to the sound card and recorded with MMC 8.9.

I tried a second capture using the same setup, but with the MJPEG codec, but it dropped frames excessively (I only dropped one in two hours with HuffYUV). I tried a third capture with VirtualVCR, and it seemed as though I got much better audio/video sync, but the video was really macroblocked badly at full screen (I can't remember now which codec I used here; it was very late at night and i was getting groggy ). I still want to try iuVCR and VirtualDUB yet, and will do that over the weekend. I'm a complete noob at this and still have a LOT to learn, admittedly.

The manual I linked to earlier shows the card I have -- I think it's the 7200 series of Radeon.

I'm wondering now about that whole business of using the audio pass-through for sync purposes that you mentioned; something like that makes sense to me as an explanation. It doesn't, however, explain the setup on page 21 of the manual, as that shows direct audio feed into A/V in on the AIW, along with the choice of either composite or S-video.

But the one uncompressed AVI I captured was encouraging. I was really impressed with the video quality. I just have to get these sound issues resolved (hopefully )...

C.K.

[stahlhart]

What is your PCI card?

From this manual, the 9500 Pro is not a capture card

http://www2.ati.com/manuals/Rade9500.pdf

The link you posted shows the audio out connecting to the sound card on the PC.

My PCI card is a 64MB All-In-Wonder VE card. Here is the connector it uses.

My AIW is a PCI Radeon, I believe the 7200. My 9500 Pro is just a plain old AGP video card...

See where I'm confused -- you look at that illustration on page 21, and they don't show any connection to the sound card for capturing from a VCR. I'm wondering if I need a second cable for the A/V out jack (like you've illustrated here), in addition to the one I already have for A/V in, such that audio from the VCR can pass though the AIW on its way to the sound card? Because if you look at the manual, they're making it look like audio and video are both captured as inputs through A/V in.

C.K.

[Webster]

Just input line in from sound card to ATI card as DarrelS show. THEN choose your line-in SOURCE (i.e. line in as oppose to microphone etc...) by running setting up your TV tunner. This procedure is the same for AIW card (Radeon AIW, 8500 AIW etc....)

[stahlhart]

Here's the cable I have:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=40158&item=5190671305&rd=1

Is this the cable I'm supposed to have instead:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=40158&item=5189337257&rd=1

...and is there a difference between them, apart from appearance?

C.K.

[anitract]

What do you chose as source if you have it internally connected to your sound card?

[stahlhart]

Just input line in from sound card to ATI card as DarrelS show. THEN choose your line-in SOURCE (i.e. line in as oppose to microphone etc...) by running setting up your TV tuner. This procedure is the same for AIW card (Radeon AIW, 8500 AIW etc....)

I'm not sure how you would input an input (line in)... (?) Doesn't this need to be a combination of an input and an output?

But your second point is something I'm going to have to look at -- I don't recall seeing any other options for audio source other than my sound card. That was one thing that had me scratching my head a bit -- if I connect the VCR audio to the AIW A/V in, shouldn't I be able to select it as the audio source in the software?

I'm not in front of my PC at the moment, but I'm going to dig into this further as soon as I get home -- thanks for the help...

C.K.

[stahlhart]

What do you chose as source if you have it internally connected to your sound card?

MMC's TV option showed my Santa Cruz as the audio source -- I'm not in front of it at the moment, but I strongly remember it being the only audio choice I had in the setup wizard.

C.K.

[anitract]

Like I said above, I still think that the aiw is just a pass through...so the AIW A/V in wouldn't show up as an audio source.

[stahlhart]

Like I said above, I still think that the aiw is just a pass through...so the AIW A/V in wouldn't show up as an audio source.

Correct; I didn't see it listed as one. Which is why (I know that I keep going back to it) I'm baffled by the illustration on page 21 of the manual.

Mabye I do need a second cable for the A/V out jack...

edit: this one?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=40158&item=5191219389&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

C.K.

[Webster]

OK, this is how I have on my set up (AIW Radeon, and AIW 8500)

[anitract]

Ah, yeah, you should have a cable like the one in the picture above (the one connected to the AIW out jack on the card) that will function as an output cable for your audio, vidoe, etc.....OR to get the sound working you could internally connect the AIW and sound card.

My output cord for my 9600 aiw is a huge black cord with all kinds of video outs, audio outs, etc..

[stahlhart]

OR to get the sound working you could internally connect the AIW and sound card.

Ah hah... that might just work. There are two internal audio inputs on the Santa Cruz; I'm using both of them at the moment on my CD and DVD drives, but I could easily disconnect one.

I really appreciate this suggestion; it might just bail me out temporarily until I can get the correct external cable.

C.K.

[stahlhart]

OK, this is how I have on my set up (AIW Radeon, and AIW 8500)

Yup -- this is all starting to make sense now... at first glance, the manual made it seem (at least to me) that the two illustrations you have shown here were for two different, separate uses for the card -- but the line out to the sound card in needs to be there in any event. Now I'm getting it (finally).

You guys are great -- thanks to all of you for the help!

C.K.

[anitract]

No prob...just make sure in the windows sound options you enable the right sound input, and mute the ones you aren't gonna use.

To get there right click on the volume icon in the sys tray and "Open Volume Control", then go to options -> properties to access the input settings.

[anitract]

Good luck!

[Webster]

Yup -- this is all starting to make sense now... at first glance, the manual made it seem (at least to me) that the two illustrations you have shown here were for two different, separate uses for the card -- but the line out to the sound card in needs to be there in any event. Now I'm getting it (finally).

That because they print it on 2 different pages.

Be thankful that you didn't have the problems I had when I first bought the AIW Radeon and try to get it to work with the KT133 chipset/Duron CPU and ATI software!!!! It took me 3 weeks just to get the darn thing to capture (After I switched to a Pentum III CPU). Tech. support at ATI was useless................