0.8.5 out for MMC 7.5 Reg Tool (plus macrovision)

[Stinky]

First if anyone has any objection to me posting when I do bug fixes or put out new features plese tell me and I won't use the board to do so. It seems that a lot of people have taken to my Reg Tool(s) - that I thought it would be alright to post new releases and bug fixes here. Feedback welcome if you think this is not a good idea.

Versin 0.8.5 ::: fixed a few minor bugs under within the "Edit MMC" options ::: added a "Check Macrovision" button - the kit will check our system for a patchable file - if found it will give you instructions how to use the enclosed zip file to patch your system (later I will just add a button to patch it but all in due time) ::: Improved the "Tool Settings" when you select "Dont warm me about reg changes" ::: Still working on my PreSets (please by ALL means send in your PreSet fav's and I'll add them to the list!) I'm working on an export/import feature to make this easier later on....

This weekend MUCH better documentatin and a few other goodies (time permiting!)

_________________
(darn it! editing this post messed up my hotlinks in my sig! - blah!)

your pal,
Stinky

Visit Stinkyland for MMC 7.5 Goodies!
http://64.80.22.253/stinky/

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Stinky on 2001-12-29 08:08:14 ]</font>

[kabanero]

Hi Stinky,

Do you know if MMC 7.5 will work with ATI AIW 128?

[Stinky]

I'm not 100% sure - but I think it works with eveything BUT ATI TV Wonder

follow the uninstall part of this tutorial to the letter!!
http://www.vcdhelp.com/ATI_AIW_Guide.htm

then install MMC 7.5 - you should be ok - it's a much better system then 7.1

Let me know by email - I'll start a list of what people have had success with MMC 7.5 on ... I'm on W2K with AIW RADEON - I also know that it works with the RADEON on XP

[todd-alaska]

It worked great on my all in wonder 128 16 meg

[jrstueve]

MMC 7.5 does word with the TV Wonder card.

So does the Reg Tool, except when I change the resolution it pulls it back down a step. For instance, I change the resolution to 352 x 480, and save the settings, then capture some stuff, and it ends up being 352x352, anyone else having that problem?

Any help?

[Stinky]

jrstueve: can you send me an email telling me EXACTLY the steps you take and what happens - it's very possible that there is a bug - I will fix it as soon as I can pin-point it.

also please make sure you have the LATEST version - I'm uploading a new 0.8.5 right now (I added auto Macrovision patching - but I don't think it required a version number change. It was just upload as this reply was posted (maybe I've already fixed the bug?)

[antisense]

Yeah, I have a problem with the reg 0.8.4 tool and the Svcd template. For some reason whenever I use load the template and update the registry, two things happen: first, there is only a high pitched scratching instead of actual sound, and second, when I try to drag the svcd clip into nero, it says that the resolution is actually 352x480! I am loading the correct template for me: NTSC 480x480, so I don't know what the hell is going on. I have actually had to delete my capture profiles, and create new ones (which I have not loaded any templates for fear of screwing those up as well). Now, maybe my system is just screwed up or something, but stinky, as far as i can understand it, one major problem with the ati software is that the SDE values are 480 and 240, while they both need to be 480 and 480. Do the templates change this value? If not, then people still need to use other means of producing god-fearing, totally compliant SVCDs. But you do kick serious amounts of ass anyway. Thought I would inform you of these crazy problems of mine.

[Stinky]

I was just going over this with jrstueve -- we need to do some trial and error - set up a SVCD Basic in MMC and then edit it in the Reg Tool - you see some strange values - the resolution in the registry will most likely NOT be 480x480 - but 480x240 and the Rtinterval will be the LOWER setting.

I could use your help with trial and error stuff like this - I'll credit anyone who can contribute - I can write the tool but to fully understand the innerworkings of ATI's implementation of MPEG is going to take a while to figure out.

also see what "Vertical and Horizontal Scaling" do when you enable them - I've had some very interesting results.

I stated that my SVCD templates are not perfect- seems I have the Rtinterval wrong - if you can figure it out PLEASE by all means send me your settings.

I'm just the coder - we all have to be the testers! lets make the most of MMC 7.5 but there is going to be a learning curve! I'm making us the tool - the settings will have to be figured out

[kabanero]

Hi Stinky,

I followed guide on uninstalling MMC 7.2 from my WinXP system with AIW 128, 16MB. Everything worked in MMC 7.2.
Then I installed MMC 7.5. Everything works except DVD player. When I start it, it hangs in the memory and doesn't come up on the screen.

[Stinky]

kabanero: I can only offer the directions on how to uninstall and then install MMC 7.5 -- I don't think it's even official from ATI yet - so I'm not too sure what to suggest to you - you might try contacting ATI but then they may inturn ask you where you got it and I'd have to take it down from my site.

sorry I couldn't be of more help

[kabanero]

Thanks Stinky for help. Don't worry, I won't let you down.

[cofferscuffs]

BTW v0.8.6 is out now with my revised documentation.

@ kabanero

I too had problems with the DVD player in MMC 7.5 too, the picture was all jercky and it skipped frames. I solved it by extracting the files from the MMC 7.2 DVD standalone package and do copy/paste to the right directories. It is perfect but it kinda works... But I've always found that PowerDVD is much better than ATI's DVD player.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: cofferscuffs on 2001-12-29 13:16:58 ]</font>

[kabanero]

Thanks cofferscuffs,
I will give it a try.

[cofferscuffs]

Maybe we need a list of which cards it works with?? For sure it works with AIW 128 16mb as I have it...

BTW, the MacroVision patch is for VIDEO-IN, not Video-Out.

@ Stinky

Is it possible to have this profile:

MPEG1 video (CBR 13000)
Stereo 16bit 44khz sound
480x576 res
no deinterlace (DWORDeinterlace setting:0)



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: cofferscuffs on 2001-12-29 14:33:46 ]</font>

[gtrz]

Stinky,I apologize in advance if I'm wasting your time and
space but I have the TV Wonder using 7.5 and would very much
like to use the (Windows Media-Local Use)for capture because
it looks great with small file size but I have about 40% frame loss on my Athlon at 1400.Maybe it wouldn't be in
your interest but is there anyway I can pick up the pace?
I don't even really know what your tool is for(just
mpeg?)Most of the topics on this forum are Greek to me,I just want capture to be easy.I can capture in Divx or Win
Media easily at 320x240 but it would be great to have the
ability for this other setting.

[Nelson37]

AIW 128 pro on XP, MMC 7.5 OK. Reg tool works, however each time I edit, ATI TV locks up, reboot, OK.

Macrovision works with DVD in, record OK. Have a strange VCR prob, upper half of picture jittery w/greenish ghost image shifted to right. Two VCR's, coax or composite to ATI, bad. VCR1 coax to Motorola cable box, coax to VCR2, records OK, 2nd gen tape STILL gives bad image on ATI, capture or preview. Would greatly appreciate any available enlightenment.

[cofferscuffs]

@ gtrz

The MMC Tool is for MPEG really atm, but if you know what it changes in the registry, some of it's 'features' can be applied to AVI capture (which personally I've given up due to the fact my max size for capping is 352x288 with the stupid WDM drivers).

I don't wuite understand what you mean about "use the (Windows Media-Local Use)for capture"

And what are you capturing to when you get 40% frame loss and what resolution etc (deinterlace)

@ Nelson37

Edit your profile you mean?? BTW, the MacroVision patch is old... maybe the drivers are slightly different for your card now. But in the readme for the patch it says he doesn't know wheather it works properly on other cards except AIW 128... so it could be a driver problem. Is the VHS tape you tried to capture from got MacroVision?

[Stinky]

<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 2001-12-29 20:37:44, gtrz wrote:
Stinky,I apologize in advance if I'm wasting your time and
space but I have the TV Wonder using 7.5 and would very much
like to use the (Windows Media-Local Use)for capture because
it looks great with small file size but I have about 40% frame loss on my Athlon at 1400.Maybe it wouldn't be in
your interest but is there anyway I can pick up the pace?
I don't even really know what your tool is for(just
mpeg?)Most of the topics on this forum are Greek to me,I just want capture to be easy.I can capture in Divx or Win
Media easily at 320x240 but it would be great to have the
ability for this other setting.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

The MMC Registry does not respond to changes for anything other than MPEG - you have very little control over any other codec - there are minimal settings for WMA and other profiles but nothing useful sorry

I've already looked into it

[Stinky]

<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 2001-12-29 14:24:15, cofferscuffs wrote:
@ Stinky

Is it possible to have this profile:

MPEG1 video (CBR 13000)
Stereo 16bit 44khz sound
480x576 res
no deinterlace (DWORDeinterlace setting:0)
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Technically 576 is a PAL resolution - so yes for PAL - we could try to force it with NTSC and see if it takes.

This is just a full on guess but you could try to set it to 360 and changing the Rtinterval to the lower setting and/or turning on the Vertical Scaling - that usually doubles the resolution.

[cofferscuffs]

I do it for capturing then editing as AVI capture support is shit. Then deinterlace and resize in Vdub and apply any other filters needed.

[Stinky]

Not sure I understand your reply.

You want to capture 576 NTSC or you already figured it out or you just switched to PAL?

I gotta sit down and figure this Rtinterval v. Interlaced v. H/V Scaling v. Final MPEG Res ......

Oy! I need an 8 day week!

[cofferscuffs]

No I want to capture in PAL! It already works as I've tested with the registery and it doesn't get deleted (well if you put EXACTLY 1300000 (not sure it thats the right amount of zeros) in the reg it deletes itself, so I had to raise it to 13.05mb/s).

Do you know what Rtinterval does yet?

[Stinky]

Ahhh ok

sorry - I didnt understand

There is some sort of error checking in MMC 7.5 -- I now know it deletes some profiles - I guess if you try to do 480x576 lower than 1.3 bitrate it deletes it - it also deletes all profiles not using 44Mhz audio and a few other things.

Still not 100% sure what Rtinterval does yet - but I did just find an error in the tool trying to re-create your situation - which I will fix now (not something that affects what your trying to do)

Rtinterval changes the ACTUAL resolution that is actually captured - it's a very odd value and I still don't have my finger on it.

I guess I need to put a check in the kit that if you set the res to 480x576 your bitrate must be over 1.305

[antisense]

Okay, just some weird errors with using v0.8.6 of the MMC 7.5 reg tool. Here is what I do, I create a capture profile, 480x480, deinterlacing, VBR, and all that jazz. I then use the reg tool and load the preset for the NTSC SVCD template. Okay, all set and ready to go. Now here is where things get weird. I immediately take the mp2 stream I record, and put it in Nero, just to get an idea of the stream. Nero says that the stream encoding is incompatible-no surprise there, but then Nero goes on to say that the stream is encoded to 480x176! WHile I know that I set it up to be at 480x480. Now, continuing with this idea, I look back upon all the other pre-Reg v0.8.6 MMC 7.5 SVCDS that I have burned, and 2 surprising differences occur. First, the only problem was that the stream was not encoded right, but the resolution of 480x480 was okay (on the older files) . Second, I was able to play the older SVCD files using the ati file player, now I cannotplay the newer (post template) files, but I can use Nero to play them, and then something surprising happens. Before(the old, pre-template Svcds) looked very streched when nero played them, and now thinking about SDE values, it looked like Nero was playing the file at 480x240 or 640x240, but the Svcd files that nero claimed were completely compliant, were played "weird", not the way that they were played on my tv with a pioneer dv-333. Now, however, Nero is playing the files "correctly" as they would be played on my tv! But, it thinks the file is incompatible, even after demuxing with TMPGenc and muxing with tmpgenc (which admittedly only fixes the stream, at least I know that now!). So, what to take out of all of this? First, does Nero use SDE values in the playback of SVCD (mpeg-2)files? Second, what exactly is going on when I load the SVCD template and for some reason nero thinks that the file has a resolution of 480x176? Feedback, info, help? What is frustrating is that I am not sure if the file that nero plays is 480x176 or 480x480 because I don't the visual difference between them, i.e. I feel that the 480x480 should look a lot better than 480x176, but I have never seen 480x176, so I cannot compare. However, the 480x176 file that nero claims it to be does not look "bad", it looks like any normal SVCD 480x480 file to me. Damn, this is rambling, but hopefully I am not alone in this problem!

[Stinky]

Ok your right on with the problem - actually I'm about to disable the SVCD Presets until I can figure out all the correct values. I really need to do a lot of testing before I offer access to resolution and a few other values in the kit - I have a lot to re-think - the next kit might have resolution disabled until I can figure it out!

There is a relationship between the following values - Rtinterval, Resolution and Scaling .. see these tests (all created with MMC and NOT edited - All MPEG-2 ):

Setup AS 352x480
RtInterval=166833
Width=352
Height in Registry is 240 (MMC Says 480)
ACTUAL CAPTURE Resolution : 704x480
Size : 352x480

Setup as 480x480
RtInterval=166833
Width=480
Height in Registry is 240 (MMC says 480)
ACTUAL CAPTURE Resolution : 480x480
Size : 480x480

Setup as 320x240
RtInterval=333667
Width=320
Height=240 (Registry and MMC says 240)
ACTUAL CAPTURE Resolution : 320x240
Size : 320x240

Ok so I FORCE the RtInterval change it to the opposite Value!!! (so all of these were edited but only the value of RtInterval - I didn't change the vertical scaling on these)

Setup AS 352x480
RtInterval=333667
Width=352
Height in Registry is 240 (MMC Says 240)
ACTUAL CAPTURE Resolution : 352x240
Size : 480x240

Setup as 480x480
RtInterval=333667
Width=480
Height in Registry is 240 (MMC says 480)
ACTUAL CAPTURE Resolution : 480x480
Size : 480x480

Setup as 320x240
RtInterval=166833
Width=320
Height=240 (Registry and MMC says 480)
ACTUAL CAPTURE Resolution : 640x480
Size : 320x480

Ok one more test this time not changing RtInterval but Vertical Scaling

Setup AS 352x480
RtInterval=166833
Width=352
Height in Registry is 240 (MMC Says 240)
ACTUAL CAPTURE Resolution : 708x480
Size : 352x480
Vertical Scaling : Off

Setup AS 352x480
RtInterval=166833
Width= in Registry is 352 (MMC says 704)
Height in Registry is 240 (MMC Says 240)
ACTUAL CAPTURE Resolution : 352x352
Size : 352x352
Vertical Scaling : On

Ok so one last Tweak I force the Profile above that MMC says is 704x240 to have 352x480 in the registry and then I get this:

Setup AS 352x480
RtInterval=166833
Width= in Registry is 352 (MMC says 352)
Height in Registry is 480 (MMC Says 480)
ACTUAL CAPTURE Resolution : 480x240
Size : 480x240
Vertical Scaling : On

Conclusions

#1 I strongly suggest you create MPEG-2 profiles in MMC and only edit the CPU and Bitrate in the tool for right now (unless you want to help me with this ENDLESS trial and error) - I have to find the exact relationship between RtInterval, Vertical Scaling and Capture Resolution!

#2 Not one of my captures was NERO Compliant - nor could I make a Nero compliant capture with MMC 7.5

#3 Playing with the RtInterval and Vertical Scaling may prove valuable my 320x240 capture with the resolution of 640x480 was pretty cool when it played on WinDVD !! so I set up one last profile and really liked it - it's odd but if my DVD player will play it it's going to be my xSVCD capture. Why? because I didn't drop any frames and it looks great - I usually drop frames because my computer is slow (only a PIII 450).


Setup as 352x480
RtInterval=333667 (changed from 166833 with the Tool)
Width=352
Height=480 (MMC says 480 - but I set it to 480 with the tool at first it said 240)
ACTUAL CAPTURE Resolution : 352x352
Size : 352x352
Vertical Scaling : On
Deinterlace : Off

#4 All these capture looked fine in 4:3 on the ATI File Viewer and WinDVD (all of them - each one 4:3)

#5 for this kit to work - I need LOTS of feedback - it's confusing enough trying to tweak the hell out of a software package you don't have a manual for

#6 it's all VERY confusing!!!

#7 get 0.8.7 - I fixed some bugs

[jrstueve]

I manually changed the height variable in the registry and was able to capture 352x480.

Here is an image of the registry settings.



Hope that helps.

[Stinky]

I can get it to do 352x480

it's just that what you see in the registry vs. what the actual resolution and actual size is actually quite different

I was excited to be able to capture MPEG-2 at 3.0 with CPU Load at 100% and the highest ME Ranges (Horizontal at 8 (256 in MMC) Vertical at 7 (128 in MMC)) and not dropping frames) - a great feat for my computer

you can check your actual resolution in TMPGEnc by double clicking on advanced/source range ... it might not be 352x480 ...

anyway all that work I was doing was to try and figure out as much as I could about the inner workings or MMC ... by turning on the vertical scaling I think I was able to get better resolution than before - it just looked much better to my eyes

but I do thank you for your reply - I will look at your settings and see if I can learn from it also - I did notice you used the 'Res' setting - any noticable results from it?

[jrstueve]

I think I need to clear up a minor point.

The TV Wonder GUI doesn't allow you to choose a x480 height setting, the only way is to backdoor it through the registry. The other factor is that when you do this, you can't view the video while capturing. (some limitation about the card, i think).

So I tried using your tool to force the setting to x480, and ended up being x352 (which might have been a typo). I have no idea what the MMC tool sets for the registry for x480 settings, because it is impossible for me to select that setting, and then see how it effects the registry.

But I'm trying to get a better resolution by fiddling, and see what I can get without massive frame drops, so I might try fiddling with the settings you've stated and see what I get.

Thanks,

[cofferscuffs]

IMO, I think Rtinterval has something to do with the fields that are captured or deinterlacing. Also I have confirmed that the MMC does not like some exact bitrates, Stinky I'll email my findings to you shortly as normal..

[Stinky]

cofferscuffs: looking forward to your info!

check my homepage - I kinda put the breaks on the tool until I can make it a reliable source.

also there were a few bugs in 0.8.6 in the presets STILL but they should be fixed now.... 0.8.7 is online