ATI MMC Questions

[saturndude]

I got my capture solution working for the first time last week (All-in-Wonder 9200 AGP). Toward the end of the 90-minute made-for-TV movie, there were frames dropped (rough estimate 5 to 10 percent), but I forgot to turn off anti-virus, use a dedicated hard drive, etc. After some tweaking, this setup could do a good job.

I am using MMC 9.13. I have a few questions --

1. I thought this card uses hardware to code to MPEG in realtime, but under the video recorder tab, "(SW)" appears after all the options (resolution, etc. in the presets). Is the theatre 200 chip being used at all?

2. Where is the option to see frames dropped (percentage or number of frames)? Was this dropped in later versions of MMC?

3. Do I need to record in ATI's proprietary format to use the hardware encoding chip and lighten the load on my CPU? Then open the file later and export to MPEG-2? The documentation glosses over hardware / software encoding.

4. Did the "video soap" option disappear from MMC at some point? I thought I read on another forum that the theater chip only alters color, saturation, or provides "video soap" to encode in realtime. This implies that regular VHS to MPEG is all done in software (taxing my CPU).

5. Are older versions of MMC more clear on "hardware" and "software" encoding, and should I switch to an older version? I have MMC 8.1 or 8.2 (rather old) and I also have MMC 8.8 (incompatibility message with theater chip when capturing, can't use that one).

EDIT: In another post, someone suggested Virtual VCR could work with ATI's hardware, but it is AVI only (recode to MPEG-2 later). ATI's software also lets me capture to AVI, assuming I have enough drive space (my Canon S3IS digicam [6 megapixel, 12X zoom] uses AVI for movie mode, files are large). If the MPEG doesn't prove to work well after another week or two of trying, is AVI a good option?

[lordsmurf]

I suggest ATI MMC 9.02 at most, for this card. I still use 9.02 and 8.7, and have no complaints. Excellent captures.

[saturndude]

Okay,

I got the video driver from one place, WDM drivers from another (so XP could use the hardware and not show yellow question marks), and MMC 8.2 from an old ATI TV Wonder where I ripped the disc before returning it (I'm using the software on ATI equipment, so I think I'm OK on licensing).

Turned off several things (including anti-virus) until the next reboot.

Recorded about an hour of that TV movie. Thousands of frames were recorded, only 9 were dropped. Outstanding. The actors' lips kept up with the sound very nicely.

Still don't know if I'm using the Theater 200 hardware chip or not, probably I am.

But before I experiment with VideoSoap, it looks like the file player cannot open the files -- either those recorded with MMC 9.13 or 8.2. It is not a question of rights and permissions. I'll probably need to install the ATI DVD decoder.

Can I make the preview screen bigger while adjusting the video soap inside my custom preset? What should I record to test different soap settings? A couple of minutes of local television news at each setting perhaps? Or cartoons like the Simpsons so I can easily see ghosting, sharpness, etc.? Can I use a still picture (screen-cap) to adjust things like Photoshop Elements 5?


THANKS!!!

[lordsmurf]

Install any DVD player software, like PowerDVD or WinDVD, and it should add MPEG-2 codecs into DirectShow (for Windows Media Player and others to use). Be sure you are recording to MPEG, not ATI VCR format.

You can drag the VideoSoap preview bigger, sure, I do it all the time. you can change where it previews too. I prefer 18% salt-and-pepper setting or just outright use Heavy.

Ghosting and sharpness are not really something VideoSoap can fix for you, especially not ghosting. You need to fix your signal better. You can do a little, but not complete removal, in VS.

PS Elements 5??? Are they up that high now? Wow. Anyway, you cannot screen-cap the overlay where video is. You'll need to capture some video, open the clip in VirtualDub (MPEG support version), and then take a still image and copy it to the clipboard. THEN you can paste into Photoshop. But I don't know what you want to use it for, besides showing it to the forum, or whatever. It's not something you can use in VS, no.

[Scorpion King]

I'll offer a few pointers on ATI MMC.

Go to the top of this page and type ATI MMC in the search box. The search will find about 1300 hits. There is a lot of information in those pages. You read all them and you will be the resident ATI expert.

MMC versions after v9.08 are not worth installing. Stay with v9.08 or under.

CAT later than v5.1(??) are very much bloated. You system will boot faster using the older versions.

The MMC presets are junk. Create new presets based on DVD specs. Do your testing and adjust your bitrate settings for 1hr, 2hr, and 3hr MPEG2 captures. My 1hr is CBR 9.8Mbps, 256Kbps audio, 100% motion, closed GOP, crop, etc. You need to find your own settings.

VideoSoap works good and you need to learn how to use it. The settings and the filters you use is going to be based on your signal quality of your inputs. The better the input the less values you will want to use. Capturing from my satellite using monster cables and s-video I have a pretty clean input signal. I generally use about 10% combo#1, and 10% sharpen. Capturing from VHS I usually use combo#2 and sharpen around 30% for both. The combo filters are a preset combination of all three filters (sharpen, soft focus, despeckle) where combo#1 uses lesser values than combo#2 does. These are some nice presets.

When adjusting the videosoap settings you can see the lighted graph at the bottom of the box. This graph shows how the videosoap settings are effecting the chips resources. The colors are self explanatory I guess.

The videosoap preview screen can be stretched (enlarged) and moved to the side so you can adjust the filter values. If you raise the value of the filter to the highest setting you can see what effects (or negative effect) the filter has. After watching many hours of my captured video I generally try to use the least amount of videosoap I feel is necessary. I like a sharp picture and I find that using too much filtering makes the video too smooth for my taste. It does help to clean up quite a bit of garbage if used properly.

The hardware assist is working when using the ATI MMC program. It might be just hardware assist but if you get the settings adjusted properly you will see the chip is capable of capturing very high quality video and compress it better than most any other capturing program you have. I have achieved very good quality captures with my ati card using mmc. It can be done. It ain't easy at first though, you will need to do some reading and run quite a few tests to get your hand in.

Good luck.