ati mmc 7.7 - direct divx-avi capturing

[nanjil]

Guys:
I know somebody answered this sometime ago.

I have ati all in wonder /mmc7.7. I want to caputre directly to divx avi .
But the mmc Ui wil not allow me to adjust bit rates. How do I do that?

T hanx

[bpjenn]

Don't use MMC to capture avi or Divx. Video and audio will be out of synch. Use virtualdub and then you can also adjust the Divx settings.

[jayant]

Question for bpjenn

But can you do capture with VirtualDub if you have only the Rage Theatre Capture driver as I have got along with the Radeon 8500 DV Card?

When I open VirtualDub and command it to do Capture, I get the DOS table with a reply to the effect that the sytem found an unacceptable driver. If I minimize the DOS table and continue with Capture inspite of the warning, capture does take place but I am not sure if the AVI file thus captured can be encoded to MPEG format and used for making a VCD or SuperVCD.

Your valuable comment, please.

P. Jayant

[bpjenn]

Be sure to download and install the latest software for your card from ATI. You must select the compression format in virtualdub or it will default to uncompressed. You can use Divx to encode from to VCD or SVCD. If you do, use a high bitrate such as 6000kbps. Most would recommend you use huffyuv or mjpeg to capture with and then encode to mpeg using Tmpgenc

[fingernailX]

I use MMC 7.6 to capture to Mpeg 2 I frame only 15 Mbps Non-interlaced. Then I use Xmpeg 4.5 to 2 pass vbr to Divx @ around 1600 to 1700 kbps with 96kbps mp3 audio. Gives me 1 hour of capture per cd with great quality. Xmpeg keeps everything in the YUV colorspace so it is very fast! guides are available for Xmpeg at doom9.org

[nanjil]

Guys:
thanx for all the suggestions - I will especially like to try that xmpeg route.


I did some experiments on my own with ati mmc 7.7, virtual dub (with vfw wrapper) . I have AIW 7500 , so the chip is rage theater.

wondows xp - sp1
athelon 900 MHz
640 MB RAM

Following are the observations:

with virtualdub+ frames size >= 640x480 I get plenty of dropped frames > 10%.

ati mmc 7.7 + divx , also dropped frames and moreover no other software can display the video

ati mmc 7.7 + dvd mpeg2 - captures nicely
ati mmc 7.7 + ativcr -- captures very nicely - problem is format is properietary and no other software can display the video.

question: Is there a way I can convert ati(.vcr) files to avi?

Thanx a lot guys..

p.s:
I also tried scheduled recording - That was a complete disaster and good for another post. Fortunately I had a traditional vcr doing the old fashioned recording also.