Hello All

I am new to this forum, and I appreciate any help anyone can give me.

I have a PIII 800 with 320MB RAM with one of 2 configurations:

1. Voodoo 5500 3dfx AGP with ATI TV Wonder PCI or
2. ATI All in Wonder 128 Rage with 16MB AGP

All I want to do is capture and preserve home movies from VHS, 8mm tape or the old compact video tape formats. I am looking for best balance between quality and effort.

Here are my problems:

When I tried to install the AIW128 I keep getting a BTVid error if I try and use some other capture software besides MMC (like Virtual Dub). The ATI website says its an issue relating to a previous installation of the TV Wonder. The solution recommended is a complete reinstall of Windows, which I really do not want to do, and am not convinced it will work in any event.

The TV Wonder card works fine, but if I update the MMC software to recent 7.XX version then I get the same error when I try and capture with anything other than MMC.

In addition to this, I am just not sure how much better quality I will actually see if I capture in AVI and then convert, as opposed to direct MPEG I or II - is it really worth the effort given the input source I am using?

Also, is there any difference between capturing with the AIW128 and the TV Wonder?

My preference is to use the TV Wonder with the updated MMC software, but I want the flexibilty of being able to capture using other software, so that means I have to solve to BTVid problem. This way I can capture directly to MPEG I or MPEG II.

But then again, if this means that there will be a noticable difference in quality I am willing to do some tweaking and extra work to get materially better results.

Any suggestions or advice???

Please?