ATI MMC 8.1 talk... :)

[Heywould3]

ATI released the MMC 8.1 Wednesday. They also released all new drivers cat 3.2 remote wonder 1.4 new control panel wdm drivers etc. every thing is new.. ATI has been busy you must install 2 new packs for MMC 8.1 to work however.. and they are both from MS one is the new windows media encoder which is actually kinda cool you can cap in HD 1024x768 or higher with endless options for audio/video including 5.1. for th emost part i found WME to work great but not as st8 forward as MMC and who needs to go that high anyway. the boast better vid quality at same bitrates as before. i tend to agree with that.. they offer more video filters now in this version but they are only slightly tweekable but it has enough to be usefull. the interface looks almost the same with only a few differences. they also fixed MMC library wich for me hasnt worked with the introduction of 7.7.1 they say on the FAQ site that owners of 9700 series cards get it for free 8500 and below will have to pay to upgrade.. well i got it off their site for free with all needed drivers so they may be giving it away for free as beta.. so maybe you should grab it if you want it now.

I didnt have any problems installing any of hte SW and i didnt even install it the proper way. i dl all the new stuff to a folder.. then loaded the mmc packs in the order they say.. BUT i did not upgrade to CAT 3.2 untill the next day. after all the mmc stuff was loaded i didnt see any troubles. i then loaded cat 3.2 new CP and the remote wonder 1.4 and still no issues.. i did not remove my existing stuff first either..

If any of you have loaded this new pack please post your feelings. also any features you found in the new version that you might think is cool.

For the record i ahve the AIW 8500

I am able to cap at the highest quality and bit rate in any format with out one single frame drop.

OH one more thing i thought was cool.. in the mpg1/2 options you now have the ability to set a targe bit rate AND a max bitrate for VBR caps. kinda cool huh?

Ok im done for now. 8)

[doug1937@hotmail.com]

I have an AGP ATI AIW 128 Pro w/32MB...is this compatible with MMC 8.1? I'd love to get SVCD compatibility...

--Doug

[rickmccl]

I installed late last night in a mammoth download session. Initial impression: Mpeg2 CBR-4000 capture with no frame drops and excellent quality? Cool!
I hadn't noticed the VBR options yet, now I am really excited.

After installing all that DX9, WME9, MDAC, DAO I was sure something would be broken but I haven't found out what that is yet

HW: ATI AIW VE in Shuttle SS24 (Celery950/256M/80GB 36" tv)

[Sartori]

These are the new features of MMC8.1


Q5: What is new in MMC 8.1?

A5: For existing users of MMC 7.X, the following list provides the new and improved features of MMC 8.1:
Support for MULTVIEW™ when combined with an ATI TV WONDER™ PCI card
Picture-in-Picture (PiP)
Picture-outside-Picture (PoP)
Record one while viewing another
Watch while channel surfing.
VIDEOSOAP™ - advanced filtering and noise reduction for personal video recordings
Improved MPEG encode performance and quality including
True field based capture and TV-ON-DEMAND™
Improved overall quality at half the bitrate.
Extended automatic file naming options
User remappable custom capture presets
User configurable AVI Audio and Video codecs
Support for MS WMV9 (a.k.a. "Corona")
AVI Files larger than 2 Gig.
Adds the Closed Caption (CC) database which includes:
the ability to search CC data for TV-ON-DEMAND™
the ability to seek based on CC data for TV-ON-DEMAND™
the ability to seek and search based on CC data for captured ATI VCR files
Fast access to the most recently recorded content
DVD now includes:
support for still capture
support for simultaneous dual sub-titles
improved S/PDIF support
improved title compatibility
Media Library can now:
Protect files from deletion
Recommend content for deletion (disk clean up)
Export "m3u" style playlists
File Player now supports the THRUVIEW™ desktop mode

[Heywould3]

I have an AGP ATI AIW 128 Pro w/32MB...is this compatible with MMC 8.1? I'd love to get SVCD compatibility...

--Doug

Im not sure if it is compat or not.. BUT i have the same card in my old celeron computer and MMC 7.5 worked fine but wouldnot load 7.7.1 so prolly not. it said that the hardware was incompatible. it needed the cat drivers or somthing and you cant load them with out a radeon board. Sorry best thing to do is give it a try.. just make sure to set a go back point on OS then try .. if it dont work you can always go back to last settings.

[spiderman2k1]

Both format are not going any where. Most laptop's at best buy and Citciutcity come with DVD-R. IDE and USB drive's are DVD+R only the DRU500AX will burn DVD-R. Home DVD player's besybuy has Panansonic and Sony is coming out with a home deck that will burn DVD-R and DVD-RW and DVD+RW not DVD+R. Poeple think if one format is selling better that the other one will die. If that was the case we all be driving the same car company. or Ever one would be using WIndow's no but some people use MAC some use Linux and other OS's

[jolo]

I have a ATI 7500 all-in-wonder card.

For the first time ATI wants me to purchase an upgrade, to go to MMC 8.1.
It is $9.95 for the software, then an EXTRA 10.00 for mailing out a stinking CD !!! No on-line upgrade is offered ???

If there any reason why this would be worth ther $20 ATI wants from me, as well as to wait two weeks for delivery ?

I read about SVCD capturing, I have done that before, but with the use of capture software other than MMC.

I would like your opinion.

Jon

[dun4cheap]

Well ATI only wants the $9.95 for the DVD portion of it, which is now Power DVD wrapped up. You can download 8.1 without DVD for free. I for one don't use the ATI dvd player, I use PowerDVDxp so no loss. It does have quite a bit of updates on it and works great with my AIW 7500 and remote wonder. The remote wonder powers my ATI stuff along with my PowerDVD player. Kudos to ATI, go get the free download and check it out.

Dun4cheap

[Nelson37]

I have the AIW 128 pro and have not been able to get MMC 8.1 to work. However, I DID get MMC 7.7 to work after getting a Catalyst driver installed, so I am hopeful a future driver upgrade may allow for 8.1.

BTW, SVCD capture is perfectly possible with the earlier MMC versions. However, for best compatibility and a 10% reduction in filesize you need to run the file thru TMPGenc Merge and Cut to strip out the padding stream.

[Nelson37]

Rage3D has a method for installing MMC 8.1 on AIW 128, which has worked for several. Method involves renaming a directory during install, I did not remove MMC 7.7 but moved the directory first.

After trying this, I have confirmed that previous unsuccessful install attempts had updated several files in MMC 7.7, and I believe this did result in improved capture quality.

MMC 8.1 install trick resulted in all features working EXCEPT TV app, gives an "MMC has encountered an error and must close" error, if I don't close this box I can access the TV app but only codecs shown are AVI and WMV.

I am running 6178 drivers with 3279 WDM, have re-installed both, no fix.

Will post this on Rage3d but thought I would try here as well, any ideas?

[txpharoah]

My opinion of 8.1 was low. I uninstalled it in favor of 7.7, which seems to be the most stable version of ATI MMC, and using the more stable DirextX 8 instead of the buggy 9.

Capture quality in 8.1 was entirely awful. And those filters (videosoap) were nowhere near as good as filters found in TMPGenc and others.

[rayban]

I have the AIW 128 pro and have not been able to get MMC 8.1 to work. However, I DID get MMC 7.7 to work after getting a Catalyst driver installed, so I am hopeful a future driver upgrade may allow for 8.1.

Nelson...can you tell me which catalyst drivers you used? I also have the same card and will be using it to capture analog. Have you had good results with analog captures? TIA. :P

[rayban]

My opinion of 8.1 was low. I uninstalled it in favor of 7.7, which seems to be the most stable version of ATI MMC, and using the more stable DirextX 8 instead of the buggy 9.

Can you tell me if you had to install the latest catalyst drivers in order to get MMC 7.7 to work? TIA.

[Nelson37]

MMC 7.7 did not run until I had installed the 6178 drivers with the 3279 WDM files, from ATI.

I had noticed gradually improving MPEG-2 capture quality over the last two years as I upgraded from 6.something all the way to 7.7, and also from a AMD 800 to an XP 1700. I had not spent much time on these as I was unable to edit successfully.

My first attempt to install MMC 8.1 coincided with the discovery of reliable editing methods, and hence extensive use of the real-time capture, so I cannot say for certain whether there was significant improvement due to the 8.1 install attempt. It is definite that several files from the MMC 7.7 were updated by the failed 8.1 install.

Real-time capture quality is such that I no longer re-encode anything, even my beloved Cleveland Browns games or my kids videos, although for these I up the res and bitrate and sacrifice filesize. For movies, I use the real-time IVTC, CVD res, bitrate setting 1.65 +/- .15, and am puttng edited 80-90 minute movies on one CD in very good quality.

I have been able to compare a DVD, SVCD made from DVD, CVD from TV capture, and actual broadcast. This was the "open fire" sequence from the movie "Gladiator", which was used on a History Channel special. This was one of my original 30 second capture test sequences from long ago, I have viewed it several dozen times, slow motion and frame by frame. There is one particular scene where two guys running from different directions are both speared by a bolt from a catapult and then hurled in a third direction, ( if you ever want a test scene, this is one of the toughest I ever found), the quality difference is minimal or undetectable. This is on a 27" TV, with two adults and one sharp-eyed teenager, who know what to look for, checking for problems.

BTW, in this same sequence, there is a guy pinned to a tree by an arrow and makes a noise that sounds very much like "agua", and I could swear it is the same death noise made by the dying demon in DOOM II, anybody else notice this?

[txpharoah]

My opinion of 8.1 was low. I uninstalled it in favor of 7.7, which seems to be the most stable version of ATI MMC, and using the more stable DirextX 8 instead of the buggy 9.

Can you tell me if you had to install the latest catalyst drivers in order to get MMC 7.7 to work? TIA.

I did install the April 2003 ATI drivers. But it worked fine with the September 2002 drivers. I just like to update every now and then. And when something fails, I revert. MMC 8.1 failed. The April 2003 drivers didn't.