Comments

mikkie wrote on 2/3/2003, 10:05 AM
The AIW should capture at 320 x 240 & 640 x 480 NTSC. You should be able to go to 720 x 480 if you use their (ati's) multimedia center software, which adds filtering, cropping, etc. - but you have to capture to their vcr format, winmedia, mpg1 or mpg2. [tip: if captureing to mpeg2 set it to all I frames if you want to later edit your video]

A couple of catches or gotcha's: Capturing from some video sources you may have to watch for some garbage on the lower 8 pixels of the video frame. If you use the Catalyst 3 drivers, you may have problems with the ati multimedia center software conflicting with ulead products & the Vegas capture applet - a work a round is to rename the ATIMultimedia folder.

There is no compression associated with the AIW where Vegas is concerned. It uses ATI's WDM drivers to set everything, but doesn't give you the option of using a capture codec like picvideo - it works, probably using the MS yuv codec depending on your system, but you'll get BIG files.

Capture does work using Virtual Dub, AVI_IO, & Ulead captureing to MotionJPEG avi files, after you install a MotionJPEG codec like Morgan or Picvideo. You can capture to mpeg2 using Ulead or any of several DVD capture programs like neoDVD, & both RealMedia & WinMedia captures work - winmedia is more editable.

mike
watson wrote on 2/3/2003, 10:09 AM
I would avoid using this card for Capture. Buy a $30 dollar firewire card and save yourself wasted time.
Wounder cards are neat, but are more trouble than their worth for DV work.
JMHO
ClipMan wrote on 2/3/2003, 10:16 AM
mikkie...

..it's not the AIW card...just the TV Wonder card (that's why only 640X240)...and the final output is going to be 640X480 wmv files...I also have a ton of space so capturing big files isn't a problem....so, what you're saying is that Vegas capture will bring it in at 640X480 uncompressed...?
ClipMan wrote on 2/3/2003, 10:22 AM
watson...

...no dv involved in this project...just vhs tapes to convert to wmv thru a vcr...don't wanna get stuck with 640X240 captures...
mikkie wrote on 2/3/2003, 10:37 AM
>>..it's not the AIW card...just the TV Wonder card

Sorry 'bout that - I have to pay more attention! If your ATI software only lets you capture at 240, & their website says this is by design (just checked), I'd have to believe that you're not going to get good results going beyond that if you could.

Watson may be right, that an upgrade is due. If you've got a DV camera then maybe a passthrough using the camera to convert the analog VHS to DV & to your drive via a firewire card. If you don't have a DV camera, then maybe a higher resolution analog card.

If you want to use your existing card, how about captureing at 320 x 240? A very clean 320 x 240 can look better then a 640 x 480 picture of less quality. If you're going to winmedia, encoding at 320 x 240 at something like 1.5 m/sec will often look better then the same sized file at 640 x 480 at 900 k/sec. Your graphics card will handle blowing the picture up to 640 x 480, usually quite well, & I've seen decent results using 320 x 240 going back out to VHS.

mike
ClipMan wrote on 2/3/2003, 10:45 AM
...thanks...appreciate the feedback..
Chienworks wrote on 2/3/2003, 12:08 PM
For that matter, if you're capturing from VHS then the 640x480 resolution really isn't there on the tape to begin with and capturing at 640x480 really is a waste. VHS only has about 200 lines of resolution, so at 640x480 it's just smearing the information over more pixels without any increased sharpness.
discdude wrote on 2/3/2003, 1:46 PM
I have a ATI TV Wonder. Its hardware is indeed capable of 640x480 capture (I've done it!) However, the ATI MMC software is NOT capable of 640x480 (for various technical reasons that would take way too long to explain). Therefore, you have to use some other capture program to get that resolution. I recommend:

VirtualVCR (Free) - http://www.digtv.ws
IuVCR (~$25) - http://www.iulabs.com

In both programs, make sure you select the "Tee-Sink-to-Sink" preview option (again for those hard to explain tech reasons).

Regarding Chienworks comment about the limitations of VHS' resolution. It is true that VHS only has about 240 lines of resolution. However, this is horizontal resolution. Everything based on NTSC (Broadcast, VHS, DVD) has 480 lines of vertical resolution. This means VHS has the same vertical resolution as DVD. So capturing at 640x480 will yield increased sharpness compared to 640x240. Read up about fields and frames to realize why this would be true.

However, ultimately, the increased sharpness probably won't matter due to the fact that your ultimate target is a low res wmv so I guess Chienworks advice sort of stands.
ClipMan wrote on 2/3/2003, 3:12 PM
discodude...

...great program...VirtualVCR...thanks for the link.....