Why only 320x240 capture from ATI 8500?

SkipWoolwine wrote on 8/17/2002, 2:15 PM

From my DV cams, I can capture at 720x480 resolution...Beautiful! But when I capture analog video from my pricey ATI All-In-Wonder 8500 card, the best it will do is 320x240. I am compiling a video clip reel of news stories recorded off-air on VHS and S-VHS at the fastest (SP) speed for maximum quality (...at least for VHS!...), and I don't need this low-res biz bringing the picture quality down. Is this resolution decision being made by VF, or is this all the ATI video capture card will give me? FYI, 320x240 resolution is the max whether capturing from the S-VHS connector or the composite video RCA-plug.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 8/17/2002, 10:56 PM

In VidCap, under the Video Menu, when you choose the ATI card as the source you should see two "capture properties" choices as well. The second one should give you a Stream Format dialog box with choices for frame rate, color space / compression, and output size. This last can be set anywhere from 80x60 up to 720x480 (at least on my screen) although 320x240 is the default choice.

SkipWoolwine wrote on 8/18/2002, 3:13 PM

On my screen, I do not have a choice of 720x480... the highest is 720x240, not 720x480. Makes no difference if I'm inputting video on S-vhs or composite RCA jack. How did you get 720x480?

Chienworks wrote on 8/18/2002, 4:56 PM

I scrolled down. ;)

Hmmm. Maybe the ATI driver you have installed doesn't support the highest resolution. You can download the lastest drivers from their website.

SkipWoolwine wrote on 8/18/2002, 10:36 PM

Thanks, got it to give me the 720x480 option! Get this: the driver and software updates available on the ATI website royally "fouled" up everything on my computer. When I got this ATI AIW-8500 card, I went there immediately to check for updates (I do this on every new toy I add) and these new DLs caused Video Factory to hang the computer so badly all I could do is kill the power and re-boot. I did reinstall the drivers, but only from the CD that came with the video card. That did the trick. Don't know why it didn't the first time.

ralphied wrote on 8/18/2002, 10:56 PM

You better have a fast machine to capture at 720x480. I have a 1.6 GHz P-4 and I got a lot of dropped frames with an effective frame rate of 23 fps.

Just curious, have you tried to capture from your ATI A-I-W card using the TV program? The card will do on-the-fly MPEG compression. This is how I've captured all of my analog footage in the past. It really cuts down on the size of the working clips. Using the MPEG files from the ATI card has worked well with VideoWave, but I have to admit, I haven't had as good of luck bringing them into VF. I've been having problems with VF interpreting the audio layer.

SkipWoolwine wrote on 8/23/2002, 8:46 PM

I do have a fast machine: 2 AMD 1900+ processors, so the 720 x 480 capture worked OK. Haven't tried the ATI AIW Capture feature, but knew it was there. Might play with it later. Feel I am lucky just to get VF capture to work!