CAPTURE
GUIDES -> Capturing AVI with an ATI card
This guide will
make you an excellent quality AVI file that is suitable for
editing in packages such as Adobe Premiere and Vegas Video.
Why capture AVI when the ATI can do so well at MPEG? Well,
MPEG is an end product, and not really suitable for editing,
as MPEG is a form of compressed video. This being said, AVI
is best left in uncompressed form. However, given the
enormous sizes of an AVI file, many choose to give it mild
compression, such as HuffYUV or MJPEG. This guide will cover
all of these methods.
Getting
Started
1.
Hardware/software required to use this guide. Any ATI
ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON CARD. Mine are ATI AIW Radeon 7200
cards, one PCI and one AGP. The 7000-, 8000- and 9000-series
cards are the best ones. I use the ATI MMC 8.7 and the ATI
MMC 8.9 software that comes with the card (the TV icon) and
the 2003-2004 ATI CATALYST and WDM and Control Panels
drivers that I downloaded from www.ATI.com.
Do not use MMC 7.6 or below (MMC 7.7 is the minimum allowed
for good quality). Updates are free at ATI.com, you do NOT
have to buy their CD (the CD is ONLY for the DVD player,
which is inferior to PowerDVD and others).
2. Know the basics. Be sure to read the section
called "Understanding your source" else you may
become lost when I started discussing things like interlace
and audio.
3. Sound. Be sure you have a decent soundcard (not
onboard sound) and that everything is properly hooked up. Be
sure the VCR is setup properly unhook all unused
connections, as it can cause noise and electrical errors.
And again, ATI MMC 7.6 and below did not allow 48hz audio
capture, so be sure to have ATI MMC 7.7 or higher. Sound
settings. SoundBlaster cards are suggested.
4. Install your codecs. The HuffYUV and MJPEG codecs
most likely do not come with the card or with your system.
Same for other codecs like DivX and XVID. In order to get
these, go to www.videohelp.com
and download the codec from the TOOLS section of the site.
To download the HuffYUV codec I use, click
here. You will need WinRAR
to open the downloaded file.
5. Macrovision. Macrovision is an anti-copy system
made to prevent you from copying tapes, a video
error that is artificially inserted into analog tapes and
corrupts the video signal. This method of anti-copy is
flawed, and often harms unprotected tapes, and therefore
must be removed. To download the ATI Macrovision hacks, click
here. There are 4 Macrovision hacks inside the RAR
archive, and I suggest you try ATI-MV-Hack.zip first. Try
the 2005 Driver Replacement next. You
will need WinRAR
to open the downloaded file. Only use these if you need
them, they are not a requirement of using this guide. They
are also not guaranteed to work on all systems.
Quick
Note
The presets that
come with ATI MMC are complete garbage, and I would guess
that a tech made these rather than a videographer. They do
not account for interlace, the aspects are often wrong, the
frames-per-second setting is often wrong, and the resolution
is often wrong. So this will teach you how to make your own
presets.
Capturing
All images have text descriptions below the image:
Above picture: ATI MMC control menu. The checkmark is the
settings button. The movie camera is the record button.
Above picture:
Clicking on "Map Preset" will allow you to change
any of the four presets to something else. You will not lose
any of them. There can only be 4 shown at one time, but
dozens of them can exist on your system.
Above picture: After click "Map Preset" on the
previous page, your should get this screen. You can select
another preset, edit your current preset, or make a new one.
Click "Create New" and we'll make a good one.
Please note that the best way to create a new AVI capture
template is to select an existing AVI template and alter it.
As long as you change the name of the preset, it will not
overwrite the old template. The ATI MMC 8.x also disallows
creation ("Create New..." button) of both AVI and
MPEG at the same time, however editing an existing AVI
template is the workaround.
Above picture: Name the preset and enter a description. This
is how it will appear on the settings menu. Click NEXT.
Above picture: Select the codec, frame rate, standard and
resolution. North Americans choose NTSC 29.97 fps and
Europeans choose PAL 25 fps.
I like to use 640x480 as that is true 4:3 aspect ratio. It
is convenient to maintain aspect while editing. Not all
editing packages and its plug-ins will respect the 4:3 on
720x480 resolution. Plus I plan to encode to 352x480 later
on, not to mention that the source footage is often no
greater than 352x480.
Feel free to use 720x480. The 640x480 is just my preference.
Also feel free to use another codec. I tend to use MJPEG
(which has no further options to "Configure...")
or HuffYUV. If your system drops frames with HuffYUV, then
try MJPEG or uncompressed UYVY or YUY2.
Select 48hz STEREO audio. MMC 7.6 and earlier only allows
44.1hz audio. Versions 7.7 and above allow 48hz capture. Try
to change it to 48hz. Otherwise you'll have to let an audio
program change it to 48hz. Another reason to upgrade.
If using HuffYUV, click on "Configure..." and read
the next step...
Above picture: When capturing HuffYUV AVI from tv or VHS
source, encode interlaced! You must leave the video
interlaced. Your source is interlaced. Interlace requires
more than 280 lines of resolution in the digital world, so
PAL users can choose 288 or 576 and NTSC users must choose
480. Removing the interlace lines kills quality and causes
stair-steps to appear in your video, most noticeably on
straight lines.
Click "OK", click "Finish", then proceed
to capturing.
Above picture: Be sure to change the frames recorded/dropped
count from a percentage and time to actual frames captures
and actual frames dropped. Otherwise it would probably just
show 1% dropped all the time (you always drop during the
first second of a capture). Right click to make the change.
And then watch it every 30 minutes or so if you can.
Above picture: An nice feature to capture a 6-hour tape and
walk away. Can set auto-naming of capture files too. This
is found on the Digital VCR or Personal VCR screen after
clicking "One Touch Record".
Dropped
Frames
Video capturing demands a lot from your system. Although the
ATI All In Wonder Radeon card chipsets use a form of hybrid
hardware-software encoding on MPEG, the AVI capture is pure
software. Fast systems, notably Intel Pentium 4 systems,
seem to perform best with AVI capture, especially if using a
codec for compression. Be sure to read the dropped
frames guide, if needed.
Page Last Updated: May
26th 2005
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