ATI MMC9.08 better than new versions (9.16) for capturing ?

[777sp2]

Hello Kevin and all,

I have not visited in a while, but I have been activley converting VHS to DVD in the past year or so. I have a PC with XP. I have the ATI X800 with MMC version 9.08 and Catalyst version 5.11. It works flawlessly with my conversions using HUFFYUV 2.2.0 no less!

No real question, just thought I would relay my MMC horror story....

I decided yesterday to upgrade my MMC to version 9.16 and also the latest drivers and Catalyst. Boy what a mistake! I tried to make a test capture using Huffyuv and it would not capture correctly. When I tried to open the folder it corrupted it. I tried uninstalling MMC 9.16 and re installing MMC 9.08 with the latest catalyst, but they were conflicting.

Long story short, I completely uninstalled all ATI files from my harddrive and re installed MMC version 9.08 and Catalyst version 5.11.

I am glad I saved all the down loads for these versions on my hard drive as well as a data DVD as I was unable to locate these versions on the ATI website.

This combination of ATI X800 and MMC 9.08 has been superb with HUFFYUV and very stable. From time to time I might have my audio slightly ahead of the video. I easily take care of this in Premiere by advancing the video track about 5 frames.

When I first got the the X800 I had a cheap $40.00 creative sound blaster card. I always had audio sync. issues. The problem was that the cheaper sound cards have latency issues. I upgraded to an audigy ZS and it works great.

After cathing up on your forum I noticed alot of frustration with later versions of MMC. I hope my story helps someone who might be thinking of upgrading their MMC. Don't do it!

One question,

With ATI no longer supporting future versions of MMC what choices are their? If a person was willing to spend up to $2000.00 for a analog to digital conversion workflow solution, what are the options?

It seems strange that there are only PC graghic cards that will do this as a side benifet using third party codecs. Are there any high quality stand alone Software and hardware options in the market that are dedicated strictly to the task of analog to digital conversion with quality being top priority? I.E. 12 bit conversion with high sampling rates.

Thanks, and good to be back

[admin]

I'm actually pretty baffled by a number of trends in digital media the past few years here, from video to photo to online publishing (blogs,design).

In the video scene, we're seeing WORSE QUALITY DVD recorders in 2006-2007 replacing some really high quality units from 2004-2005. It's disgusting.

The trend from ATI the past year or so has been equally as odd, with them primarily relying on third-party software and limiting the abilities in updates to older software. Now that ATI has been bought out by AMD, I would expect even more watering down of their products.

The only ATI products I can recommended tend to be the older and discontinued ATI All In Wonder RADEON AGP series cards (or the early version Radeon PCI, not PCI Express, cards). You can still pick up a number of these cards off eBay in the $50-75 range.

If you really had $2000 to spend, I would strongly consider budgeting $1000 towards a solid system, finding the best deals on hard drives, cases, misc parts like fans/wires, RAM, and a good CPU. Then put $1000 into a Matrox RT.X100 card, which does both DV and MPEG2 hardware capturing. Matrox has always been an option, even before the first ATI All In Wonder Radeon ever came out in 2001, but at 4 times the price. In fact, looking on pricegrabber.com, I see a few places selling these cards for just under $700 without Premiere. You can buy Premiere separately, if you don't have it already, for a about $300 on an academic license (or $450 or so on a full license). The RT.X100 is the last-generation card, but it's cheaper than the current RT.X2 and the newer cards doesn't do anything extra that you'd really need (it mostly adds HD video to the mix).

ATI MMC 8.7 and 9.02 are the most stable versions, and 9.06 or 9.08 are really the last one you'd want to attempt. The newer 9.16 is simply awful by most accounts.

I recently had some lousy experiences myself, using ATI MMC 9.02 and PAL input. I upgraded hoping to fix it, only to downgrade to a version I had archived from years ago. I used some Catalyst drivers from 2004 or so, and then ATI MMC 8.7, to fix my issues.

It's unusual that you got sync issues on a SoundBlaster card. In fact, the more expensive cards tend to be the ones that cause issues, or the ultra-cheap $10 cards or audio devices built into motherboards. If you're still getting sync errors, there's probably some problem there somewhere, either in Windows or in your hardware.

[admin]

There are also some good JVC DVD recorders, in the $1000-1500 range, professional equipment. Depending on what you need to do, some of these are good choices too!