ATI AIW 9700 Pro, best MPEG2 record settings with MMC?
 

I have an ATI AIW 9700 Pro that I plan to use to capture VHS tapes. I am wondering if there is a quality difference between hardware and software MPEG2 encoding with this card. I want to use ATI MMC for recording and it gives me both options. Is there any reason not to use hardware encoding?

For MPEG, you must only use ATI MMC.

Use the hybrid (software) encoding, and be sure NOT to use the AIW card audio. It's wholly inferior, tinny junk. And the hardware compression relies on ATI AIW audio piped through the purple breakout box. For systems that have this added option, HW encoding, I prefer to bypass audio from AIW purple input, and instead route directly to soundcard input (RCA > stereo mini adapter).

HW encoding was not support before the ATI 9.1.x series, as far as I know, and then bigger issue with that version is it dropped the dropped frame counter. You have no idea what is happening now! So assuming the 9700 doesn't require 9.1.x, and it should not being that it's an AGP card, you may have installed the wrong MMC, maybe even drivers.

So back up for second. What did you install?

For AVI, you can use MMC for AVI, but it's always been squirrelly. VirtaulDub is better anyway, as it gives you more preview controls, you can better monitor the health and status of the capture.

Yep, let's back up again. What are you going to do with those captures? At most you can do some simple cut-and-join editing but you'll have to use smart-rendering editors only or suffer the consequence of really crappy looking videos. How about cleanup? Are you ready to watch VHS head-switching noise, dropouts, poor color?

If you have any intention of cleanup, restoration, repair, color correction, or any other image mod, you're shooting yourself in the foot unless you capture to lossless Avi. MMC is a headache to use for that purpose. Use VirtualDub or AmarecTV.

I installed the latest version of WDM and CCC. I believe they are both 10.02. I installed version 9.16 of MMC. That works, but doesn't have drop frame count or VideoSoap. I tried uninstalling MMC and installing 9.08. The TV program couldn't find the capture card. Maybe 9.08 and 10.02 are not compatible. Is there any quality issue using hardware encoding with 9.16? It seems like hardware encoding should give me my best chance for not dropping frames.

I would like to record straight to MPEG2 and trim. I know that I am making a tradoff (potential quality of the end product vs. time) doing it this way, but I am ok with it. I am converting home movies, so it is more important that I do a decent job getting them into an indelible format than it is that every second of footage be re-mastered ideally.

You have to uninstall both the drivers and MMC, and should probably run the ATI uninstall utility as well. Fully remove all traces of ATI, then start over. Do you not have the CD for this card? That would be ideal. It probably has an older Catalyst, as well as ATI MMC 9.0.x (9.02 probably).

Hardware encoding quality is not good, and limited. This card was never designed for pure hardware, nor pure software. ATI was always hybrid, and also a reason that quality excelled. Quality of hardware only is blocky and not good, no, don't use it.

If it truly is Catalyst 10 and MMC 9.1.x only, then I'm afraid you bought the wrong card for your use. But I don't think that's the case.

I know this card supports older MMC. I will have to find drivers. I bought the card in 2002 , so I doubt I still have the CD.

That card probably wasn't street dated until 2003, and was a Q4 2002 release. I have comparable CDs from the era, some of which are already posted here in the ATI AIW driver sticky.