Video Guides > Capturing/Recording > AVI with ATI All-In-Wonder

Updated November 2009

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 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. You can download the HuffYUV codec here. 

5. Macrovision. Macrovision is an anti-copy system made to prevent you from copying tapes. It's a video error that is artificially inserted into analog tapes and corrupts the video signal. However, this method of anti-copy is flawed, and often causes issues trying to convert unprotected home video tapes. It has to be removed. Download the ATI hacks from our forum, and read the instructions in the post. 


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. 


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