ATI AIW compatibility with motherboard?
 

Hello my Name Is Jose. I live in Buenos Aires.
I am investigating ways to convert my old svhs tapes to digital.

If I wanted to use these Ati All in Wonder boards on a PC, should I get a PC with AGP slots, do you think any of these two boards can serve me with either of these two PCs?

What combination do you recommend?


ATI All in Wonder:
1) Ati All In Wonder Rage 128 Pro Agp 32mb
https://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar...o-agp-32mb-_JM

2) Ati All In Wonder Radeon 7500 Agp 64mb Ddr
https://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar...p-64mb-ddr-_JM


PC with AGP:
1)https://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar...agp-win-2k-_JM

2)https://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar...windows-98-_JM


The idea is to complete my workflow to capture SVHS.

Thank you!

Get the aiw 7500, but use at least a p4. To complete the workflow you need something that stabilize the signal.

Can you give us a bit more information on what format(s) you wish to convert the VHS to?
Do you want to just capture it and move to DVD's or do you want to do restoration and significant editing? The best capture option will depend on your goals.

It might also help to know what equipment you have to use currently, VCR, PC and possibly any DVD recorders, etc.

Also, do you have experience in setting up PC's? Have you built one of your own? Setting up a capture PC using an AIW card is not rocket science but it is not trivial. If you don't have experience it could be quite difficult.

If you do want to go the AIW route, as ginopilotino says, you should look for a newer, more powerful PC. I think the minimum recommendation would be a P4 at 2Ghz with 2Gb of ram. You could get by with a bit less, but hopefully something like this or better will be available. Windows XP-SP2 is recommended as the most easily set up with the AIW. Other versions can be made to work but require more set-up.

You will also need at least the special purple output cable to connect the VCR to the AIW and a decent sound card (which can be connected to directly from the VCR). Equally important, you will need a fast, large hard drive (or a few of them), probably connected via eSATA. Note that Win XP can only access up to 2Gb drives. Using eSATA will likely require another special PCI card and cables to provide the SATA port on an older PC that most likely won't have them on the motherboard. Using older IDE drives could probably be made to work but it will be more difficult to get working right and difficult to move your files around for post capture work.

Hope this helps a bit... There's a LOT to learn and a lot of options to choose from.
If you haven't already, spend time reading the guides, etc. on this site. Many are somewhat out of date but still provide very useful background in trying to get up to speed.

Also, do some searches on something like "capture pc requirements". Use the top "Google custom search" option, NOT the "advanced search". It does a much better job of finding useful threads on this site than does the advanced search.

BW

Winxp support more than 2GB drives. If he choose the old school, he need a p4 with sata and agp, not very common. But it’s better to use for capture only, then move files on a faster machine. I didn’t try with old pc, but on my z400 I can capture lossless directly on nas.

You are correct.
:smack: I meant to say 2 TB drives!

Hi, thank you very much for the answers!
In my previous message I was very inaccurate,
I will be very precise now.


I am a film editor and I dedicate myself to that.
Now I am writing a movie that I will make myself if everything goes well, I will film it on SVHS.

I have a Panasonic OmniMovie SVHS PV-S770D (NTSC) camera, it is in excellent condition: clean heads, impeccable mechanics and optics.
I have SVHS JVC, PANASONIC, SONY and FUJI (these suck) new cassettes, I will use these new cassettes.
Do you know the Tdk Professional Se-60 Pro-svhs-japan-dyess? I have the possibility of getting some of them.

I don't know if it's important, but the camera will always be mounted on a tripod, so it will be fixed, under control.
I will not capture sound on camera, I will capture the sound with an external recorder. So, I think, a problem is cleared.

I will have a professional colorist at the end of the editing process, if I have a TBC I will have the colorist at the time of capture.

My goal is to have an image as accurate and clean as possible.


Capture:
I read a lot of accurate information in this forum, and it helped me understand many things.

VCR:
I have the Panasonic OmniMovie camera that maybe can serve as a VCR, I have a SONY SVO-9500 MDP (I know it's not good, but I have it) and I have the possibility of getting a gray ¨Panasonic, SVHS, with many buttons and commands¨ according to the description of a friend who tries to get her from a school where she worked until recently and where she is lying. I still don't know what model it is, nor what state it is in, but I'm hopeful.
I also have the possibility of getting a wonderful Panasonic Ag-1980, 300 uSd in Uruguay, logistics is difficult but I will do everything possible to get it, it is my priority.

S-Video Cables: I get the good ones here.

TBC: I would love to buy an AVToolbox AVT-8710 or a DataVideo TBC-1000, but in my country it is impossible. I will be alert in the forum to see if I find any, and in that case try to send to Buenos Aires.


PC and board:
I have the AIW 7500 agp.
Now I need to build everything around.
I will pay a qualified technician who can arm the PC and leave it running.
The PC will only use it for capture.
I have no problem paying the money that is necessary to get a PC that works well with the AIW.
I have read that the E8400 is really good, but I need to know precisely what is the best I can use, to see if every piece I need exists in my country.

Software, codec.
I have the VirtualDub and my idea is to capture without compressing. Then I will transcode the material to an editing codec, to edit in a MacPro, possibly in Avid Media Composer (it is the software I use, it can also be the Pemiere Pro or FCPX)


I have doubts about the special purple output cable, do you have a specific name to search for?


Thank you for all the help you give me.
If I were your neighbor I would not get into this problem, I would simply take my tapes to do the job, but that is not possible for now.
Thanks a lot!
José.

Why don’t you buy an mxo2? You can use it in a modern pc. The quality is at least the same as aiw, you don’t have to find an old pc and pay someone to make it work.

What Mxo2 model do you recommend? Here I see some at 570 usd, and the cost of the AIW is 70 usd!

I only have MacPro and Macbook Pro, so I must build a PC anyway?

I have a mini and a full one, it cost much less than 570$. But if you can’t find at a lower price, go with aiw. Mxo2 works with Mac too.

Jose,

Thanks for the clarification on what you are trying to do with analog video capture. Sounds like an interesting project, not typical of what is discussed here... Hopefully, your explanation will allow others, with VASTLY more experience than I, to provide their valuable advice :wink2:.

Welcome to the forum! (I think even that might be above my pay grade:unsure:)

My expertise is limited so far to AIW based capture PC's of which, for some reason, I have now built 3, trying 5 different AIW's and various drivers, etc. etc.

So, trying to "stay in my lane" as they say, I'll answer the questions I feel I can.

The "purple output cable" you need is like this. It connects to the back of the 7500 AIW and provides the analog video and audio inputs to the AIW in one convenient block. These are readily available and inexpensive in the US, but I don't know about Argentina.

However, you may be able to get by without the purple cable if you will only be inputting s-video and normal analog audio to the capture PC. I have read that the s-video pinouts on the special cable (at connection to the AIW) are the same as those for a standard s-video cable and thus an s-video cable can be modified to make it connect directly to the AIW. I wouldn't go there unless you can't find the cable but at least it's an option with the 7500 unlike many other AIW's which absolutely require one or more special cables which are often missing from those AIW's you find for sale.

The AIW 7500 actually does nothing with the audio and just passes it internally (special cable required) or externally (another special AIW cable required) to the sound card of the PC. The audio from the VCR/camcorder can instead be routed directly to the Line-in of the sound card. It's actually much easier and should provide cleaner audio anyway if routed properly (less connections). In your case, you may have almost no need to capture the audio directly with the video since I suspect you will be doing separate audio only editing and then combining that with the edited video later. But I'm getting out of my lane now...

I built one of my PC's using an ASRock 775Dual-VSTA with an E6700. It works well but I can't make it boot from or even read a USB drive until after I'm in the OS which is a bit of a hassle. I may just be missing something in the BIOS... The motherboard will also need recapping now that I know it works, but I need to brush up on my soldering skills first.

If you pursue the PC/AIW route, I suggest you spend some time with your PC builder and have him or her help you with specifying the full system.

@ ginopilotino
Can you describe the entire hardware required and data path to use the MXO2 for capture? I understand it needs some kind of PCIe card with a cable connection to the MXO2, but know nothing about the details. The ability to use a more modern PC would have interested me earlier had I not delved so deeply into the AIW world :D

BW