Welcome.
Dazzle better than ATI AIW? No, not even close. For starters, your Dazzle image is blown out, overexposed. Yuck.
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Originally Posted by MatMK
Hi,
in my process to restore old footage from Hi8 and VHS, I stumbled into this forum and quickly found out that it is probably the most informative source for digitizing video on the internet with many experts on the subject, so I decided to share my probably controversial findings:
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Thanks.
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I bought an old ATI AIW 128 Pro
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Nope. Probably a mistake. There were actually several variations of this version, and the only decent one was the pre-Radeon with 32mb RAM. Is that the one? Even then, the AGP Radeons are what you want. (Some rarer PCI and USB exist, but must be careful here too, more wrong versions that right versions.)
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To my eye, the footage from the Dazzle seems a lot crispier,
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False sharpening. Easyt osee the halos around the clock. It's not even good sharpening, very primitive and butchers video. (The clock in that still also reveals tendency of Dazzle to amplify line timing errors.)
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It's actually the opposite. More noise in that blown-out building. The chroma noise in the sky (seen on the ATI) was lost due to being blown out.
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No.
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The AIW also uses unsolicited crop of the left side of the image.
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That exact ATI has a native 712x480 chip resolution, and crops to 704x480. The overscan of the source wasn't centered, so it crops. It's not a negative against the card, more like a negative against the tape. It should not hard justify like that, all black on right.
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The only negative thing I can say about the Dazzle is that it seems to overexpose a bit.
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Horribly so. Unusably so.
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The biggest difference can be seen on the date watermark in the bottom right corner, where the ATI is much blurrier
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No. False sharpening in the Dazzle. ATI is accurate.
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and contains chroma fringing.
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No. The Dazzle hid it in halo. Look closer.
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Another huge quality issue is the horizontal lining on the sky in the chroma spectrum.
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You're seeing noise patterning in the chroma channels, that's not normal. Usually a shielding issue. Remember, ATI is internal, Dazzle is USB external. That doesn't at all make USB better, just different. Must pay attention to dirty power within the system.
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The provided footage is from a basic, but newer VHS player, captured through composite
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That doesn't help matters.
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the ATI seems to crush blacks,
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No. ATI AIW captures all illegal values, 0-15, 236-255.
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whereas the Dazzle crushes whites.
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Crushes, blows out.
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One thing to note is that I don't have the official cable adapter for the ATI card, so I soldered a spare composite/S-Video cable directly onto the card based on the pinout provided online. I double checked everything is conducting as it should, both the shielding and the signal wires itself.
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That didn't help either.
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Is it possible that the ATI card is truly lower quality?
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This exact card? Maybe.
All ATI AIW Radeon cards? Absolutely not.
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From what I understood on this site, it may be one of the eldest capture cards, but it has the Rage Theater chipset the same as some newer models, and the difference between Rage 200 (that the newer ATI AIW cards have) was said to be only in terms of hardware encoder for MPEG2 (that I don't use).
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Correct.
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My theories for discussion why this could be, in no particular order:
The posts promoting ATI AIW cards are obsolete (some are nearly 20 years old) to the point that a cheap USB capture card can beat them.
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No.
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I have something set incorrectly in the software, be it VirtualDub, Windows or something else.
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Perhaps.
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The issue lies in the driver version (I use the ones from this site with the install hack method).
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Should be fine, those are final drivers.
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There is a hidden processing filter in the Dazzle card that enhanced the image,
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No.
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The quality is affected by my soldering instead of using the official cable box. I tested it thoroughly and even re-soldered it again without any effect, but there could be a different problem that I didn't think of.
My card is defective and these problems wouldn't occur with another unit.
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This is likely.
That purple dongle was less than $10 on
eBay.
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The ATI AIW 128 Pro is in fact worse quality capture card than the rest of the lineup, even while it has the same Rage chipset.
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Perhaps. I just don't recall anymore, it's literally been decades since I did much with it. I don't suggest 128 Pro cards, and haven't for at least 10 years now.
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The ATI card has these issues only when capturing PAL - most posts on this forum presume the use of NTSC and the European format is not widely tested.
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Perhaps. There are PAL-first and NTSC-first cards that "also do" the other format. Was this the PAL or NTSC tuner model?
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I am wrong and the ATI image looks better, as judging quality is highly subjective and I don't have a lot of experience with analog video, let alone analyzing its defects.
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It is subjective, but not entirely. Flaws are flaws. You can enjoy eating a turd, but it doesn't make it a Hershey bar. The Dazzle card has issues.
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Which option do you think it is? Please provide your opinions and/or ideas how to improve the quality.
Thank you.
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At the moment, my leading theory is the homemade solder work.
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Originally Posted by MatMK
You are right, I only wonder why should there be difference between the cards, if the capture chipset is (very nearly) the same.
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The Theatre Rage/100 chip is the same, but the full card chipset is not. The drivers aren't the same either (which I know, since I hacked it all those years ago; my hack was based on the irrepeatable hack attempt of somebody else, so I can't take full credit for it).
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I know that the use of TBC is preferred,
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It's not a preference, it's a requirement. Nobody likes buying TBCs, boring boxes. But it's the tool required for this task. Everybody resists TBCs at first, but it's a futile battle in almost all cases. You even suffer a miserable capture experience (bad quality, or failed transfer attempts), or you use TBCs. You can attempt to use TBC(ish) items, like specific DVD recorders (ES10/15 type), but it has warts, problems. You're really analyzing card differences, and you'd do the same with the VCRs and recorders.
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but these things are not cheap,
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Buy it, use it, resell it. Quality gear holds value. (Crap has no resale value; congrats, it's yours forever.)
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and going through this rabbit hole can only lead further and further.
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VCR > TBC > capture card is a simple formula
Not any random gear, but recommended specific brands/models (and conditions) of each.
The real rabbit holes are things like Avisynth. Easy to get sucked in, sidetracked.
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The VHS tape is also recorded from an old Hi8 camcoder without a TBC, so I am not sure how much visual improvement I could achieve there.
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It depends on factors. Can range from total cleanup to hopeless.
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You say that the Dazzle is better at handling direct video from the VCR. Would you please elaborate on why that is?
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I don't really agree here. There are some capture cards that are more forgiving of input errors (allow bad signal, not correct, still drop frames), but Dazzle doesn't make that list.
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I know how S-Video works in principle, but never realized the difference in quality between cards will be smaller there, it makes sense when you point it out.
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Composite itself is not bad. Implementation is. And sadly almost all devices implement it badly.
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Thanks for the advice, will definitely try. I was a little skeptical to use the card's brightness/contrast settings, since I am not sure if these are indeed taken into effect during the capture, or if it's just post-processing.
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Some versions, some software, some drivers, some cards, it is NOT recorded on ingest, and is indeed only preview processing. So test. I ran into this with an ATI AIW 7200 card back in '01 or so.
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Originally Posted by traal
So the Dazzle has a better comb filter. That's nice to know.
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I don't agree here. Overall, all aspects of that Dazzle card are craptastic. Mind you, it gets far worse, Easycap is worse. It also does not apply to all Dazzle versions, some do not blow out that way. Dazzle is a Pinnacle brand name, and as I often state, Pinnacle has many unspecified production changes. Chips, firmware, etc.