No Audio Captured

yargellham · #1 01-03-2005, 04:50 AM

Hi! I am a novice at this stuff. I bought AIW 128 PRO on ebay and am having trouble recording from the TV application (MMC 7.1) to an mp2 file. The video is recorded but there is no audio. The audio works fine when I'm just watching TV. I am using a DMAN 2044(M-audio) sound card. I checked all the ATI knowledge base articles pertaining to this problem and they all state that you have to configure the sound source in the sound initialization wizard of the TV initialization wizard. But no such wizard appears in my software even when I turn off video on demand as they suggest. Also, in the TV player set up Digital VCR tab, notihing appears after the words "audio" in the current settings group box.
Can anyone help me?

Thx,
Yargellham

admin · #2 01-05-2005, 10:13 PM

Sorry for the 2-day delay, been in and out of town first few days of the new year since it's holiday time (visit family).

Anyway, the ATI AIW 128 PRO card uses a Theatre chipset to capture video. Those are very good chips. However, the card is a bit old, so ATI has discontinued support on it, in terms of drivers and software. But all is not lost. ATI MMC 7.2 is about 4 years old now. ATI MMC 8.7 is one of the newer ones, and can be installed with a few simple hacks, as outlined on a guide on this forum. It is a HUGE performance and quality increase over the version 7 relic.

This is the guide for hacking up to ATI MMC 8.7:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/foru...asp?TID=2&PN=1

As far as the lack of sound recording, the two most common culprits are having the wires plugged in incorrectly, and having ATI MMC on the wrong audio input channel.

If you are using the coax for source, that wire is simple to plug in. If this is composite with rca audio (the yellow and red audio cables), please be sure they are plugged into the purple breakout box. The purple box feeds audio and video to the ATI card, and the audio then routes through the soundcard. The ATI card must be connected to the soundcard either internally or externally. New boxed ATI AIW cards would have come with both wires. It connects the AUX channel on the soundcard and ATI card, using the little 3-pin audio cable. The external method is using the ATI output wire bundle (black wires) and plugging the audio mini (stereo/headphone cable) into the soundcard INPUT (not MIC).

In ATI MMC, you want to click on the CHECKMARK and on the DISPLAY tab, go to the INITIALIZATION WIZARD and follow the on-screen instructions. Be sure the computer speakers are turned up and that the WINDOWS volume is not too low (or muted), so that you can hear the audio from your input VCR or coax signal. See image:

Cheap audio cards are usually a concern for AUDIO SYNC problems, not so much refusing to cooperate. I doubt your card is being ignored. As long as WINDOWS sees it, you should be okay in this regard.

Let me know how it goes.

yargellham · #3 01-08-2005, 03:10 AM

Following your procedure I was unable to get MMC 8.7 to work on my (win98se)system. What is worse is that there was no uninstall option installed with the MMC 8.7 . I tried using the windows add/remove programs option but that didn't work either. So I deleted the MMC folder under program files. But it still appears in the add/remove programs window and I can't re-install MMC 7.1 because it tells me I have an MMC already installed on my system. Can you tell me how to manually uninstall any MMC that is lingering on my pc?

yargellham

admin · #4 01-08-2005, 03:33 AM

There is an ATI Uninstall Tool somewhere on ATI.com. I'll continue to look until I find it, and post a link here for you.

HOWEVER, I'm curious what does not work. It installed? But just does not capture? If so, that may be easy to fix. Reinstall the v6168 driver (STEP 4) again, from the 128 PRO install guide.

yargellham · #5 01-08-2005, 05:03 AM

Yes it installed but the TV app has only s-video and composite options. I have cable tv plugged directly into the card which worked fine with 7.1. The composite cables from my VCR plug into the purple break out box and they don't work either (but did in 7.1). Anyway, I don't think this upgrade will solve my problem of not being able to capture audio because the word "none" appears next to sound in one of the MMC 8.1 folders in the setup screen. I have the sound out cable from the AIW going into a break out box from my sound card. There is no internal connection available.

As I said in prev post, I have tried manually to uninstall the MMC 8 and it didn't work. Now if I try to reinstall the MMC 8 I will probably not be able to because it will detect a previous version as it did when I tried to go back to 7.1. I think if I can get it to be removed from the Windows add/remove display it might work but I don't know how to do that. Is it somewhere in the registry? I'm not that savvy.

Thx
yargellham

admin · #6 01-10-2005, 10:04 PM

I'm thinking that your audio card is the issue.
Would you be against getting a new audio card for about $25.
It may also be good to re-verify the audio cable inside the compayer, the one running from the ATI card to the audio card, is plugged in. There must be one inside.

PS - I've moved the audio problem/install problem posts away from the 128 PRO guide and back into here with your original posts. I think the problems are 100% related.

yargellham · #7 01-11-2005, 08:43 AM

What audio card could I get for $25 which has been known to work with MMC 7.1 or 8.1? I have an Athlon XP 1900 and an ASUS A7S333 with SIS 745 Chipset. Will I be able to keep my DMAN 2044 audio in. It works really well for my audio recording applications, cakewalk pro audio and Sound Forge. In fact I have no problems at all with recording or playing audio with the DMAN. It is only the MMC which does not seem to recognize it for recording. Plays fine with cable TV and VCR input. There is no internal connection to the DMAN. I connect the AIW from the audio out jack to inputs 3&4 (there are 4 in's and out's) of the DMAN break out box.

admin · #8 01-11-2005, 01:53 PM

Any number of SOUNDBLASTER LIVE cards or SOUNDBLASTER 16-BIT cards run for about $20-30 in most computer/electronics stores: Fry's, Microcenter, Best Buy, even Walmart.

It should work with two cards in there. I've never tried anything like that. You may have to mute one when not in use.

I have really no idea why there are so many problems here.