Capture card advice - Dazzle vs ATI 600?

[MMM3]

I am once again going to go through this process again. I made several VHS to VCD on CDRs and eventually DVDs sometime ago when DVDs first became popular. I was using a dazzle 150 device with my Panasonic PV-9450 4 head and ulead with good results to convert older home movies.

I ditched the dazzle because I could not get it to recognize and work properly and want to redo alot of the earlier stuff I did to get them on DVD this time around. The tapes are mostly from the early 80s and 90s.

I have been researching a bit on this site and familiar with the ATI cards but not sure which one would be best for my setup.

I am running Windows XP on a Pentium dual core 2.5ghz 2 gig ram and have either PCI or PCIe available but no AGP slot. I am aware that there is a USB capture device as well the ATI 600 which is recommended.

A little help please on deciding on the best ATI or alternative capture device for my setup will be appreciated.

I recently acquired the new Pinnacle Studio Ultimate software for editing.

[quarkz]

Have a read of this thread of some decent alternatives:

Best ATI All In Wonder card alternatives, to transfer tapes to digital?
- http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...ti-wonder.html

and then this gives you a nice list of ATi video-cards (AGDP, PCI, PCI-e) for use with your WinXP machine...
(just pay close attention to where you buy your cards, what condition they are in and whether all of the connectors are included too, e.g. S-Video, RCA, etc.)

ATI All In Wonder card models
- http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...html#post13441

Quote:

Originally Posted by kpmedia

Just to add in some useful information, the following list is for the only ATI All In Wonder cards that could use ATI Multimedia Center (ATI MMC) versions 8-9. These PCI and AGP cards are often referred to as the "classic" series of cards on this site. More on that in the history writeup below.

PCI: (Rage Theatre chipset)

• ATI All-in-Wonder VE Radeon 7500

AGP: (Rage Theatre chipset)

• ATI All-in-Wonder 128 Pro
• ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon (7200)
• ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 7500
• ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500 / AIW 8500 DV

AGP: (Theatre 200 chipset)

• ATI All-in-Wonder 9000
• ATI All-in-Wonder 9200
• ATI All-in-Wonder 9600 / AIW 9600 XT / AIW 9600 Pro
• All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro (PAL)
• All-in-Wonder 9800 Pro
• ATI All-In-Wonder 2006 Edition AGP8x

PCI Express: (Theatre 200 chipset)

• ATI All-In-Wonder 2006 Edition PCI-E
• ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon X600 Pro
• ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon X800 XL
• ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon X1800 XL
• ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon X1900

History of ATI AIW Radeon cards:

The PCI and AGP cards are what many of us call the "classic" ATI cards, because they were well respected, and were developed at a time when ATI was heavily into both graphics and video processing. The cards not only worked, they worked well! In the early 2000s, ATI was actually giving professional video companies like Canopus and Matrox a hard time, cutting into their NLE card business. Why buy a $2K Canopus DVstorm or Matrox RTX card when you could get an ATI for $200-400? After all, all of them could do MPEG-2, DV and uncompressed 4:2:2 AVI with excellent results. The extra $1.5K could go towards other expenses, such as software or even the rest of the computer. Matrox even tried to compete with ATI, with their lower-cost Matrox G450 card.

The Rage Theatre chipset, used with ATI MMC, was reported to be a hybrid hardware/software MPEG encoding system, based off the professional Ligos GoMotion MPEG encoding technology. The updated Theatre 200 card refined the quality of video input, as well as offloaded about 5-10% more of the MPEG processing into the chip and off of the main system CPU.

The 7000 cards originally shipped with ATI MMC version 7, which was decent but lacked some of the features that really made these cards work well. ATI MMC 8 brought more recording features, including the well-liked "VideoSoap" option that allowed for filtering of the video -- restoration of cleanup. The ATI AIW 128 Pro required a hack to use v8, using files found on this site, but the others natively accepted the v8 upgrade.

When AMD bought ATI in 2006, the video applications were tossed to the side, with ATI being gutted for their GPU abilities, to fortify AMD products. Intel had long had in-house Intel graphics abilities, and now AMD had ATI in-house. Even into 2010, the AMD ATI site was largely full of broken links and missing information -- some of which appears to have been restored after a multi-year absence.

The PCI Express cards were built later in the ATI AIW generation, at a time when consumers were demanding more of a "PVR" recording style from computer cards. A PVR, or personal video recorder, simply records television and is not really made with general video input capturing in mind -- for example, VHS to DVD. The latter versions of ATI MMC 9.x required by the PCI-E generation of cards also removed or limited some recording options coveted during the "classic" years, such as VideoSoap. There was also more emphasis on MPEG-4 recording, even though it made for a horrible capture format.

You'll note that this All-In-Wonder card list does not match the list at Wikipedia. I firmly believe there are mistakes on that list, even when sources are given. My information is based on a decade of accumulated research and first-hand experience. Beyond that, my list closely matches the official "by chipset" list from AMD's December 2010 site. In my opinion, it's also an issue of authority -- this site is well known for its information on using ATI All In Wonder cards, through the efforts of site members like lordsmurf, whereas Wikipedia is not.

The major "problem" of the ATI All In Wonder series is that Windows left it behind. With AMD now focusing on new GPU related products, legacy products did not receive video-related updates to function correctly in Windows XP MCE, Windows Vista or Windows 7. You have to build a system around Windows XP, on a good AGP motherboard. For most serious video hobbyists and professionals, that's really not an issue, as the machine is built specifically for video capturing, and not as a general-use family computer. KVMs are used to keep overall desk footprints small.

It's honestly near-impossible to replace a quality ATI All In Wonder card, even by spending $500-1000 or more.

[admin]

Quote:

recently acquired the new Pinnacle Studio Ultimate software for editing

I would suggest not using it. It's honestly extremely lousy software, and will mostly just butcher your video work.

Quote:

I am running Windows XP on a Pentium dual core 2.5ghz 2 gig ram and have either PCI or PCIe available but no AGP slot. I am aware that there is a USB capture device as well the ATI 600 which is recommended.

Feel free to pick either:
- the ATI 600 USB, or
- the PCI-e ATI All In Wonder cards (x1800, x1900, etc).

The ATI 600 is easily found on Amazon used and complete (external wire bundle included).

The PCI express ATI AIW cards are somewhat difficult to find, especially complete (all three wires included). Finding the individual wires for sale is honestly next to impossible, outside the purple/domino breakout cable. The other output wires can take a bit more time to locate. Worth it if you're patient, but annoying if you want something working right now. These cards also benefit from Zalman cooling mods, which add at least another $30, and fully block the first PCI slot under the PCI express slot (unless your motherboard has a large gap, which some do).

[MMM3]

Didnt want to create a new thread so instead dragged my old one up. I finally got an ATI 600 USB, experimented with a JVC 7800 which I need to send back since the picture quality is horrible and have virtualdub with huffy codec. After I capture, do I encode to mpeg and than can add titles and such for dvds or is that done while the format is still in avi? I plan on making dvds and also want to have an mkv. Also what software is recommended for doing such? Is windows media center good for anything? I also have adobe media encoder, and pinnacle studio hd. Thanks!

[lordsmurf]

What do you mean by "add titles and such"?
- If in the video itself, this (usually) happens in an editor (NLE) while AVI, before MPEG.
- If just DVD menus, then this happens after MPEG conversionm during the authoring phase of creating DVDs, before burning.

The ideal software for AVI capture is VirtaulDub.

Pinnacle software is quirky and buggy, and not suggested. Adobe Premiere Elements is far, far better.
See http://www.amazon.com/s/?_encoding=U...A6CDS3DJZL5XAS

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