Three tips about the ATI USB 2.0N (AIW USB)?
1. I absolutely (love) the AIT USB 2.0N for analog to digital capture, its a very solid box, very stable. Works beautifully under XP with VirtualDub.
2. It is absolutely "crucial" (i.e. mega-important!) the power supply you plug into it is reliable and not "used up". I just bought a "used" power supply off an auction site and its voltage is all wacko from its labeled spec.. my first clue was the AIT box came on, whimpered, blinked off, blink on, stuttered blinked off. The (most) common problem with the AIT USB 2.0N capture box is a (faulty power supply) this has happened to me so many times I can't count the number of times.. people regularly toss the box, or sell if for pennies.. and its that stupid wall adapter.. easy fix. Try doing that with any other device with an embedded power supply like a DVD recorder or stand alone computer. Wall adapters "fail" and "Fail often" for no reason at all. Keep that foremost in your mind. 3. Audio playback while capturing will "interrupt" and cause video "artifacts" to appear in your capture that look like blocky strips of signal drop out. It is (not) a sign of a problem with the AIT USB box. Stealing time away from the CPU causes USB packet loss and that causes the video capture to "starve" introducing video artifacts. Turn audio playback (off) that means in Virtual Dub, go to > Audio (menu) >[Enable audio playback] << uncheck that option, if you need to listen to your capture, use a splitter cable or route it through an amplifier with multiple outputs. If your in the field, set the audio levels, turn audio playback (off) and then start the actual video capture session. The audio will be recorded even if you do not hear it and video will be rock solid. |
So these are essentially the USB version of the ATI AIW 9x00?
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The 7000 series and the 9000 series used the newer 12 bit video and analog ADC - analog to digitial converters (dual) in all but the 7500 card I believe. The differences between all those cards was basically the GPU for the video display portion of the card, which tended to run hotter the later the edition of the card. (All) but the VE (PCI) were AGP cards and specifically designed for XP. At the time PCI was "slower" than AGP, and the VE was offered as a "Value Edition" to consumers at a lower cost. But the video capture portion was same as all the others. The 9600 is preferred, but "tricky" to buy today, because they were trying to cram so may outbound connections on rear slot of the card, so that it did not take up two back slots in the case. They put a special 24 pin DIN connector on the 9600 that "is" absolutely required. It is a "one of a kind" never made again, breakout combo cable for dual vga monitor female connectors. A used 9600 card is useless without that connector and people often neglect to include it with the sale.. it cannot be second sourced from (anywhere). The ATI USB 2.0N is also a "one of a kind" never made again, Theater 200 chip capture box with analog NTSC tuner. It worked/works very well with DirectX because it includes a Tuner even if not used. It has all of the crossbars and filters expected of PVR style capture device.. but.. and this is a BIG but.. it is a (Raw) capture device.. no hardware compression at all. That made it "undesirable" in its day and so it sold cheaper.. but was its salvation later when computers got fast enough to do compression in software and with GPUs.. it basically "doesn't get in the way" or do substandard grinding of the video image into mush. -- Its one achilles heel is the "blessing" of an external power supply. That makes it very easy to replace without opening the box or having to source a weird nonstandard power supply component. The power supply also does not heatup or dry up or go "boom" inside the case. But it does capture audio as well as video, so no extra sound card is required (its an unsual little box). There are no 64 bit drivers for the ATI USB 2.0N, although I have got the 32 bit drivers to work under Windows 7 x32 but Windows XP SP2 is the "best" capture operating system for its stability and "light touch" when handling the hardware. DirectX 9 also "feature peaked" in XP and was ripped apart and deprecated under Vista and Windows 7 as they dispersed all the ActiveX development team at Microsoft. It was also picked as one of the Elgato supported capture devices for the EyeTV 3.0 software for the Mac, which recognizes and uses it to this day under OSX. Elgato recently sold EyeTV to Geniatech but still supports it out of Europe. Ironically (Rovi) of Tivo fame still sells the TVGuide EPG (in 2019) for EyeTV 3.0 (so in a way) it still supports this box, even though the tuner is useless.. lol. Again no hardware compression is built into the box, so it didn't get a lot of love from the PVR crowd on Mac either.. but that also kept it cheap and flying under the radar. Its a truly hidden gem.. as long as you make sure to trade up the power supply when it dies, as the box seems to never die. Today they don't make power supplies so "weak" anymore.. the noise produced by modern power supplies is 1/2 the ripple current and the amperage power "starts" higher than the max amperage of the original power supply.. all good.. but you have to (pun) adapt with the times. I would caution anyone seeking one though.. this is a paradoxically "cheap" but "high-end" box.. for (Raw) capture restorationists, that understand and "like or don't mind" using XP. Forcing it to use Win7x32 is (not fun)(not fun at all) and rather pointless. But it works great with a laptop finely tuned to work with XP. Its really for creative types who know computers and know video. Its easy to use with VirtualDub, ATI MMC and many other programs that run on XP but just don't think your going to slap it on Windows 10 and expect on it to work (spolier: it will not work on Win10). Quote:
But the PCI sound card can "interrupt" the data bus of the motherboard simply by prioritizing audio playback and that's enough to mess with the timing required to service the USB packets. The USB and audio playback are not "synchronized" and so they walk over each other "colliding" when they demand attention. Neither can afford to buffer because that would insert discontinuities and would eventually have to start dropping data. If that option made the audio playback breakup and chirp and drop playback packets.. I would believe it would help, but I would hardly believe they would offer the option if it could magically make more bandwidth, because it would make the audio playback seem like it was totally broken. But like I said.. I will play with it. I know in GraphEdit "picking a master timing clock" is required or the Graph will not even "go" the competition for sound samping and video capture is so conflicted.. but in that case its more because the drivers are so badly written. I've only seen that with some old Pinnacle hardware.. they assumed you would "never" try playback and video capture at the same time, and always provided a full set of monitor connectors on their capture boxes.. so "playback" never passes thru the PC at all. -- a sensible way of dealing with an impossible situation. We "want" software and hardware to work in an inuitive, logical way.. but reality keeps getting in the way. |
You really don't need audio preview.
- Most of my VCRs have multi outputs. AG-1980P, several JVCs. - The TBC-1000 acts as distro amp. - Routing audio capture around USB to dedicated audio card, using a card with internal passthrough, plays live (though sync/delay may be an issue, depends on system). - Y split RCA to audio card input, for playback only. There's several ways. Audio preview in VirtualDub is a well-known issue for dropped frames, stutter, and other worse oddities. The OEM power supply is the Phihong PSM11R-060 (6V 1.66A center-positive). But the Key Digital DSA-0151F-06 A (6V 2.5A center-positive) works as well. Beware of generic Chinese junk supplies, as warned. ATI MMC for MPEG, VirtualDub for lossless AVI |
When I try to use the program in PAL region I have no option to change from NTSC. The picture settings have a reset option only and the whole section is blank. I am using an ATI wonder USB 2.0 on windows XP. Do you have any ideas on how I can force PAL?
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You have to use virtualDub or another 3rd party software. The hardware itself supports PAL. The default software included by ATI does not. |
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I don't recall the on-disc version (ie, included with the ATI USB 2.0) being NTSC-only. But even if it is, it's outdated ATI MMC 7.x, and the 8,x versions surely support it. However, all this said, there's little reason to use it in the 2020s. ATI MMC was for MPEG capturing (up to 20mbps max, 4:2:0), back when HDD space was a premium. Now, in an era where a 22tb+ WD CMR (non-SMR) HDD is $300, trying to compress is insane/stupid (with specific exceptions; all rules have exceptions). Use VirtualDub 1.9.x, and capture lossless (preferably Huffyuv, not Lagarith, not Ut, not Magic). That creates an actual archive of the tape, of the video in its purest form. |
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