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ATI TV Wonder TV Capture Program?

R

RedShirt

Golden Member
Hey, anyone out there use a program other than what ATI includes for capturing TV? One that does higher res captures, or allows you to capture with different codecs?

Thanks
 
Cyberlink PowerVCR II is pretty good. I can capture in 640x480 Mpg or mp2. The image quality is also a lot better. If you just want to watch TV, the try DScaler. It's freeware and IMO, the image quality is the best.
 
For some reason I get no audio in PowerVCR.... Strange. I have it set up for Aux2 which is what my ATI card plugs into on my soundcard and is what the ATI player uses.
 
I've yet to find capture software that will work properly with the TV Wonder. ATI's works, but has such severe limitations that it's useless. VirtualDub is a nice app, but for some reason won't capture audio. Others have the same problem. (I've tried using the internal connectors and the external. I can watch TV just fine with the external connector, but capture apps won't receive it.) I had similar problems with the Hauppauge WinTV-FM, which uses the same chipset as the TV Wonder. However I assume there are newer drivers for the WinTV, which I haven't had a chance to try yet. Last time I really worked hard on it all was several months ago. But I spent a couple of days recently trying to get the TV Wonder to work.

I'd rather not have to pay for an entire video editing suite just to be able to USE the capture function.
 
DScaler is also implementing a recording feature, but right now there's only support for half height recording (640x240).
 
I can't see how recording is going to work with DScaler since it already uses soooooo much CPU time. On my Athlon 1200 it will eat up everything in order to drop no frames. Recording uses a bunch of CPU cycles too and having both going together is going to require a VERY fast processor.

Oh and the audio thing with the TV Wonder, I get the same thing with mine if I use programs like Showsifter, PowerVCR, or WinTV. So I stick with MMC 7.5 and DScaler (though I still haven't gotten stereo sound to work with DScaler).
 
VirtualDuB!!!! - http://www186.pair.com/vdub/index.html

It is a freeware capture/video conversion utility. It will interface with the capture drivers of most video capture cards. It does cool stuff like capture to multiple, sequential, AVI files to avoid the AVI 2 gig file size limit, or it will capture to OpenDML AVI files (>2gigs.) If your card can capture raw RGB or YVU it will do real-time software encoding using any CODEC installed in your system that supports RGB or YUV frames (for example, I can capture to divX in real time). Of course how well this works depends on your CPU speed.

Give it is a try, it's great!

 
I already mentioned virtualdub (which by the way is easier to remember at www.virtualdub.org) and the fact that it won't record sound with my TVWonder and had problems interfacing with my Hauppauge WinTV (I think I remember now that I couldn't control the tuner, had to set things up with the TV app then switch to virtualdub in order to change channels and stuff; or maybe even that didn't work so I couldn't change channels).
 
Yeah, Virtual Dub would be nice, cept I can't change channels. It does get sound however...

But I change the channel on my ATI crap, close it, and then go to VD and it just opens up on channel 4 all the time.
 
The problem with VirtualDub is that uses the VFW (Video-For-Windows) routines, where the max vertical res is 240 lines. Instead, try this program: iuVCR from 0iuLab . It's mini-sized (<1 MB), used DirectShow to get past the 240 limit (I can do max 720x480 on my AverTV studio), and except for a 3 second start/exit delay in the shareware version, is fully-functioned in every sense.

About the Audio Problems, iuVCR has a tweaker that can fine-tune detection of the audio source. Try it and let me know.

BTW, some people have reported that it is tough to plug into ATI's video output. Try changing the source formats in iuVCR to RGB24, RGB555, YUY2, YVU9 one by one to see if it works.

The best thing is that iuVCR can compress in real-time to VFW codecs, notably, DivX 4.x. On my system rig , I can do real time comp at 640x480, 1-pass CBR medium to DivX 4.12, and at 640x240 (which, btw, automatically eliminates the need for interlacing, and technically, you don't lose any vertical res), 1-pass CBR slowest to DivX 4.12. Great for capturing movies, and not eating up your HD with MPEG-1/2 ala PowerVCR/ATI/Aver Recording Apps.

A request...while compressing anything from my TV tuner to DivX4.12, if my 1-pass CBR quality is Fast, Fastest or Medium, the output has a strange graininess in it. This problem is eliminated when using quality Slow or Slowest. Any of you have this problem?
 
Hey izx, thanks for making your first post in this thread!

I'm downloading iuvcr now (the non-beta one). I'll let you know how it works for me. It seems that he reccomends a BT chip on your TV tuner card, and I don't think the TV Wonder has one... but I'll give it a shot anyway because no where does it say it WON'T work on any other card.
 
Well, I get sound, and the features look great, but for some reason the picture is all messed up. I tried all the formats you listed and YUY2 looks, the best, but people are purple, or static comes in etc. And for some reason it thinks there are 625 lines of resolution. Isn't NTSC 500 and some?

Hmm.....
 
Geesh, Don't I feel stupid 🙂 I got it now. It works fine.

This is awesome. You have no idea how long I have been looking for something like this! Thanks a lot for the advice izx. I will play around with the program for a while and report my findings on various settings to see if I get the same results as you stated before.
 
Well, I checked out Medium vs Slow and I do not notice any extra grain in my capture... But my cable here isn't all that good and there is already some grain due to the image quality of the broadcast.... But I can't tell the difference between the settings.
 
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