I am experiencing a problem with my Radeon All In Wonder card when attemping realtime capture.

I wanted to make SVCD’s but found that with my P3 450mhz I was suffering frame loss even at minimal VCD standard. Therefore I upgraded to a P3 1000 MHZ and presumed this would solve all my problems allowing me to capture at the very highest level with no frame loss as ATI say.

To my disappointment, with the P3 1000, I can now capture VCD mpeg 1 standard - barely, but any MPEG 2 capturing appears to suffer frame loss. I say “appears” because the ATI capture software doesn’t report frame loss when capturing, but when I playback the file - video and audio are out of synch. ( They appear to start out ok, but after around 30 seconds audio is 2-3 seconds in front of video ). Maybe it is not frame loss I am experiencing, maybe it is another problem ?

I have tried all the things other people have said works for them - old / new drivers - new mmc, installed DVD 4.1 but to no avail. Surely my machine should be able to handle what I want to do. I am trying to capture 480x576 at a bit rate of around 3 with motion prediction of around 75 but as I say it is out of synch.

My machine specs are

Asus motherboard with Via Apollo chipset P3 1000 MHZ 320 mb ram Ati Radeon All In Wonder AGP 9gb Samsung Spinpoint hdd - *5400 rpm (*could this be the problem ?? I’m loathe to upgrade anymore !!! )

-- Ben Basford (ben.basford@blueyonder.co.uk), April 20, 2001

Answers

Oh and I forgot to mention my OS is Windows ME the Hard Drive is a 2nd one with DMA enabled and nothing else on it

-- Ben Basford (ben.basford@blueyonder.co.uk), April 20, 2001.

Hi Ben, Rich Aubin has a couple of web sites that talk about ATI issues.They might be helpful. They are: members.home.net/richa www.pcphotovideo.com Rich recently touched on the very topic you are talking about. I also have an ATI card - the All-in-Wonder Radeon. I have a/v sync problems after about 30-35 minutes, but I can usually fix them with the Womble MPG2VCR product (www.womble.com - $250 though :-( ). I set my bit rate at 2.59 Mbps. Rich correctly says that ATI's software may use your setting as the ideal constant bit rate, but at times your recorded video may spike above that. I have recently purchased the BitStream viewing program from www.tecoltd.com (there is a free one there too) and I have discovered that my video sometimes goes as high at 3.1 Mbps, even though I am using 2.59 Mbps to record with. Rich says that if you use a setting of 2.3 Mbps, it usually keeps the spikes under 2.6 Mbps, which is the limit for SVCD video. He also states that if your video goes above 2.6 Mbps that you will start to see a/v sync problems. My guess is that for the 30 minute TV shows I record (about 22 mins. after editing out commercials) that I'm not seeing any problems, but that the sync problem is cumulative, so the longer you record, the more likely you are to see it. Since you are recording at 3 Mbps, you are above SVCD specs and Rich would say that you will have problems for sure and the only way to fix it is to drop the bit rate. You could consider getting the Womble product as it has a tool to deal with a/v sync problems that works pretty well. I'm trying to get as high a quality as possible and my DVD player plays my SVCDs, even if they aren't quite in spec, so I'm not dropping my bit rate. By the way, you should also be aware that I have discovered to my horror that EVERYONE who has a VIA chip set has constant problems. I have an ASUS A7V motherboard with a 1 GHz Athlon and a VIA chip set. ATI stuff does not like VIA at all in my opinion. I long for the day that manufacturers will stop using VIA or else VIA will finally get its act together. I can't use the ATI DVD player at all because it always locks up my PC (I have version 7.0 of MMC) so I had to buy PowerDVD. Lots of other people on the internet who have my setup have the same problem and the conslusion we've come to is that VIA is to blame.

-- Jason Shumate (Jason.Shumate@sita.int), April 20, 2001.

www.videoguys.com are NOT impressed with anything ATI All-in- Wonderxx, either.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), April 21, 2001.

I have a similar problem with my Radeon 64mb VIVO. I can capture 640x480 at 30fps using a huffy codec, but I still have audio synch problems. I know my system is fast enough (1.2ghz, RAID 0 7200rpm 80gb, 640mb ram). After some deep searching I believe that the problem is caused by the sound card. I have a Sound Blaster 5.1 gamer and according to the program that installs with ATI's MMC, the clock stability on the sound card deviates too much to be effective, this is what is causeing the "drift" as I call it, on the audio capture. Unfortunately I dont have a solution for this yet. I believe that it has to do with the transfer rate between the sound card and the pci bus, but that is just speculation.

PS. 5400rpm drives are waaay too slow for video capture. You need at least a 7200rpm. they are cheap. Maxtors are good and always on sale, 40gb go for less than $100 now at best buy.

-- Pete (morganp1234@yahoo.com), October 29, 2001.

The problem must have been ATI drivers and not the chipsets. I have the rage fury pro vivo on amd750 and 1.0ghz tbird and had the same problem of A/V captured out of sync.

Installing the WDM driver fixed the problem. By the way, MMC 7.6 works perfectly on rage fury pro too.

-- T D (bi241@scn.org), May 24, 2002.