Hi experts,

I'm using the NTSC version of ATI AIW 128 Pro, and I know I cannot use it to capture PAL video. If I want to do so, what can I do? Can I buy another capture card that can capture PAL video? Will there be any conflicts to my ATI card? If there's no conflicts, which card shall I get and what is the approx. price? Thanks.

-- Jacar Yun (tyttt@hotmail.com), August 31, 2001

Answers

You are correct that the NTSC versions of ATI's cards do not allow for PAL captures. One option, and I strongly discourage you from doing it, is to record NTSC video with the ATI and then convert it to PAL sizes and frame rates using either TMPGEnc (www.tmpgenc.com - it's free) or MPEG2VCR from Womble (www.womble.com - it's very expensive). I did a conversion once and while I did get valid PAL output, the quality was terrible from both TMPGenc and MPEG2VCR. Your best option is to buy the Dazzle Digital Video Creator II card. You can get info at www.dazzle.com. DVCII records both NTSC and PAL. DVCII can have problems with certain AMD motherboard chipsets, but it works on most of them. You can also have IRQ conflicts, so you need to be sure that you can assign Dazzle it's own IRQ. I don't have Dazzle, but I'm thinking about buying it. The quality is fantastic, much better than you can get with any ATI card.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), August 31, 2001.

I forgot to add that the price is from US $230 and up. You can go to www.pricewatch.com and enter Dazzle to find some companies that sell it.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), August 31, 2001.