RE: Video Capture (Again!)

[Pedro de Oliveira <oliveirp@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Ian

Pedro, what hardware are you using the card with?
<< At the moment I am running PII 400Mhz with a ATI-Rage Pro 32Mb but
I have
also run it on a PIII 800Mhz with a Matrox Mystique 2mb with no
problems>>

I ask because I have actually ditched Win2K for my video machine simply
because of the hideous problem with the ATI Drivers.
<<The drivers were bad until the start of Sept when they upgraded the
win2k
drivers from beta to full versions - I still can't get teletext but
everything else works perfectly>>

I have went from being able to capture a *maximum* resolution of 352x288
without dropping frames under win2K, up to being able to capture 640x480
with no frames dropping under win98, all other software remaining the same
version.
<<I presume you are talking about AVI capture - I don't use this too
much
and when I do I use MPEG as this doesn't loose anything even at 640x480.
Don't ask me why but it's true>>

Ati have a *hideous* reputation for poor drivers, and rightly so. :(
<<Agreed>>

Great cards, but *never* update the drivers unless you have a
*seriously* good reason to do so. They tend to do irritating things like
disabling features without saying so, and also seem to write very bad
installers, which "update" things like codecs without checking
version
stamps etc...
<< When upgrading to the latest version of the ATI drivers, I had to
install
an add-on for DirectX which sorted all my problems out.  The drivers for
win2k actually put two instances of all the bits of the TV-Wonder - which I
then had to uninstall by hand and if I uninstalled the wrong one it would
find it again and I would have to uninstall the other one - all with
reboots
in between - BAD BAD BAD.   All in all I would say this is a good card
compared to the others that I have seen like the Hauppauge (?) as the 3 I
have seen (USB and PCI) all seem to have a lag in the audio compared to the
video - I would prefer to mess around with drivers then have a lag in audio
personally.  They also ditched the teletext for no reason even though there
is a teletext device with drivers in device manager???>>

Ian.
<<Pedro>>
PS Ian - the cheque is in the post ;-)

-----Original Message-----
From: Pedro de Oliveira [mailto:oliveirp@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 22 October 2001 11:03
To: 'ukha_d@xxxxxxx'
Subject: RE: [ukha_d] Video Capture (Again!)


Hi Keith

I use the ATI TV-Wonder under win2k.  There were some initial problems when
win2k was first released but all has been ironed out now.  It works
extremely well for capturing TV as well as CCTV. It also has a s-video in
and TV out.  There is a "schedule" type of program as well so you
can set it
to record TV if you are away.

If you need any more info just say

HTH

Pedro de Oliveira


-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Doxey [mailto:ukha@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 22 October 2001 10:58
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: [ukha_d] Video Capture (Again!)


Hi All,

My turn to ask a Frequently Asked Question.

What is the best Capture card that I could get for a "reasonable"
price?

Requirements.

Can be either a Capture Only card or an All-In-One type graphics card. Must
be able to save files in a generic format eg Mpeg or AVI. Must allow the
files to be played on ANY other machine using Windows
Media Player.

Software.

Something like Showshifter would be nice although not essential as
recording would be a manual process. How well do the programs
supplied with ATI/Matrox/Haupaggue cards perform. ( I have an early
WinTV card and have never had too much luck with the software with
lockups and hanging being frequent )