Video Capture : Need Advice

[RoyGBiv]

About a year ago, after a long period of techno-lust, I decided to splurge and bought an ATI 9800XT All-in-Wonder video card. The graphics performance on this card was exceptional for the time, and I still have no issues with it. I've recently toyed with overclocking it and have achieved good results. Playing modern games is a joy because I typically can put all the settings on high, or at least near there, and not experience any problems.

However ...

The main selling point of the card for me was the video capture functions. I already had a good video card. I wanted the ability to record video for my own archival and creative purposes. In this I have been incredibly disappointed.

At first, everything was groovy, mostly because I'd never had this ability before, and it was just fun to play. I have not really experienced any real problems as such, but as the newness wore off and I stopped being impressed by ThruView, I began to realize that the quality of the capture sucked. Recently, I have also had problems with a slight time shift between my television monitor and the signal running through the video card. What comes through the computer is now about half a second behind what goes through the television, which defeats one of the purposes I had in being able to use the computer monitor as a secondardy screen with the sound pumped through my high-end sound system. This may have something to do with the overclocking I've done recently (only change I've made), but I'm not sure and don't really care at this point. It also seems I have to reload the WDM drivers about every other week for no reason I can fathom.

So, I am moving on. For other reasons, I have decided recently I'm going to move to a GeForce 6800 video card. (NVidia being more friendly with Linux is the most important reason.) But, I also want to maintain video capture ability, only with better quality. I know we have a lot of people around here who do this, so after all this rambling, my question is what do you recommend?

[Up2Late]

1. Sorry to hear about you trouble with ATI, I have a 9600XT...

...(ATI All-In-Wonder 9600XT) and have never reached the point of giving up on ATI All-in-Wonder.

What do you mean by "...the quality of the capture sucked." In what way? What program did you use?

One thing I've learned about ATI AIW video cards (This is my third) is, that you have be very careful to follow their recommendations when adding any new programs (that come with related hardware) or updating the ATI drivers. Some of their programs do seem slow and clunky, at first site, but they work really well, once you learn how they work and will produce DVD-Quality Video.

Another thing I like about ATI is that they release and updated version of the "CATALYST" Control Center every month, where they fix any new bugs that have popped up.

What version of "CATALYST" Control Center do you have?

I've never had much luck or seen any advantage with overclocking, so I can't speak to that, but that could be causing some of you problems.

Are you saying that you have the 9800XT AIW AND another Video card in you computer now? I tried that with my ATI7500 AIW and an ATI7500 video card (I needed a second video monitor) but that didn't work very well.

Also, do you mean the "All-in-Wonder 9800® PRO ?" Below is a list of the 9800 cards from ATI, I haven't found a "All-in-Wonder 9800® XT."

Radeon® 9800 XT
All-in-Wonder 9800® PRO
Radeon® 9800 PRO
Radeon® 9800

Here's a link to this page: <http://www.ati.com/products/home-office.html>

My brother uses NVidia, he likes them, but I don't know anything about them.

[RoyGBiv]

2. Thanks for the response ...

I hope you'll let me pick your brain for a moment and pardon my lengthy detail. I don't really want to give up on ATI altogether, but my experiences with this card are not what I've seen is possible from viewing the work of others.

First, the typo wasn't with the XT. It was with the 9800. I have an AIW 9600XT, same as you, and that's the only video card in my system. Sorry for the confusion.

More info.

My drivers are usually the latest. I update drivers in my system religiously, and I updated all the ATI software a week ago to Catalyst 5.7, Media Control center 9.08, the latest WDM (5.5 I think), etc. This seems to have made some of my problems worse and some better. I now get a 2-10 second delay when opening the tuner before the television signal starts, and as mentioned, it runs behind what's on the television by about 1/2 a second, but this started before the update. (Actually, I first noticed it after coming back from vacation. My system had been shut down for almost two weeks, and when I started it up, several things were twitchy. I chalk it up to the gremlins that invade people's homes when they are away.)

Re: Overclocking: I don't have this on all the time, but I found advantages to stepping up the core and mem speeds when I play a game like DOOM3 and some other FPS games. The frame rates definitely improve. I use Radlinker to do this, which doesn't affect anything until I use a shortcut created by Radlink. This steps up the speeds to the settings I want when I start those programs and resets it to the default when I'm done.

I do have my CPU overclocked, but I've always had it overclocked. I tested it, and this cuts off anywhere from 30 to an hour when I render a full DVD from an AVI file or set of files. I suppose this could be part of the problems I've had, but I'm not sure how that would be the case.

Besides the time shifting delay, a problem I haven't even begun to explore sine it started so recently, the basic problems are these.

The video always looks washed out and a bit blurry. I've turned off the video soap (I think that's it) when possible, but it doesn't affect anything. I've tried capturing using every setting and configuration imagineable. I went so far as to take a non-copyprotected DVD and ran an S-Video cable straight from the player to the card and captured what was playing with the highest settings. The result looked like an average VHS tape, which is pretty much what all my captures look like. I even played the result on a different computer, thinking somehow my monitor might be the problem. (My monitor isn't the best in the world, but I can play other MPG and AVI files that are high quality, and they appear much better.)

I also have a problem with the sound. Intuitively, I'm pretty sure this is not a problem with the ATI card itself since all it does is serve as a pass-through to the sound card. I'm thinking it must be the software. The sound while simply using the TV tuner is fine, but anything I record, again using the highest settings, has a very low volume that requires me to turn up the volume on my system to the highest setting to hear reasonably. I forget I've done this, start playing with something else, and just about jump out of my shorts with how loud it is. I have a good sound system. (Audigy Z with Altec Lansing 5.1 speakers.)

Anyway ... any suggestions you might have on how to tweak things would be greatly appreciated. I'm building a new system and will be getting an NVidia card for that since I want it to run Linux mostly, and NVidia is, at this point, much more friendly with Linux. However, I'm not trashing this card and would be very happy to have my current system serve as a dedicated media center.

[Up2Late]

3. Well I have some good news and some bad news.

First, I should tell you that I am, and have been a Video/Film Editor for almost 20 years, so I hope you will trust me when I tell you that you are not imagining things when you say that the Video looks a little blury, but their is not much that can be done about that. The Washed out part are most likely because you haven't adjusted you monitor for Video properly.

Here are a few unfortunate facts:

1) Standard, American Broadcast Television, even at it's best, is only 380 lines of resolution. In the Editing Suite (before broadcast, it can be as much as 560 lines of resolution. A VHS Video recorder can only reproduce about 300 lines (in SP mode, EP or SLP is less).

2) a Computer screen can not actually reproduce the colors of a T.V. Broadcast accurately. What you see is a "simulated" Television picture, because the Television and the computer screen work on completely different principles. It sounds weird, but that's how it was explained to me.

The main reason it looks so blurry is that you are sitting 1-3 feet away from the Computer screen. If you sat back about as far as you normally sit from you T.V. (about 6-12 feet), it would look a lot better.

3) A DVD (when using a RCA type or S-Video cable connector) you get 480-560 Lines of resolution (compared to 840-1024 lines of most computer screens), which is why people think DVDs look so much better.

If you want to test this, turn on a sharp channel or play a DVD on you T.V., then go sit the same distance from you T.V. as you are sitting from your Computer screen. You can also try outputting you computer screen signal to your T.V. (if you have a "Video In" on your T.V.) and see if you can read any of this on it.

For the sound, I had a similar problem. Here are a few things to check.

1. For play back, check to see if the sound is up all the way on the "on screen" controller (tuner). Look in the lower right and check if the red "L.E.D.s" extend out to the edge of the dark blue.

2. Check to see if the wires coming out of DVD player are connected to the Right and Left Audio out, and not to the Left Audio out and one of the "Component Video" output connectors (their are 3- Y, Pb, and Pr).

3) If that doesn't fix it, you might want to see if you can do what I did, I took one of my extra CD-Rom to SoundBlaster connector cables, and connected the ATI card to my Audio AUX connector on my Motherboard. For some odd reason, which I have yet to figure out, after months of it working without one, the audio stopped working correctly, but when I added the internal audio cable, it's worked great ever since.

Regarding the sync problem, I need more info to advise you. Are you talking about the sound and the picture not matching on the computer screen, or is it that the sound and picture on the computer is slightly behind the T.V. (in a different part of the room). I did see the first problem today (after upgrading from ver. 5.6 to 5.7), but it fixed it's self after logging off (the computer user), then logging back on. The second situation, I fix by turning off the sound while recording (TV-on-Demand).

Here's some sites with SMPTE Color Bars for adjusting your monitor, but like I said, a computer screen will never look perfect:

<http://www.mediacollege.com/video/test-patterns/colour-bars-smpte.html>

<http://www.greatdv.com/video/smptebars2.htm>
<http://www.greatdv.com/video/smptebars.htm>

Let me know if this helped and if I can help you further, I'm sure I'm forgetting a few things.

[RoyGBiv]

4. An exceptional response ...

Thank you so much for that.

Somewhere in the back of my head I knew some of this about the lines of resolution, but for whatever reason, it never occurred to me that this was the problem. I don't want to admit what business I'm in. Makes me seem like even more of an idiot. I actually spent part of yesterday explaining to someone the differences between various versions of HD televisions being sold today and that some of the less expensive versions wouldn't display the quality of picture they were wanting to see. The person had purchased one of those 480i (I think that's right) televisions without a sound system from someplace like Best Buy and was yelling at *me* because the picture and sound weren't as good as his buddy's 1080i mondo-huge screen with the 7.1 surround sound system and amplifier that requires its own cooling unit (exaggerating, but you get the idea).

Anyways, thanks again.

I'll try your suggestions on the sound volume problem. The cables are connected properly, but I hadn't thought of using the Audio AUX connector. It currently has nothing connected to it.

I've realized I'm not explaining the sync problem well, so let me see if I can do a better job. First I'll explain the typical setup I used from the beginning.

I have one coax running into the house that serves as my Internet and video connection. It is split three ways with two 1000MHz splitters. The lines going into the video card and the cable modem get the most signal loss. (This is necessary because the condo complex won't allow another dedicated line to be run. I need a high quality 3-way, but I've been too lazy to go find one, and since this worked, I had no motivation.) One line runs to the cable digital box. Another runs to the cable modem, and another runs to the coaxial input on the back of the ATI card. I also have a set of composite cables (RCA video, left/right sound) running from the output on my digital box into the composite input on the ATI card. I switch back and forth between composite-in and tuner depending on whether I want to record something that requires the digital signal to be decoded first. For example, all the video music channels that actually play videos are on digital channels.

Up until a few weeks ago, this all worked fine except for the recorded sound being too low, and it didn't matter which input I used; it was low regardless. The video and sound quality were a bit poorer than from the coax line running directly into the card, but it wasn't a big deal.

I hadn't used the video capture functions in awhile when I tried to record something the day after I got back from vacation. (I realized after last posting that I may have gone through two upgrades of Catalyst without using the capture functions, so one of those upgrades may have been the beginning of the issue without me realizing it.) When I did so, I realized that both the picture and the sound coming from the computer monitor and speakers was about 1/2 second behind what was coming from my television. I was using composite-in, so I switched to tuner, but the same problem was present. Your mentioning the two being in a different part of the room moves me to mention that I had actually expected this problem when I first set this up, but there was no problem. It's only appeared recently.

The only reason this is at all important is that I would often open up the ATI TV application while watching a movie and use the computer's sound system so I could get good surround. With the 1/2 delay, it's impossible to do this now without feeling like I'm watching a badly dubbed foreign film. I could just run the televisions sound into my sound card, but I haven't worked up the motivation yet, and it's irritating to have to run yet another set of cables when the setup I had before worked fine.

ANYWAY ...

I played around with a crippleware version of Pinnacle's video editing suite last night, and the sound and video sync problems were not present while using that. I conclude from this, then, that the problem is with the software and not the card or my rather bizarre setup itself.

One more time, thanks for taking the time to compose that response. It gives me a lot to work with.

[Up2Late]

5. Thanks, it helps when you find someone with the same hardware

Sounds like your Sync problem, (and over all set-up) is almost the same as mine.

Two ideas on what it could be, and I did start having this problem about two Catalyst updates ago too, it could be:

1) Maybe the Digital cable box got a software update that added or improved the speed of the Analog to Digital conversion or more likely

2) I noticed on 5.6, ATI added a bunch of new stuff to the Video section of Catalyst (having to do with interlacing), I think some of these settings might increase the time it takes to process the video. I haven't messed with these yet, but I would bet that resetting them to default might speed things up a little.

Good to know I'm not the only one who's having this little trouble.

As far as NVIDIA Cards go, the company that make the Professional editing software I use, Avid, recommends the NVIDIA Quadro®4 980 XGL (Windows) or the NVIDIA QuadroFX 1100. Here's a link to the page with their recommended system requirements:

<http://www.avid.com/products/xpressdv/specs.shtml>

[RoyGBiv]

6. This weekend ...

I finally have a weekend off, so I'm going to play around with all this sometime then. Thanks again for giving me some advice and motivation. I'd tried a number of forums and never once even got a reply that approached being helpful. I greatly appreciate your effort. I'll report back if I work anything out.

This has modified my thoughts a bit on my new system. I still want an NVIDIA based graphics card for it, again because of its greater compatibility with Linux. But now that I realize my current card isn't really the problem, a lot of those media functions I had planned for the new system can be done on the one I have now, and done better since I won't have all my other garbage on it cluttering it up.