Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

ATI8500DV DV port, MPEG2 capture fiasco

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • ATI8500DV DV port, MPEG2 capture fiasco

    OK, here is another update for anyone intersted in buying one of these cards. I have been using it for about 2 months now and have had one small problem (or so I thought). It would occur at the beginning of MPEG2 captures. I would drop a few frames at the very beginning. No big deal, since I can easily trim off the garbage frames and the rest was fine. I figured it was a config issue or CPU HP. Now for the big problem. I borrowed a DV cam from a friend since I am in the market. The DV port does not work with my MB for some reason. It installs fine, it just doesn't show any video or capture any in the application. It will control the camera just fine though. I tried reinstalling without ACPI and it made no difference whatso ever.

    I did some researching and some whining at some other forums and it turns out that others are experiencing similar problems. I don't use timeshifting, but that was one of the main areas of problems people were experiencing. Disabling the DV port (SW1 on the card) fixed the problem. I disabled it and viola, no more drops at all. Any bitrate/resolution and it looks great.

    Now here is the question, should I be happy that I can capture in MPEG2, DVD format (almost, video is right, 48kHz audio is being integrated into the next MMC) or should I be angry, that once again, I have a piece of HW that does not work as advertised? Like I said I do not have DV cam yet, but I am looking at one that is going to be available this week locally and would just like to have my HW work right. I know that firewire cards are cheap, but that is not the point. Aren't there laws about commerce concerning advertisement and fulfilling those promises? Are computer HW/SW companies exempt from these laws? It is just getting old, years of fighting with the same damn problems, over and over and over and over... I know that I am no the only one that feels this way. These forums would not be so busy if it weren't a hard fact of dealing with PC's.

    I really like this card alot and am pretty sure that they will fix the problem eventually, but if they don't, what do I do? Be happy with what I got or whine a lot and get nothing but balder and waste my time?

    WAHH!
    WinXP Pro SP2 ABIT IC7 Intel P4 3.0E 1024M Corsair PC3200 DCDDR ATI AIW x800XT 2 Samsung SV1204H 120G HDs AudioTrak Prodigy 7.1 3Com NIC Cendyne DVR-105 DVD burner LG DVD/CD-RW burner Fortron FSP-300-60ATV PSU Cooled by Zalman Altec Lansing MX-5021

  • #2
    Hey man, that really s"#ks! I´m pretty sure now that I will go for the AIW Radeon 7500 eventually, as it has no FireWire port. If I´d want FireWire, I could always buy a card designed just to do that. And I don´t play games, so the GPU power of the 8500 isn´t worth the extra money for me. I hope you can get it sorted out with a driver update or something like that soon. Hang on in there!

    landrover
    -Off the beaten path I reign-

    At Home:

    Asus P4P800-E Deluxe / P4-E 3.0Ghz
    2 GB PC3200 DDR RAM
    Matrox Parhelia 128
    Terratec Cynergy 600 TV/Radio
    Maxtor 80GB OS and Apps
    Maxtor 300 GB for video
    Plextor PX-755a DVD-R/W DL
    Win XP Pro

    At work:
    Avid Newscutter Adrenaline.
    Avid Unity Media Network.

    Comment


    • #3
      Sigh!! Im right there with you. We are all fish caught on the preverbial hook. I love this technology but the beginner and prosumer level has always been plauged with hardware and software problems. It seems that alot of these suppliers are out for the big buck! M$, ATI, Matrox, IBM, yada yada yada. What a great scam, get a product or software working, kinda, then place it in a pretty box and sell it for a competitive price to millions of suckers, then dont reply! and if you see your profit margins slipping away, discontinue the line or close shop and open under a new name. Im tired of rebooting, defraging, scandisking, deleting, uninstalling, reinstaling, etc. Wouldnt it be a wonderfull world if we could just buy this stuff and put it in and it works. All we would be doing on this forum is bragging about how good our systems work and the great output and productivity we get out of it! All I have to say is thank goodness the rest of the world doesnt follow the same road. Our cars would be in the service station every week. Our food would be constantly spoiling due to the refrigerator failing, we would be walking around in dirty clothes. The computer / software industry reminds me of the sports industry, the fans are intriuged by the talent and excitement of the game, the teams see the potential revenue income of their mass following and demand a higher wage. The managers raise the price of the tickets to the sucker fans and give the players more money, and also give themselves a salary increase. The fans are happy. Then it starts all over again. Who can change it, not one fan can, but all of the fans united can!
      Well gotta go and pick up my new sound card!
      Lenl

      Comment


      • #4
        Such is the wonderful world of the "Early Adopter" Rest assured ATI will have your "issue" resolved in the next hardware generation (too late to do you any good this time around).

        Went through the same thing myself with Acer mobos, Intel-clone processors, capture hardware AND software...the list goes on and on.

        An immutable rule of computer technology is that the consumer is just the next in a long line of beta testers. Guess I don't have to tell anyone here that it's been true since the days of the Sinclair.

        Still might get one of those 8500DVs...NEXT year!

        Kevin

        Comment


        • #5
          There's a good reason to buy dedicated hardware instead of cards that combine all sorts of stuff.

          Cheap TV cards with the new Philips chipset are now emerging on the market (the image quality is supposed to be better than the BT848a).

          Maybe the combination of a good TV capture card, a good VGA card with video-out and a good Firewire card is the best option ? Then we can simply select the manufacturers with the best driver support and never risk more than $80 or so...
          Resistance is futile - Microborg will assimilate you.

          Comment


          • #6
            eYup....

            A nice combo;

            TV capture card (WinTV or maybe one of the new Philips based models)
            Pyro IEEE-1394
            G-450 (or better yet: a Parhelia, when they hit)

            and they won't step on each other. The only downside is that they use multiple slots.

            Dr. Mordrid
            Dr. Mordrid
            ----------------------------
            An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

            I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

            Comment


            • #7
              The only thing I worry about is if the capturing device (Wintv?) and the TV-out of the graphics adapter use the same field order...
              Resistance is futile - Microborg will assimilate you.

              Comment


              • #8
                Exactly!

                My setup: G400MAX, ADS Pyro, and bt878 based tv-card (Pinnacle PCTV Pro to be precise, exact same hardware as WinTV.) Everything is rock solid.

                Comment


                • #9
                  WinTV Theater (model #495) is solid on two systems here using a G400 and a G450.

                  Dr. Mordrid
                  Dr. Mordrid
                  ----------------------------
                  An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

                  I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Just adding my AIW 8500 DV experience:

                    I've had to disable the DV input in my card to let my mobo
                    see all the other PCI cards I've installed ( Promise Fasttrak T2,
                    Adaptec SCSI controller, Dazzle firewire additional ports).

                    My mobo is an Intel D850GB (P IV 1,5 Ghz) and runs WinXP (but I think this problem is OS independent).
                    Ati stated my setup as compatible ... BUT there is a "technical issue" note on their page that address my kind of problem.

                    My AIW is from Hercules and obviously they dropped not even a line about this problem; I've had to find it by myself but it was tooooo late...

                    Having disabled the DV ports, I could now say that every TV card will do the same job the 8500 do, saving you a lot of money (and troubles).

                    Sure RealMYST now runs faster but this isn't exactly what I intended....

                    Brambus

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Hmmm, I'm sorry to here about this problem as I'm pretty sure it's somehow related to the mobo chipset.
                      Does ATI have a hardware compatibility list for the AIW DV?

                      Why not get the RT2500, especially now that the prices are pretty low?

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        You were warned. More of the same from ATI which is why I've quit buying their stuff.

                        Maybe it'll be fixed, but don't hold your breath!

                        --wally.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Brambus
                          Just adding my AIW 8500 DV experience:

                          I've had to disable the DV input in my card to let my mobo
                          see all the other PCI cards I've installed ( Promise Fasttrak T2,
                          Adaptec SCSI controller, Dazzle firewire additional ports).

                          My mobo is an Intel D850GB (P IV 1,5 Ghz) and runs WinXP (but I think this problem is OS independent).
                          Ati stated my setup as compatible ... BUT there is a "technical issue" note on their page that address my kind of problem.

                          My AIW is from Hercules and obviously they dropped not even a line about this problem; I've had to find it by myself but it was tooooo late...

                          Having disabled the DV ports, I could now say that every TV card will do the same job the 8500 do, saving you a lot of money (and troubles).

                          Sure RealMYST now runs faster but this isn't exactly what I intended....

                          Brambus
                          I have to disagree on the part about every TV card doing the same. I know that Matrox couldn't make a driver for WinXP and the quality of MPEG2 realtime capture is really impressive. It's a lot better than anything that I captured before and re-encoded using any MPEG compressor. And as you said the gaming is incredible. Much better than I had hoped for. They have a new "aggressive" driver release attitude as well. There have been two beta versions and a few leaked versions in the last 2 months. Each version definitely working and with a little improvement each time. The theater mode finally works for 16:9 DVD PB and is enabled by default in the drivers.

                          Anyway I've gotten over the DV port thing. All the stuff that this card can do, screw it I can spend $50 on a firewire card and deal with it. I never really expected it to work, it just kind of bothered me that it didn't and I wanted to make sure that anyone with drops in their captures maybe able to fix it.
                          WinXP Pro SP2 ABIT IC7 Intel P4 3.0E 1024M Corsair PC3200 DCDDR ATI AIW x800XT 2 Samsung SV1204H 120G HDs AudioTrak Prodigy 7.1 3Com NIC Cendyne DVR-105 DVD burner LG DVD/CD-RW burner Fortron FSP-300-60ATV PSU Cooled by Zalman Altec Lansing MX-5021

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            This mpeg-2 realtime compression, is it i-frame only? In that case, big deal. Not that different from MJPG...
                            Resistance is futile - Microborg will assimilate you.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              You can do either I or IPB. The MMC SW is pretty flexible. I talked to one of the main SW guys and the new version that will be coming out is pretty impressive sounding. Just a few additions such as 48kHz audio, SVCD compliant templates, stuff like that. They've been turning new stuff out very fast too.
                              WinXP Pro SP2 ABIT IC7 Intel P4 3.0E 1024M Corsair PC3200 DCDDR ATI AIW x800XT 2 Samsung SV1204H 120G HDs AudioTrak Prodigy 7.1 3Com NIC Cendyne DVR-105 DVD burner LG DVD/CD-RW burner Fortron FSP-300-60ATV PSU Cooled by Zalman Altec Lansing MX-5021

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X