From Video tape to .wmv, results not pretty

Use the MMC (MultiMedia Center) software that comes with the Radeon to actually capture the video. For some reason Movie Maker doesn't play well with the capture hardware on Radeon cards and produces the exact choppy results you mention.

Once you have your MPEG-2 file from MMC, you can then use other software to convert it to the format you desire.

In fact, I have a feeling MMC can actually record directly to WMV itself these days. It's been a while since I used a ViVo card.

Incidentally, Windows Movie Maker is primarily intended for creating small, highly-compressed movies for distribution over the Internet or on CDs. If you want to create a DVD quality movie, you should investigate software suited more to the task.

both situations above are correct. i too use my ati software when i'm at home. at work though, we had to do a video clip assembly into one big movie and my video cards weren't letting me capture anything larger then 320x280 (what windows movie maker uses). so we bought a little external AV device.. i think it was from a company called ADS but lots of vendors make them now. it has rca and svideo input jacks as well as usb and svideo output. you put it into your machine, plug a vcr or video camera (or even dvd player) up to it, and it captures the video at 720x480 into mpg2 video (newer ones i'm sure are up to mp4). it even came with software like Ulead video Studio SE, which was VERY quick, VERY easy to use, and came with some nice little effects. i preferred it over adobe's Premier simply because it was getting the job done with no hassle. it also came with My Dvd maker and some other stuff, for burning right into dvds.

if i remember when i'm back at the office tomorrow, i'll post the name of the device. it was 150$ when we got it, 2 months later my father bought the same unit for 100.

for burning software, if you have Nero or some Ulead software that will do the trick. i prefer Roxio's Easy CD/DVD creator but - lets face it, its very expensive. very nice features though for making dvds.

hope that helps.

Hiya Warewolf, what you been doing, you no longer come on the Chat, come back and let them all know you are still alive

also check for in the settings for quality and compression that its not skipping frames. i had a ATI card and some where in the settings for capture it had a setting that skipped frames. the result was a smaller file but the video staggered. this wa along time ago but your problem sounds like what i experienced.

/me agrees with Stumpy. Stop in and say hello.

Well...good game.

Ok, so following the advice of Grayhaze, I dl'd the latest MMC stuff from ATI. (I had uninstalled all that stuff last year because it wouldn't let go of the file associations). I installed the newest codec pack from MS first and then installed the MMC.

Created a DVD high quality .mpg file. Neither WMP nor the ATI player could even open the resulting file. Made an .mpg file described as really great for full TV resolution. Neither player could read that either. I converted those two files to AVI (MPEG 4), great picture, no sound.

Made an MPEG 1 file and no problems, but very small picture. So...an MPEG 2 codec, it would seem, is what is missing. Went in search of MPEG 2 codecs. Found one, installed it. Now WMP opens the DVD quality mpg file, the sound is perfect, but only the first frame of the video shows. The ATI player still won't open it. Ok, so this all sucks. I'm hoping that my friend with the DVD burner is going to be able to do something with the DVD quality file. Ooops...video file is 730Mb and cd-r only holds 700 Mb. Winzip to the rescue. Reduces the file to just barely under 700. Fits right in there. I also make another .mpg file in a quality which is described as perfect for making VCD. It's mpeg 1 so it plays fine and it fits on the cd with no problem. I'm giving all this to my friend tomorrow and hoping for the best.

I checked all the codecs I have installed and noticed an MPEG 4 codec from MS. Why can't it play an mpeg2? Not backward compatible I suppose, or, which is quite likely, I have no idea what I'm doing

Hi WOM and Stumpy!!!!

Thanks for all the advice and I'll look in here tomorrow for that device name DesignCaddy. I'm not really sure how much of this I'll be doing, since I don't personally own a DVD burner, but you never know.

werewolf, you might want to check out:

http://www.virtualdub.org/

i use this when i want to fiddle around with movie files. lots of features, and it is free i tried windows movie maker once, and haven't opened it since. it simply wouldn't let me pick the frame size or codec i wanted.

from my experience, if you can get a mpg or avi video file on your HD that actually plays, even if it is very large, then it should be fairly easy to encode it with virtualdub however you want. it is worth remembering that if you end up with a multi gig video file (which is quite easy!) it will play slowly simply because the file is so stupidly large. well, that has been my experience of this anyway

the website does say this program does video capture, but i have never tried this myself.

oh yes, and as you have already noticed, video codec's seem to be something of a minefield

i've been trying to figure out how to crunch a director movie into a good video file its being a pain. i had the same problems as you,werewolf. mp4 played first frame then stopped... the rest of the movie would start moving 20 minutes later on the strip. avi was great picture but no sound.. none of the other settigns had picture that could keep up with the music.

that unit i mentioend is called USB Instant DVD from ADS technologies. very cool little unit to take in 720x480 video, when your video card itself doesn't support it (and lets face it, even the best radeon don't take video in full-size).

Howdy Feline Thanks for the link. I'm going to check it out after work (I'm currently home for lunch) This sounds like it might do the trick. I gave my friend the cd's this morning and told him about all the problems I'd had. He's going to see what he can do.

DesignCaddy, I'll check out that device after work as well. Sounds interesting.

werewolf, a couple of things to consider. first up, some video codec's require that the picture has a specific size. eg, the height and the width in pixels must both be an exact multiple of 4. so 400 * 600 would encode fine, but 400 * 601 just makes a mess.

also, you could try the divx encoder. i have seen some very impressive results with this, and version 4 used to be available for free.

either way, grab a short section of the movie (i can explain how to do this in virtualdub if you want) and save it out. then use this for your tests, since it is a lot easier to experiment on a 5 meg file than to experiment on a 500 meg file