If someone could give me some clarification on my questions I would
appreciate it. I have been capturing analog video via a Hollywood DV
Bridge, which I guess is a external capture card. I recently acquired
a new computer (2.8 P4; 1 meg of RAB; 240 gigs total HD space) . The
computer came with a an 128 mb ATI Radeon ATI 9200 card.

This card has composite and S-video inputs. I have never had a
computer with these types of inputs which I guess means that all my
previous computers have had on-board video systems. In any event, my
first question: what are these imputs for? What can I hook up to
them? This goes along with my second question which is: Can a
graphics card also be a capture card" I have Premiere Pro and my
logic is telling me that I now should be able to hook my VCR directly
up to these inputs and skip the DV Bridge. If I can do that, then
isn't this card also a "capture card"? If not, then what is the
difference between a video card and a capture card.

I have never had to deal with these things before because I always
captured thru the DV-Bridge. However, now I have these PCI card based
inputs and I am confused as to how they are usable for me.

I guess as a side question I am wondering if I can hook up a cassette
tape to them and capture audio to a WAV format.

Anyhow, I know this is really basic stuff to a lot of you but I need
to grasp these fundamentals if I am to make use of this card. And if
I need to get an additional card for actual capturing I will.

Thanks in advance

John H. Power

<johnpower@verobeachlaw.com> wrote ...
There is no mention of inputs or capturing capabilities on
ATI's website. How do you know they are INputs?

Some video cards DO have video input/capture features.
ATI Radeon 9200 doesn't appear to be one of them. At
least according to the info I could find on ATI's website.

Why would you need video input to capture audio?
Most computers have audio input and output capabilities
built-in.

news:alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati would be where
I would go to ask questions about ATI video cards.

On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 08:36:20 -0500, johnpower@verobeachlaw.com wrote:

Alot of video card nowdays also function as video capture devices.
ATI has been making their video cards with capture ability for many
years already.
suspect it might be like a regular TV card. Open your program, set
the settings, codecs, etc you want to use, and hit capture.
instead?

johnpower@verobeachlaw.com wrote:
Are you positive they are inputs? As far as I can tell, there are
no RADEON 9200 cards with video inputs, but a number with video
outputs.

However, lets assume there is a RADEON 9200 card with video inputs
and you have one.

Some people like to view or record video on their computers, you can
hook up whatever you like that produces composite or S-video signals.
Usually if you have both, they are independent so you can actually
hook up different signals to each.

Sure, it is also a capture card.

In almost all cases, you are better off using the Hollywood DV Bridge
than any inexpensive video capture card. The problem is that the
inexpensive video capture cards don't capture audio, you are supposed
to record audio through your sound card. Due to the poor media
architecture of PCs and sound cards, this results in sound that is
out of sync with the video when you capture.

Why do you need an additional card? You've got a analog to DV
bridge?

Sam

On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 09:43:09 -0800, "Richard Crowley"
<rcrowley7@xprt.net> wrote:

Because the Quickstart brochure that came with the computer describes
the front and back panels and states that they are inputs. I looked
at the ATI site also and the card they called the 9200 had no
composite jacks. I think this is an "upgraded" 9200
I don't need video inputs to capture audio. I suppose I would do that
thru the sound card anyhow as the other poster suggested. So I am
back to the same question...what are these composite jacks for

On 15 Nov 2003 12:53:42 -0800, sam@paiks.org (Samuel Paik) wrote:

I never thought about hooking a tape player up to the Bridge but it
appears there is no reason why I cannot. The inputs are there.

Hi,

Radeon 9200 cards with video I/O certainly do exist. I am the sad owner of
an ATI Radeon 9200VIVO 128Mb 8x Dual Head card with S-Video and Composite in
and out via 4 very thin cable strands merged into a single plug on the
card's backplate. The cable is a cheap and nasty version of the
comparatively well-shielded moulded cable supplied with the AIW cards.
Capture performance is atrocious - noisy, and 30-40% dropped frames at half
DV frame size, 50-60% at full DV framesize. It reminds me of a USB 1.1
capture device I stupidly bought a few years ago. There's nothing wrong
with my machine - 2 10K SCSI III drives and 2 SATA drives dedicated to
video, and firewire capture is perfect via Audigy or motherboard IEEE. The
9200 simply can't handle the throughput required, so I copy analogue to DV
tape via my camera and capture it from there via firewire. I don't need to
do this enough to justify the cost of a Canopus ADVC-100 or something
similar.

John, the plastic shrouds on the S-Video and composite plugs have arrows
molded on them indicating which are "in" and which are "out". You can
connect your VCR or other analogue device to these and your capture software
should detect your Radeon as "ATI Rage Theatre Video Capture" with "Video
Composite" and "Video SVideo" options. Try it, weep, and then get yourself
some hardware that works.

Cheers,

Ken

"Samuel Paik" <sam@paiks.org> wrote in message
news:309a88d5.0311151253.2f17dc53@posting.google.c om...

"K+" <subsimian@tohmail.com> wrote:
I believe it is unlikely that the card is responsible for the frame
drops. It may be responsible for the noise.

These drives should have adequate performance.

And if you can capture DV via Firewire, then your drives aren't
out of tune.

This is extremely unlikely. I've owned three ATI cards with video
capture capabilities and all of them can capture at 720x480@29.97 fps
without dropping frames. One of them is an AIW 9000 Pro, which is
built on the RADEON 9000. The RADEON 9200 is basically a RADEON 9000
with an AGP 8X interface (the RADEON 9000 has an AGP 4X interface).

My guess is either something is wrong with your AGP interface
(software or hardware), the capture drivers you are using are
badly broken, the capture software was badly broken, or you
are using an inappropriate codec.

On the other hand, it may not be worth your time to figure this
out since you have an alternate and most likely superior choice.

John already has hardware that works :-)

Sam

On 16 Nov 2003 11:26:39 -0800, sam@paiks.org (Samuel Paik) wrote:

I am not sure I am getting it to work right.. I am going to fool
around with it a bit more and I may have another question or two. I
can't seem to capture into Premiere Pro with it. Actually though, I
think I am going to buy an ADVC-50 and scrap my Hollywood DV bridge so
I won't have all those wires going everywhere. I don't need the
ability to write back to analog so the ADVC-50 should work OK.

I don't really understand why people need those DVRaptors and other
$1000 capture cards. Is the analog to DV capture quality that much
better with those cards? I am just trying to convert the old family
videos to DV format.

Thanks for your helpful comments Sam.

I'm afraid my experiences with Radeons have been as bad as yours have been
good. I bought the original model Radeon 32Mb AIW card for a small fortune
in 1999 thinking it would be the video editing equivalent of a Swiss Army
Knife. The graphics display worked ok (dead slow for games though - my
son's 16Mb 3DFx card performed much better), but the TV was terrible and
video I/O was appalling too. I bought a cheap 2nd hand VCR and piped the
composite sigmal from the tuner in that into the AIW and that was a big
improvement, but still very noisy with a large percentage of dropped frames.
VCR to Digital video camera to PC via firewire gave fantastically good AVIs.
The Radeon AIW capture/tuner was the weak link. That card has been on 4
different motherboards with the same result and now it just sits in a file
server doing what it does best (displaying static XVGA!). I didn't expect
wonders (ironic smirk!) from the 9200, after all it was 1/4 the price of the
AIW, but I did expect an improvement from the 128Mb RAM and much faster
graphics chip. Nope! I've seen many posts from people happy with their
Radeons for capturing video, but most are from the NTSC part of the world.
Maybe ATI don't take so much care in implementing PAL (maybe because the
French use it ? ;-)).

Seriously, I appreciate your feedback. I doubt that we've helped you much
though John! People just doing what you are (capturing old analogue stuff
to DV) don't need fancy dedicated capture cards. Some of them do seem to
have the "muscle" to prevent anything short of an OS crash from interrupting
the video input stream. They can provide big reprocessing advantages when
you come to edit your thousand hours of home hohum down to a few hours of
real entertainment :-).

Cheers,

Ken

"Samuel Paik" <sam@paiks.org> wrote in message
news:309a88d5.0311161126.3fe4fdf5@posting.google.c om...

"K+" <subsimian@tohmail.com> wrote:
Ah, didn't realize you were in PAL land. I have no experience with PAL.

ATI is a Canadian company (but not a Quebec company like Matrox).
Then again, the French just have to be different--they use SECAM.

Thanks for setting me straight Sam.

I'm from World Cup Rugby land where last night the NZ team did what Mother
Nature expects, and thrashed France within an inch of extinction. If Darwin
was right, Oz will do the same to the Poms in the grand final tomorrow
night. If I tape that and want to capture a few quality clips of
highlights, I certainly won't be putting a Radeon between my VCR and my hard
disk.

Sorry, I digress again without being of any help to John...........

Cheers,

Ken

"Samuel Paik" <sam@paiks.org> wrote in message
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