ATI MMC MPEG1 Capture "System Reference Clock"

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Hello to all.

I am trying to make compatible VCDs by doing direct-to-MPEG1 capture on my Gateway Solo 9300 notebook which has built in video capture and output. The sofware used is ATI's Multimedia Center "Television" capture program which can directly generate an MPEG1 file.

The problem I have which I hope someone here may have an answer to, is that the MPEG1 file generated is acceptable in all respects to Adaptec EZ Video CD Creator except for the "System Reference Clock". If I burn anyway, the VCD plays visually OK on my DVD player but the sound is all chopped up. (Adaptec EVCD indicates possible problems with the video and audio pack sizes, and maybe this is also a problem).

Regards, Brady

-- Brady (foo@bar.com), March 22, 2000

Answers

Interesting...setup with the Gateway Notebook! Anyway, for your problem with the reference clock and choppy sound: The motion estimation should be set at 3 in order for the reference clock to be right with EZCD (1200). Check your GOP settings and make sure it's at 15,3.

-- lnguyen (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), March 22, 2000.

Check my web site which has a LOT of information about the ATI AIW 128 video cards. Although this is not your video card, you'll find information there about your problem. Just setting the GOP and other parameters as the previous poster mentioned will not help. If your chipset and software is based on those other ATI cards, you need to do other things. The ATI Multimedia Center software discussed on my web page is similar to what you are using (if not the same) There are 2 versions .. 6.0 and 6.2. 6.0 has many problems that were addressed with 6.2 You "can" make Whitebook complient VCD video with the 6.2 version IF you check (enable) the "defualt" setting in the first Mpeg-1 setup screen. But do NOT change any other setting from it's default or you will throw that parameter you are having trouble with out of whack again. The problem is that the "default" Mpeg-1 setting in MMC 6.2 is VERY conservative and produces poor quality video. There are work arounds. Check my page for lots of tips ... http://www.members.home.net/richa/

HTH

-- Rich (richa@home.com), March 22, 2000.


Thanks Rich and LNguyen for your responses.

Rich, thanks for the link to your site. It looks like we are experiencing exactly the same problems. Unfortunately, what appears to me to be the optimum approach of capturing directly to MPEG1 with MMC does not appear to work 100%. I find that iFilmEdit will not give me a flawless VCD even. It makes the MPEG file EZCD Video compiant but sound still drops out occaisonally (every 10 seconds or so) when played back on my Sony DVD player.

The only flawless playback I have experienced has been to capture in AVI and convert the entire output file to MPEG using ATI2VCD 1.0. Sound was flawless but there is no control over compression. What is less-than-optimal about this solution is that AVI capture files are HUGE and the conversion after capture is so slow.

It seems we are in the hands of ATI to come up with a solution to this problem. Thanks again for your responses, and if you read this, Rich, maybe you could tell me if iFilmEdit really made the file work perfectly on a DVD player?

Brady

-- Brady (bkeays@pacbell.net), March 23, 2000.


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