Has anyone tried to capture video using the ATI Radeon All-in-wonder? Can you tell me if it's worth getting?

-- Eddy Mazmanian (gmazman@home.com), January 03, 2001

Answers

I have yet to be able to get it to work with ANY program besides the one that it comes with. It's the best card out there if you want to do EVERYTHING ... But perhaps not the best video capture card.

-- clint (clintjcl@hotmail.com), January 05, 2001.

I just bought a PC installed with the ATI A-I-W Radeon card. Expensive and works well enough to produce mpg-1 files. It makes mpg- 2 files but its own player doesn't even play it and neither does Windows Media Player 7, complaining some missing CODEC. Since I am not very technical I guess it's something missing on my PC.

-- Eddie Chu (mail@eddiechu.com), January 06, 2001.

AIW Radeon is a must have! Video capture is amazing despite the fact that it's a jack-of-all-trade type of card... I've still to fiddle around with settings to obtain the correct resolution and must admit have yet to create an mpg that's VCD compatible but I fully believe that this card can give me good enough quality to burn a movie onto CDROM in VCD format.

My setup before is using my Sony Vaio notebook linking to my DV camera via firewire. Capture was fine, but encoding to MPEG firstly takes 10 years and 2ndly gives me less than desirable results; motion generally causes fuzziness. The Radeon capture via a non-digital input (S-video) gives me (so far) very good and acceptable quality, no fuzziness! Highly recommended and a pity it doesn't come in 64meg to cover my gaming interests.

-- Mike (michael.cheung@ft.com), January 10, 2001.

THe Radeon is a horrible card for video capture. IT simply does not work 98% of the time for video capture. ATI drivers are very buggy and their support is horrible.

-- Vlad Lashing (vlashing@home.com), May 05, 2001.

Pls get rid of any ATI products, I am 100%sure it will trouble ur system one or another way... Sometimes with your scanner, videocamera etc.. ALL_IN_WONDER PRO 32MB is royaly screwing me for past 3 months . I lost my money ($199) and time.. Simply ATI products will not work... Try to contact them, then U will really understand how they are screwing u...

-- Aji Paul (ajipaul@yahoo.com), June 18, 2001.

Buying the AIW has proved to be an expensive mistake - it is so buggy. I can't capture colour NTSC images from an NTSC video player but PAL is OK. Trying to get the TV program to work more than once per Windows session is impossible and getting it started at all is hit and miss. Press the 'wrong' setting and your PC will lock up.

File Player? - hasn't played a file yet.

All in all - best avoid

-- Pedro (pete671@hotmail.com), July 17, 2001.

I have my ATI AIW 32mb Radeon for less than a week now. But I haven't had any of the problems I've read here. Every funtion that I have tried works flawlessly thus far. But I have not tried to capture from my VCR just yet, along with some other functions (this card is packed with functions).

"Pls get rid of any ATI products, I am 100%sure it will trouble ur system one or another way... Sometimes with your scanner, videocamera etc.. ALL_IN_WONDER PRO 32MB is royaly screwing me for past 3 months . I lost my money ($199) and time.. Simply ATI products will not work... Try to contact them, then U will really understand how they are screwing u... "

This is a thread about the Radeon bro, and one bunk card probably doesn't mean that every peice of hardware a company makes will suck. I feel you have drawn your conclusion too quickly. I would also imaging the troubles you described as being related to your system, but that's just a guess.

"Buying the AIW has proved to be an expensive mistake - it is so buggy. I can't capture colour NTSC images from an NTSC video player but PAL is OK. Trying to get the TV program to work more than once per Windows session is impossible and getting it started at all is hit and miss. Press the 'wrong' setting and your PC will lock up. File Player? - hasn't played a file yet.

All in all - best avoid"

Again I have had none of these problems yet. I captured full color NTSC video (one time so far) and it played fine in ATIs file player and windows media player too. So far I have used the TV program most extensively and I can start and shut it down as often as I like in a windows session. That feature has worked flawlessly for me. I have also had no lock ups since installing the card.

So although I have more to check out about the card since it has so many features, no problems yet. I have in fact, been quite impressed. I wonder if some of these problems people are having are simply related to the computer they put the card in.

-- attjack attjack (attjack@hotmail.com), July 19, 2001.

I have a AIW Radeon running in a Iwill KK266 w/ Athlon 1.4 GHz CPU and 512 MB.

It runs great for _AVI_ capture, but if I try to capture MPEG-2, it inevitably hangs the system.

Tried TV-On-Demand this morning, and after a while it started looping the same couple of frames (almost like if there was an IRQ conflict, but there is none).

I'm still happy with it since I like the GuidePlus feature and the tuner responds very quickly.

Things AIW Radeon doesn't have (that I think are important): * Integrated play while recording - you can do it but at very reduced performance - this would facilitate TV-On-Demand features while using Digital VCR (for the same program) * Content management (like Tivo) * Better control of MPEG settings (even tho mine doesn't work quite right) * Launch of external program from ATI Scheduler so you can use a different capture card to record from the tuner.

All things considered, I'm still happy with it - but I'm not sure I'd spend ~$300 on it again.

-- Brandon Higa (bhiga@email.com), August 07, 2001.

After 6 months this card is only good as a simple display device. All the "features" of the AIW are useless. This is a $50 card packed with $200 of features that are ususable.

-- Jory James (pp9t@hotmail.com), August 24, 2001.

I have had several versions of the All in Wonder card, and they keep getting better with each release. The key thing I've found is that if you are going to do alot of video capture/editing, you need a good processor(at least a PIII 450 or AMD equiv)..and the more ram the better:). I am using the AIW Radeon right now...great for TV watching and BASIC video capture. You can capture in MPEG1 easy...MPEG2 takes more power and resources, but as long as you keep the window size small, it works ok. The breakout box for connections is a good idea and one of the main reasons i got this card. I usually capture my projects as MPEG1, then use a DIFFERENT program to edit and encode...my current fav is Videowave 4. I have started playing with the DivX codecs to save space...whatever floats your boat. Warning: ATI is notorious for slow driver updates..they generally wait for Microsoft certification of a driver, then release it:(. The new AIW Radeon 8500 looks good..64DDR and a IR remote are good additions;). They also promise to start releasing drivers every couple of months with the 8500...hmmmmm. I still think the card is good for an all around video solution. You can capture, use the tuner, play games at a decent framerate and not pay 400 dollars for your card. Give it a try, huh?

-- (awilliam3@hotmail.com), October 08, 2001.

I think I must agree with another respondent,that the ATI is barely effective if you have a powerful system (and then it does not do as good as it should, considering the 1.4 GHz I have, and the 1.5 Gig of RAM). So, if you have a less than optimum system then choose another card more specific to video capture. I heard the Pinnacel dv500 is good, but has its own set of driver problems.

-- Carlos Alfredo Calderon (stdcac14@wt.net), December 14, 2001.

I have been desiring the AIW card since I built my current system. I finally found a buy, and got the Radeon 32 DDR in the bargain. I installed it on a clean WIN98SE install, and had little trouble getting all the functions to work. My only trouble so far is in reinstalling the DOS games I play. This is an IRQ/software issue, and not related to the AIW. Very happy, but would not have spent $300 dollars on any video card.

-- E Nitnerrab (barrbl@aol.com), December 21, 2001.

I've used 3 generations of AIW and can say that they are ok for video capture unless you want professional results and can pay for it. I've used them in 3 operating systems as well. The negative comments are exaggerated but you can expect some issues if you drop one of these cards into a computer that isn't fairly fresh from a clean install of the OS.

-- Michael Purnell (mike@greenftechn.com), March 27, 2002.