a vaguely unsatisfying experience
Written: Mar 06 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Best low priced vidcap board
Cons: erratic performance, poor drivers
The Bottom Line: don't consider it if you are serious about video editing, it can't quite do it to par. Pretty good for the casual user.
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| alan_d's Full Review: ATI ALL-IN-WONDER 128 Pro, (32 MB) AGP Video Card |
I am writing about the ATI All-In-Wonder 128 Pro, AGP 16MB version.
I bought this card in high hopes. It has video input AND output, as well as 3d support. The TV tuner was simply an added bonus for me. It comes with proprietary software for capture and editing, but since it uses Windows WDM capture, it can use most other capture software.
It is a pain to install. Both my brother and myself have versions of this card, and I set them both up. It has never worked without a hitch. I could go into a lot more detail, but suffice it to say that it is unnecessarily difficult even assuming nothing goes wrong (which of course, something will.)
I really cannot comment on the 3D performance other to say that I have been happy with it, and it clearly outshines my Voodoo3 3000 16MB PCI that now serves as my secondary video card. Sometimes the OpenGL acts a little goofy, but I don't think it's any better with any other card.
As for the video capture--the first thing I noticed was that there was a distortion band across the bottom of the screen, and a slight color darkening across the top. It only distorted when I was using my VCR, not my console DVD player nor the built-in TV tuner. I always assumed it was my VCR's fault, as it does this on my brother's ATI AIW128. The AIW128 uses a different vidcap chipset than the 128Pro, so I posited this was a driver problem. This was later confirmed, as Windows 2000 has no problems rendering accurate video. Also, while the Windows 2000 drivers had less interlacing artifacts at higher output resolutions for TV display (as well as none of the picture distortion), the picture seemed a little softer. You have more MPEG settings to play with in the Win2k drivers, but unfortunately you have less codec options including the ATI codec. This is disappointing, since the ATI VCR codec is a pretty good intermediate format for video before I convert it to MPEG-4. Both drivers have a problem with properly rendering the right hand side of the screen. My captures have a noticable black bar across the right hand side. On the plus side, with a reasonably fast processor you can cature directly to MPEG1 and 2. I captured 320x240 MPEG for over 20 minutes on my 450MHZ AMD K6-III just fine. I was pretty impressed by that.
The actual performance of the video capture is sketchy. At lower resolutions it seems to work okay. I have noticed that if you are capturing at higher than 320x240, it must be doing some sort of interpolation to get that resolution. Subsequently, the CPU usage will greatly increase if you go for any of the higher resolutions. This is not an issue on the Win2k side, as it will not capture higher than 320x240.
The capture software is easy to use, but slow. There is a definite lag between when you hit the capture button, and when it actually records. And, it is completely incapable of matching the framerate you specify! It is consistently off by +-1 frame per second, which may not seem like a lot, but makes it so you cannot piece together clips in an external editor! This is not a problem with the driver or the card, but the software. I now use VirtualDub, which works fine with some driver coaxing. I have to flip through the input sources to initialize the sound...
The drivers for win2k are much more streamlined, and work faster than their win98 counterpart. The TV controls are MUCH more responsive, and the picture quality is distortion free compared to win98. However, the win2k drivers are STILL IN BETA AFTER OVER A YEAR, and it locks my system when I run the TV and Internet Explorer simultaneously.
Lately, I have been unable to capture long segments without errors being introduced into the video stream that chokes up VirtualDub.
The TV output is good except for the black band across the bottom of the screen distorting the image.
And finally, other OS support. Haven't tried Linux yet, though I hear it's supported. BUT...I also am running BeOS and QNX RTP6, neither of which can correctly recognize my (supposedly supported) ATI card. BE won't even recognize it with the correct drivers, and QNX just screws up and locks up an otherwise uncrashable OS. I should note, Be attributes the problems in BeOS to the fact that ATI AIW128 cards have over 40 different chipset variations, none of which they disclose any information on.
Well, this has been a pretty long review, but I think I have covered everything that I found notable about the card.
In summary:
The drivers all stink, poor OS support, passable video capture for the prosumer. I'm just kind of disappointed because I thought it would do a better job of what it it meant to do. The TV is pretty cool, and I love watching supersharp TV on my 19" monitor, but I got it for vidcap, and its just not as good as expected. These are all driver problems I believe, incidentally.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 126
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Epinions.com ID:
alan_d
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Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 1 member
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