Theater 550 Pro: Bad composit and S-Video inputs?

[hysteriah]

Hi!

I try to use my PowerColor Theater 550 Pro for capturing some old VHS and Laser Discs... and I discover some strange problems.

The first problem i discovered was when I tried to use the CyberLink PowerCinema app. Whan I selected composit or s-video as source instead of the tuner, the record/capture button was greyed out after a few seconds of watching TV. If I clicked the button before it became greyed out I just got a message that said that the source I tried to capture was copy protected and coulden't be captured... ??? What the...??? The source I tried to capture was a private made tape and was absoluteley NOT copyprotected in any way. I tried to use the tuner of my VCR as a source through S-Video instead of a tape but the same happened??? I gave up and started surfing the net... and found this wonderful forum with many good tips and trix... so...

I tried Chris TV instead... and now I'm able to capture from the S-Video and composit inputs :-) BUT... I discover a hugh quality loss. The video from s-video and composit inputs is way to blury, the colours flickers... and there is a strange "ghost effect" in scenes with fast movements that looks pretty much the same as the "temporal noise reduction filter" on the Hauppauge PVR 150 cards... it's verry anoying. This doesn't happen when capturing from the tuner. When comparing a videoclip captured from the theater 550 pro tuner and a clip captured from my VCR tuner through s-video or composit input, the image is verry bad from the inputs.

I discovered something else... when I tried using the ATI MMC 9.15... just 4 fun I switched from hardware compression to software compression... and all of a sudden all these problems disapeared. The bluryness, ghost effect and the flickering colours just disapeared... and the image looks incredibly good... I think it looks better even from the onboard tuner with software compression instead of hardware compression.... BUT (again) I discover a new problem... the audio and video was no longer synchronized :-(

So... anyone with any idea of how to get deasent quality when capturing from the composit or s-video inputs on this PowerColor Theater 550 Pro card? Anyone with the same problem or is it just me?

Thanks for a wonderfull forum site

[hysteriah]

PS: I live in a PAL-B country