New ATI Tuner Card.

[jonaslasky]

Hi hrlslcbr,
Lets slow down for a second and take this one step at a time:
1) theatrix claims that the filters are "disabled"
2) you claim they "aren't adjustable"

To me those sound like 2 conflicting reports.

You can take down my posts that you don't like, but your reasoning is still conveniently flawed. A DiSABLED FILTER, is still the same as a NON-ADJUSTABLE filter. Your argument is still non sensical. and you still can't expect people to use GraphEdit to tweak the filters only to find out it was an exercise in futility.

Jonas

[Multimedia Mike]

You can take down my posts that you don't like, but your reasoning is still conveniently flawed. A DiSABLED FILTER, is still the same as a NON-ADJUSTABLE filter. Your argument is still non sensical. and you still can't expect people to use GraphEdit to tweak the filters only to find out it was an exercise in futility.

Jonas

Hi Jonas,
To me, disabled would mean not working or turned off. Now these filters are definitely on otherwise the quality would be way worse. Regarding non-adjustable, as I posted earlier I did try it out and was able to change parameters. So both of those claims are not true. Yes the sharpness is not adjustable, but I've mentioned that before and I can't really do anything about that right now, but we were talking about filters like 3d comb and noise reduction.

Also please note that I don't take down posts just because I don't like what they say, I take down posts that have inappropriate language. Everybody is welcome to express their opinions or problems, but it must be done in a civilized manner

[hrlslcbr]

Mike, could you share the drivers you are using; because none of us here can adjust the filters with the sliders, which means they are either disabled or non adjustable (you can pick the one you like the most).

[Multimedia Mike]

Mike, could you share the drivers you are using; because none of us here can adjust the filters with the sliders, which means they are either disabled or non adjustable (you can pick the one you like the most).

Hi hrlslcbr,
I just downloaded the drivers off the website. I don't have a system handy right now to try it again, but I'll do that next week and maybe even try a different board to make sure. What I tried to see a big difference, and I encourage you to try this, is in GraphEdit open the "ATI AVStream Analog Capture" just go to "Filter Properties" and set the noise reduction filter method to "None". You can also set a some of those other parameters to 0 and you should definitely see a difference in the quality of the TV you see.

[dutchfudge]

What I tried to see a big difference, and I encourage you to try this, is in GraphEdit open the "ATI AVStream Analog Capture" just go to "Filter Properties" and set the noise reduction filter method to "None". You can also set a some of those other parameters to 0 and you should definitely see a difference in the quality of the TV you see.

Didn't you say before that settings adjusted in Graphedit would be reset/overridden by the recording software? So how can we adjust the filters, and actually have them work in the REAL WORLD?

[jtbili]

Dear MultimediaMike,

Using ATI 550 I would like to have advanced control on parameters like hardware encoding flow, comb filter, sharpness. I am not able to agree with you that setting thes parameters has no visible influence on the result. I expect to have the opportunity for settings parameters and decide myself about the parameters' values. This card is more then one year on the market - during this time I have not noticed any significant positive changes in the drivers or software; only delays or explanations from ATI. In the meantime I had to learn GraphEdit, Chris TV or ChrisTWEAK to force changes in the card with disputable results.
Summarizing, ATI please take care about new features of drivers not wasting time to persuade the world that product is sophisticaded enough and flexible for all.

[theatrix]

Hi hrlslcbr,
Lets slow down for a second and take this one step at a time:
1) theatrix claims that the filters are "disabled"
2) you claim they "aren't adjustable"

To me those sound like 2 conflicting reports. Anyways, I just fired up my Theater 550 card here and just opened up GraphEdit and put in "ATI AVStream Analog Capture." From here you can tweak the comb filter and noise reduction filter parameters. I took a screenshot of MCE TV with default settings. Then I closed it and turned off/darastically varied a whole bunch of parameters just to make it easy to see a difference. Sure enough, difference there was and quite a bit. Note there are a few things you need ot keep in mind:
- unless you have a specialized test signal coming in, it's very hard to see small changes in the filter parameters on a regular analog TV signal
- you need to have the stream NOT running, while you're changing the paramters, so close MCE or whatever app you use and change them and then relaunch it

Try that out and let me know because honestly this doesn't appear to be an issue from what I can see here.

Mike,

Thanks for replying and performing a test.

What I said was that the filters are disabled in 'capture' mode and non adjustable in any mode, they do provide a good tv preview screen but are pretty much useless for anyone wishing to record any signal whatsoever.

Interesting what you say about closing the stream and then adjusting parameters before re-opening the stream, I tried this in graphedit and noticed no difference on any signal, tv, cable or vcr and even if this method did work for me it will still be not much use because it would be very time consuming to get the right filter setup.

The bottom line is this:

The filters are not adjustable in the way I would expect them to be, I have tried every possible test with graphedit and maybe only a couple of times seen a very minimal adjustment to video footage that needed cleaning up, but never ever have I managed to perform any adjustment whatsoever in 'capture' mode and I believe they are totally disabled in 'capture' mode, maybe you can confirm this ? The reason why I say they are disabled in capture mode is because the capture is of less quality than the preview - regardless of any card settings - hardware settings - filter settings - software settings or system settings.

My problem with ati's advertising is the fact that they clearly tried to pitch this product at tv viewers and also guys like me who clean up and convert old video footage. Well they should have just pitched it as "a great tv previewing card" and said absolutely nothing else.

I sold the card on ebay and doubt I will ever buy another ati product unless they change their advertising strategy and compensate me for the endless hours of testing and posting messages to find answers. Having said that, if the 650 comes out with the exact same chip as the 550 I will spend extra time warning people on forums like this so that they dont end up spending weeks / months only to find out what I found out.

Thanks for listening.

[jonaslasky]

Mike,


The bottom line is this:

The filters are not adjustable in the way I would expect them to be, I have tried every possible test with graphedit and maybe only a couple of times seen a very minimal adjustment to video footage that needed cleaning up, but never ever have I managed to perform any adjustment whatsoever in 'capture' mode and I believe they are totally disabled in 'capture' mode, maybe you can confirm this ? The reason why I say they are disabled in capture mode is because the capture is of less quality than the preview - regardless of any card settings - hardware settings - filter settings - software settings or system settings.

Thanks for listening.

This is exactly what I and everybody else have found too. As DutchFudge pointed out (as I did in the message Mike removed) Mike himself said earlier.... that whatever you might manage to change with GraphEdit, is negated when you actually do the capture anyway.

So even if we pretend that the filters are adjustable in GraphEdit... what good is it ????

And who in their right mind would ever suggest that users should use GraphEdit to set filter parameters on a supposedly consumer-friendly product anyway???

I'm only restraining myself for fear of Mike taking my message down again. Last time my message wasn't even nasty at all. Not half as bad as so many that Spaceded posted.


Jonas

[Multimedia Mike]

Didn't you say before that settings adjusted in Graphedit would be reset/overridden by the recording software? So how can we adjust the filters, and actually have them work in the REAL WORLD?

Hi dutchfudge,
What I said earlier applies to things that the actual software can set. So for example if you set a certain bitrate in GraphEdit and your app only has preset settings of High, Mid, Low for example and each of those has a preset bitrate associated with those, then they will overwrite when you set in GraphEdit. However, if the app you're using doesn't set 3d comb filter or noise reduction filter (e.g. MMC or MCE) then whatever you set in GraphEdit will reflect what you see in the app.

[spacded]

I'm only restraining myself for fear of Mike taking my message down again. Last time my message wasn't even nasty at all. Not half as bad as so many that Spaceded posted.
Jonas

Hey dont bring me into it, I dont even come to this forum anymore

See you are all finally getting the message after 14 months

[Octavean]

I think that it is painfully obvious that an ATI control panel, which can control the various features of the Theater 550 Pro is in order. IMO, it is wholly impractical to have users rely on a utility such as GraphEdit.

It really is time to just make it. Actually its way past due.

[jonaslasky]

Hi dutchfudge,
What I said earlier applies to things that the actual software can set. So for example if you set a certain bitrate in GraphEdit and your app only has preset settings of High, Mid, Low for example and each of those has a preset bitrate associated with those, then they will overwrite when you set in GraphEdit. However, if the app you're using doesn't set 3d comb filter or noise reduction filter (e.g. MMC or MCE) then whatever you set in GraphEdit will reflect what you see in the app.

Slippery... slippery... but not slippery enough.

You would have a case if your company (ATI just in case we all forgot) actually made these controls available to third party applications.

Before you try to slip away again by blaming the software developers, let's remember that I can go down to my local electronics/computer store any day of the week (even while it's raining while standing on one foot and my hair tied behind my back) and buy a 5 dollar webcam that will let me adjust sharpness... etc. so it can't be that difficult to do. To think that I actually made excuses for ATI in the beginning.... well no more.

Jonas

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi,
I've already discussed the sharpness issue, but I'll repeat myself for everyone's benefit. No, you cannot adjust the sharpness on a Theater 550 Pro. It is pre-set and the sharpness bar you see in GraphEdit won't do anything to change it. This is an issue that has been known about for a while and though I'm not too familiar with it, obviously it's not fixable from a driver point of a view otherwise we would have resolved it some time ago. So I apologize, but I can't do anything to fix it. So why don't we focus on some other things that maybe we could resolve.

Now, I'd like to get back to our discussion of filters being disabled for capture. Now I'm not sure what you guys meant by capture, but I tried to feed in a DVD player Composite Video out into a Theater 550 Pro card and played with some settings in GraphEdit (looking at the Video from MCE). The DVD had some clips meant to test comb filters and right in the first minute when I switched the comb filter from 3d to 2d I saw a huge difference (need to stop playing while switching settings). So it is obvious that 3d comb filter is up and running for Composite input (if you have it turned on). What were you guys doing that made you think it was disabled?

[spacded]

Can the last Person to leave this ridiculous thread please turn off the light!

[dutchfudge]

Can the last Person to leave this ridiculous thread please turn off the light!

spaceded obviously has nothing to add to this forum, as he is setup as he likes with MCE.

To prevent further sidetracking and flaming, please ban spaceded so the forum can stay more focused(needs a lot of help on this!)

I think everyone will agree that spaceded is not contributing anything valuable to the discussion

Thank you

[Dav0s]

can somebody tell me why this thread has over 2000 replies? i really am not going to read it all