MMC 9.15/Catalyst 6.11/AIW x1900 A/V Sync Problems When Recording

[ATImeShifter]

When I try to record TV using MMC 9.15/Catalyst 6.11 (with a rolled-back version 1064 of the WMD) on my AIW x1900, using my preferred recording format of VCD (for space-saving reasons), I get progressively worse audio/video sync problems after about the first 10-15 minutes.

At first this shows up as a lag between audio and video (which surprisingly doesn't show up in the actual recorded video), and eventually, after 30-40 minutes, with the video freezing every second or so as it struggles to keep up with the audio (and which DOES show up in the recorded video).

What this means is that after around 30 minutes it's impossible to watch TV during a recording, and that recordings of longer than 40 or so minutes are impossible to watch as well.

I've tried using the latest WMD (1075 I believe) but then I get the dreaded aspect ratio problem (no matter what recording format I use). I've tried rolling back to earlier versions of MMC/Catalyst but been unable to do so as it appears that the AIW x1900 is not able to use them because it uses a newer digital tuner. I've tried defragmenting my 2 drives, splitting the pagefile over them, and recording to the non-system/OS drive. I've tried using different recording formats. All to no avail.

Any suggestions, short of changing to a different TV/DVR application such as BeyondTV? And would that fix this problem, or is this a hardware/driver issue that will not go away until AMD comes out with fixed drivers?

[ATImeShifter]

Just curious. I've asked this question here several times, and gotten very few responses, which have been on the order of either "you've got a bad card, sell it and buy a better one" (which I'm not about to do because the problems I've been having are, while annoying, still tolerable, but which I'd still like to at least partly solve if possible), "downgrade your software versions" (which I've tried, to no avail), or "get MCE" (which isn't a bad idea but not one that I'm likely to try given that Vista is about to come out).

So, could someone at least help me out by saying why this is a topic of such little interest here, given how popular ATI's AIW line has been? Have most people decided that trying to fix these problems is a lost cause, or do most people not have this combination of HW & SW and thus this sort of problem,so aren't interested in trying to solve it?

[netfire]

I have the same problem.

You are not alone. I have the same problem. I have an open ticket with ATI support and still waiting for solution.

I have a work around though. First, go through TV initialization wizard. In the 3rd or 4th screen, uncheck preserve TV-On-Demand between sessions. Also, increase TV-On-Demand recording minutes. Mine is set for 12 hours which requires about 35 GB hard disk space. Next open up TV setup window and go to digital video recorder tab, then make sure you select "Native" preset as the degault preset.

Now you can schedule tv recording or just watch the show you would like to record. MMC will use TV-On-Demand to record the show. After you are done, open up MMC library. Right click on the file and then export using the preset you preferred.

Hope this helps.

[ennss]

I have the same problem too. The WDM driver is either BROKEN or the combination of it and MMC is BROKEN.

The problem has nothing to do with disks, pagefiles or anything else. The problem exists on a PERFECTLY clean system. On my X600, I'm able to use the analog audio WDM drivers and MMC 6.01 - can turn off TOD, no audio lag, and everything works PERFECTLY.

I'm worried that this will never be fixed before they completely quit supporting the All-in-Wonders since they haven't updated the WDM driver for 3 catalyst releases (It's still 1075 in the 6.12 beta) , and the latest Vista driver package doesn't contain a WDM driver at all.

So PLEASE, everyone who has problems go open a support ticket at AMD/ATI and request a fix!

[ATImeShifter]

This is quite odd, and I'm hoping that this has more to do with the hopefully temporary disruption that the AMD acquisition must have caused, and not because AMD has made a strategic decision to not only stop making AIW cards but stop supporting them entirely.

If it's the former, then while I'm not happy, I can wait a bit longer. But if it's the latter, then clearly this is not acceptable, as there are millions of AIW owners who are not about to give up on half the usable functionality of their cards. If AMD is not willing to spend the money to continue to support these cards, then they should at least SAY SO and perhaps offload this to a 3rd party that would charge a nominal fee for future support.

Perhaps when Vista ships, they'll finally come out with better drivers. If not, then I might end up simply buying a 3rd party app like BeyondTV, as this is not an acceptable problem. My 5 year old AIW 7200 never had this problem running on a 5 year old PC.

Btw do you have any idea how to change the "Radeon X1300 XT" that's under my name on the left? I have no idea how it got there as this is not the card that I have, but I also don't know how to fix this.

[ATImeShifter]

Thanks. I tried all of your suggestions except for recording in Native mode, and it appears to have improved things somewhat. Recordings of up to an hour are now watchable for the last 20 minutes, where before they were not. There's still a slight problem with sync, but not so bad that it's not vieable.

I haven't tried longer recordings yet, but I rarely do this anyway as I usually record 30 or 60 minute long shows (you can tell that I'm not a big sports fan ;-> ).

I didn't try Native mode because of HD space concerns, as I understand that this format creates large files. Plus, since I record and a lot of shows, I didn't want to have to go through the extra step of converting formats regularly. But I might try it out briefly to see if the improvement is worth the bother. Perhaps I'll do this when I occasionally recorder more than 60 minutes.

Thanks!

[Psycogeek]

So, could someone at least help me out by saying why this is a topic of such little interest here, given how popular ATI's AIW line has been? Have most people decided that trying to fix these problems is a lost cause, or do most people not have this combination of HW & SW and thus this sort of problem,so aren't interested in trying to solve it?

i am interested :-)
i was going to see if YOU solved it :-)
so MUCH of the new drivers and the new hardware i got (1900) sucks so bad, and you CANNOT revert back to OLD drivers with the 1900, i basically gave up. got a haupenpauge and it works great.
i have great hope that they will fix it, or SOMBODY who knows what they are doing, will finnaly get a 1900, and get a way to get past all the problems, without buying $$$$ more cute additional software that is nothing more than a glorified interface to the same load of Crud driver set.

to the things mentioned, add in turning OFF any write back cache on the hard drives. we always had to do that for video recording non-stop large streams anyways.
BUT
i thought it was about TIME they fixed this stuff, with 2X faster computers, and duel processors, and 3GpS memory thourouputs, and almost full 2x speed faster entier system, we shouldnt have to FIGHT all this trash to get it to work perfectally.
15 YEARS ago, we did video with the amiga,
with a processor that was about like a 75mgz thing, and 64 megs of memory, the HOPE back then was ALWAYS that it would work perfectally if we had Just 2X more speed. now 100X more speed later, i wish it had just 2X more speed :-)
what the frill is microsoft doing to the speed once they get it?
somthing is making cute benchmarks, but other than that were still back in the dark ages.

come over here if you want to see a 29$ VCR still make a better recording than a 2400$ computer :-) without compression and color loss too, imagine that :-)

[Psycogeek]

Re_Sync Previous Recordings with simple interleave: (when audio gets off over time)
hey Virtual dub set in the "Direct" mode can "INTERLEAVE" the audio with the video, and "repair" a audio that gets off over time (migrates), it also can offset an audio that is all off.
interleave is kinda important, as the video and audio streams are seperated pieces of data (so to speak) because the PC recording toys dont have controls for interleave, and depending on what codecs your using they can dump all the audio at the end , instead of continually mixing it with the video (so to speak).
a QUICK pass through virtualdub in the direct mode can take less than a few minutes, and in the AUDIO section you can force a 1 Frame interleave without to much size overhead, and fix CERTAIN audio problems.
you do NOT have to have Vdub in full processing mode to re-interleave the audio, IF its taking 30minutes not 30 seconds, make sure that both the audio and the video are set into DIRECT mode, so just the interleaving occurs.

its not a solution, as the actual solution would be to do SOMETHING RIGHT to begin with, so these problems dont occur or manifest themselves, but its a quick cheap way for a workaround for recordings that are not playing back synced because of the audio stream that is there and correct, just not being locked to the video.

it will NOT fix frame dropping, and other causes of the audio getting off over time, for that kind of stuff you need to address why a video frame(s) are being dropped. stuff like your DMA for the hard drive, the hard drive write back buffers, high cpu use programs, and overclocking can cause out of sync , and frame drops. setting HIGH priorities on the recording processes can keep other tasks from causing stutters & frame dropping due to cpu use.